Issue

The user is getting an error in Site Settings > Search > Basic Settings Tab for every portal in his/her instance. The Error says "There was an error retrieving your content. Please check your internet connection." There is no connection problem because the user is able to access other tabs under the Search Tab.

Troubleshooting

Open the console logs in the browser by accessing Settings > Site Settings > Search > Basic Settings (In order to access console logs you can just right click anywhere inside your DNN website then inspect to view console tab ) 

*https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-devtools/console/ (That link will help if the user is using google chrome)

Also, run this query: 

select * from PersonaBarMenu WHERE Identifier = 'Dnn.SiteSettings' or Identifier = 'Dnn.Sites' or  Identifier = 'Dnn.Users'

Solution

• Inspected the  Settings > Search > Basic Settings Tab where there were several 500 error code in the response having "An error has occurred" message.
• Reviewed logs and found "No sub-file with id _2h9o.fdt found" where it should be located under SiteDirectory\App_Data\Search and couldn't find it there.
• Tried to force run the three crawlers below with no luck to have "Basic Settings" to work: 
  1. Search: File Crawler
  2. Search: Site Crawler
  3. Search: Url Crawler
• Backed up the entire "Search" folder, then deleted it trying to force all three crawlers one more time (this is an alternative way to force-reindexing contents since we cannot access it through the Basic Settings tab)
• Restarted the application.

Product: DNN

Article By: Michael Ayoub‍