Troubleshooting Development in Traditional dotCMS Implementations

Save Time and Reduce Frustration with These Proven Debugging Strategies

dotCMS offers front-end developers a powerful and flexible platform for building dynamic websites, but troubleshooting common issues can sometimes be challenging. Whether you're integrating dynamic content, managing workflows, optimizing performance, or ensuring accessibility compliance, identifying the root cause of problems quickly is essential.

This guide breaks down the most frequent development and deployment challenges in dotCMS and provides actionable solutions using built-in debugging tools, best practices, and automation techniques. From fixing content display errors and resolving push publishing conflicts to improving search indexing and optimizing caching strategies, you’ll find step-by-step troubleshooting approaches tailored for an efficient and scalable dotCMS implementation. Whether you're fine-tuning user experience, debugging API integrations, or enhancing site performance, these expert strategies will help you streamline development and keep your projects running smoothly.

Core Troubleshooting Tools

These essential tools help diagnose and resolve common front-end issues:

dotCMS.log Viewer – Check system logs for content rendering, form validation, or API issues. The log viewer can be found in the admin panel under Settings > Maintenance > Log Files.
API Playground – Test API requests before deployment. Found in Dev Tools > API Playground.
dotCLI Commands – Automate content synchronization and prevent environment mismatches. See the dotCLI documentation page for more info.
Push Publishing Queues – Troubleshoot stuck or failed publishing actions. The Publishing Queue tool can be found under Site > Publishing Queue.
Workflow Task Manager – Ensure content approval workflows function correctly. The Tasks tool can be exposed through Roles & Tools.

1. Content Pulls Not Displaying Correctly

Best Setup Practices for Easier Troubleshooting:

Dynamic content is essential for any dotCMS site, but missing or incorrect data often results from configuration or query errors. Whether you're building a header or footer for a theme, creating dynamic widgets, or adding custom fields to content, always place significant Velocity code in a Velocity Template Language (VTL) file. This approach allows you to edit, troubleshoot, and manage code locally, while also storing changes in your CI/CD pipeline using dotCLI.

Using reusable VTL files is a best practice, particularly in multitenant environments, where ensuring that code updates are instantly applied across multiple sites is crucial. The dotCLI simplifies troubleshooting by enabling direct editing of VTL files, bypassing the UI for faster testing.

However, even well-structured VTL files can encounter issues — especially for new webmasters unfamiliar with Velocity Scripting. Below are essential tools and tips to help troubleshoot and resolve problems effectively.

Tools and Steps to Resolve:

Content Search Tool: Verify content exists and is queryable via the backend. Use the “Advanced” search options and the down arrow next to the search button to select the “show queries” option to copy starter queries.
Dev Tools Query Testing: Go to the “Dev Tools” menu and use the ES Search, Query Tool, GraphQL, Velocity, API Playground, or dotAI tools to test queries for content.
Velocity Debugging Tools: Under “Settings > Maintenance” use the dotcms.log statements to troubleshoot queries in velocity code. Explicit calls to the $dotlogger viewtool can further illuminate execution flow.
dotCMS CLI (dotCLI): Automate content synchronization using commands like dotcli content-type pull to ensure local and remote environments are aligned.

Learn more about Content Types
Learn more about the dotCLI
Learn more about Velocity Scripting
Learn more about Viewing Log Files

2. Site Layout, Device Type, and User Experience Testing

Ensuring your design renders consistently across browsers is essential.

Tools and Testing:

Theme Editor: Make quick adjustments to CSS and templates by managing changes to your header.vtl, footer.vtl, html_head.vtl, template.vtl, CSS files, and JavaScript files using the dotCLI tool to keep changes in sync with the CICD pipeline. Read more about constructing a theme’s template.vtl file.
Universal Visual Editor: Test designs in different resolutions and device types from different browsers using the Preview dropdown options.
Persona Tool: Use the persona selector to test and validate personalization rules for targeted content delivery and user experiences for different targeted channels.

Learn more about dotCMS Themes
Learn more about the Universal Visual Editor
Learn more about dotCMS Personas

3. Form Submission Failures

Forms are critical user interaction points. When forms fail, it disrupts both user experience and data collection.

Tools and Steps to Resolve:

Form Builder: Use dotCMS’s built-in tool to manage form creation and validation.
Submission Logs: Check the dotcms.log for errors related to permissions or field validation.
- Depending on the nature of the error, your browser’s console log or network monitor may also reveal useful information about client-side script issues or unexpected HTTP responses.
API Playground: Test the dotCMS API to create custom REST API forms

Guide to dotCMS Forms
Save Content using REST API Forms

4. Push Publishing Errors

Troubleshooting Prevention Tips:

Most push-publishing errors are self-inflicted. As a rule, NEVER allow direct code or content changes on the receiving server, and NEVER allow two-way publishing. Each code editor should edit code on only one environment (Dev/Staging) and then push those code changes to a node for testing (Staging), then to the receiving server — i.e., the production environment. Allowing code editors to push backwards and forwards from both sending and receiving endpoints will allow old code to overwrite new code, duplicate content to be created with different identifiers, and content histories to fall out of sync.

Push Publishing is integral for synchronizing environments. Errors here can cause significant delays if not set up properly.

Tools and Steps to Resolve:

Integrity Checker: Under Settings > Configuration > Publishing Environments, the “Check Integrity” button can help identify and resolve version conflicts before push publishing between environments.
Publishing Queue: Monitor and troubleshoot stuck or failed items in the queue and examine failed bundle error messaging.
Log Errors: From Maintenance > Log Files examine the dotCMS.log for any unusual behavior.

Push Publishing Documentation
Troubleshooting Push Publishing

5. Integration Testing

APIs and external integrations must function seamlessly with your dotCMS instance. The dotCMS CLI is an invaluable tool for managing workspaces, automating API interactions, and synchronizing environments.

Tools and Steps to Resolve:

API Playground: Test REST API endpoints directly from the back end.
dotCMS CLI (dotCLI): Automate workspace synchronization, manage configurations, and push or pull updates directly via the command line. Use its GitHub integration to incorporate a CI/CD pipeline with GitHub Actions for streamlined deployment.
OSGi Plugin Console: Deploy/Undeploy and debug plugins to ensure compatibility.

dotCMS API Documentation
Learn more about the Back-end API Playground
Learn more about the dotCLI
Learn more about OSGi Plugins
Learn more about OSGi Plugin Logging

6. Accessibility Compliance

Accessibility ensures your site is usable by everyone. dotCMS includes tools to avoid common accessibility issues.

Tools and Steps to Resolve:

Vanity URL Manager: Ensure URLs are readable and redirect correctly.
WYSIWYG Accessibility Checker: Allows content editors to test accessibility as they write content.
Accessibility Checker from Page Tools: Use dotCMS to serve secure certificates site-wide.

Learn more about the Vanity URL Manager
Learn more about the WYSIWYG Accessibility Checker
Learn more about the UVE’s Page Tools

7. Workflow Issues & Debugging User Permissions

Workflows ensure smooth content management, but improper setup can cause delays.

Tools and Steps to Resolve:

Workflow Builder: Use the workflow manager to troubleshoot permissions issues in workflows
- Select the “Filter by Who Can Use” drop-down to troubleshoot role/user permissions to sub-actions and the “Filter by Content Type” to verify role/user permissions to specific Content Types
- The multiple approvals sub-action can be used on code files to provide code review and troubleshooting help with code files between developers
Workflow Task Manager: Verify task distribution using the workflow task search filters to verify that tasks are being assigned properly to the desired roles and/or users.

Tools and Steps to Resolve:

Troubleshoot using the “Login As” Feature: CMS Administrators who create role permissions and workflows should use the “Login As” feature to proxy login as a user and test/troubleshoot workflows and permission settings before assigning content management tasks to users. Resolve issues using the Workflow Builder as mentioned above.

Workflow Management in dotCMS
Learn more about the Workflow Task Manager
Learn more about the “Login As” Feature

8. Site Speed Optimization

dotCMS offers a variety of features and tools that can significantly enhance site speed optimization. First, its ability to cache dynamic content through local cache and on-disk cache mechanisms allows for quicker loading times, as these caches serve content without frequently hitting the shared database. This is crucial during high-traffic periods, as cached contents can drastically reduce server load.

However, during troubleshooting it is important to know where caching is controlled and how to clear each type of cache.

Tools to improve Speed Optimization and How to Troubleshoot:

Page Cache: Page cache times can be set on pages to improve page load performance. However, there are two common ways to clear caches during troubleshooting.
- Remove the Advanced Page Cache: Set the property to zero and republish the page to clear that pages cache
- Clear all Page Caching: Clear the cache for all pages from the Maintenance menu
dotCache: The dotCache tool is a way for webmasters to use Velocity script to wrap a tagged based cache around dynamic pulls and set their own TTL on that cache.
- Troubleshoot: Clear the dotCache in Velocity using #dotcacheinvalidate
Content Cache: Monitor metrics like load time and server response.
- Troubleshoot: Clear the content type cache from the Maintenance Menu
Image Optimization Tools: Reduce file sizes, encode in WebP format and more, in dotCMS’s Image Editor.
- Troubleshoot: Image handling is RESTful and can be tested via URL filtering.
dotCDN: The dotCMS Cloud Engineering team will help optimize your dotCDN.
- Troubleshoot: Leverage dotCMS plugins or the built-in CDN management tools, such as the dotCDN Purge action in your workflow, to automate cache invalidation whenever an asset changes.

Learn more about the Page Cache
Learn more about the dotCache Tool
Learn more about the Cache Configuration
Learn more about Image Resizing and Processing
Learn more about dotCDN

9. Search Indexing Troubleshooting

To troubleshoot Search Indexing issues in dotCMS, consider these steps:

Tools and Steps to Resolve:

Content Refresh: Reindex a single piece of content from the Content Search tab
dotAI & Site Search Testing: Validate the contents of the Site Search index or dotAI index by searching through the index in the dotCMS back-end for each tool
Full Index Rebuild: If issues persist, consider running a full reindex to refresh the entire index, especially if data changes have occurred directly in the database. However, it is recommended that this be done during non-peak hours.

dotCMS Search Configuration
Learn more about Site Search
Learn more about dotAI

Conclusion

Front-end development comes with challenges, but with the right tools and best practices, these hurdles can be easily managed. By using dotCLI for automation, push publishing for content synchronization, and dotCDN for optimized performance, developers can build scalable, efficient, and high-performing websites.

A proactive approach — leveraging query testing, workflow validation, indexing strategies, and integration tools — ensures that troubleshooting is both faster and more effective. Implementing a structured CI/CD pipeline, maintaining best practices for multitenancy, and optimizing caching and indexing will further enhance site reliability and user experience.