I just got started with AzureWebSites by creating a website by choosing the Wordpress template. Next I tried to install WebMatrix so that I could run the website locally. Every time I tried to run my website from WebMatrix I hit the message “The following site has stopped ‘xxx’”

Step 00 – Analysis

It took a bit of time to figure out that WebMatrix makes use of IISExpress. But it was easy to figure out that IISExpress was not showing up in the system tray when I started WebMatrix. This was a good indication that IISExpress is having some trouble starting up.

So, I opened CMD prompt and tried to run IISExpress.exe this resulted in the below error message

So, I ran IISExpress.exe /trace:Error this gave more detailed reason for failure

Step 1 – Fixing “The following site has stopped ‘xxx’”

Further analysis revealed that the IIS Express config file had been corrupted. So, I navigated to C:\Users\<UserName>\Documents\IISExpress\config and deleted the files applicationhost.config, aspnet.config and redirection.config (please take a backup of these files before deleting them).

Come back to CMD and run IISExpress /trace:Error

IIS Express successfully started and parked itself in the system tray icon.

I opened up WebMatrix and clicked Run, this time the default site successfully loaded up in the browser without any failures.

Step 2 – Download WordPress Azure WebSite using WebMatrix

Because the config files ‘applicationhost.config’, ‘aspnet.config’ and ‘redirection.config’ were deleted I lost the settings of my Azure based WordPress site that I had downloaded to run from WebMatrix. This was simple to sort out…

Open up WebMatrix and go to the Remote tab, click on Download

Export the PublishSettings file from Azure Management Portal and upload it on the pop up you get when you had clicked Download in the previous step

Now you should have your Azure WordPress website all set up & running from WebMatrix.

Enjoy!