Sitecore Rocks unable to connect with Sitecore 9

During the process of upgrading Sitecore from an older version to Sitecore 9, you may face various errors/issues which are due to either:

Old namespaces/syntax are obsolete/deprecated OR
Approach to implement the logic is revamped/improved OR
Additional settings/configuration are needed to make it work

Currently we are upgrading Sitecore 7.2 to Sitecore 9. Since it is a major version upgrade we are expecting and prepared for a lot of broken things to be fixed as part of this upgrade.

Without any doubt for the ease in upgrade we are using Express Migration Tool for DB migration. Hence after successful DB migration when we tried to connect Sitecore Rocks with migrated Sitecore 9 Instance, we faced hiccups with some exceptions.

Once you enter all the required connection settings in Sitecore Rocks and hit the Test button, you get the error message below:

The web site does not respond.

The connection is using the Hard Rock Web Service which may not yet have been installed on the server.

Do you want to update the server component?

Click on Yes to update your server components. Once done, you may face a “No Service” Error.

Pretty simple fix. Came to know by my googled research that on Sitecore 9 due to security changes implemented Sitecore Rocks is unable to connect. As a solution the following configuration need to be placed in web.config after </system.webserver> node:

<location path="sitecore/shell/WebService">
    <system.web>
        <authorization>
            <allow users="?,*" />
        </authorization>
    </system.web>
</location>

Try now, Rocks should be able to connect with Sitecore 9 Instance.

Big thanks to Rob Ahnemann for this blog post. Also you can find similar question on Sitecore Stack Exchange with additional answers if the above one doesn’t work for you.