Investigate Push Publishing failure when pushing a page with built-in starter template to a clean receiver instance

Research Question

Why does push publishing fail when sending a page with a built-in starter template (Default or Advanced) to a clean receiver instance (no starter loaded), and what causes the sender page's live content to be wiped after a failed push followed by a successful retry?

Visual summary

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/f5cf7dbc-3130-4dfa-ac82-61f0197269a0

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/fa99a7d2-5e01-4eb8-837a-27c7709291c7

Timebox

8h

Acceptance Criteria

• Document the root cause of the push publishing failure: why a page with a built-in starter template (Default/Advanced) fails to push to a clean receiver with error "Field with id not found in Video content type"
• Identify which code path in PushPublisher/PublisherAPIImpl processes content type field validation during a template push, and where the field-not-found check occurs
• Document why the sender page's live content is wiped ("Nothing Live here yet") after a failed push attempt followed by a successful retry — identify whether this is a rollback mechanism, a publish state machine bug, or another cause
• Determine whether the retry "success" represents a genuinely correct state on the receiver, or a false positive (partially published content)
• Provide a recommendation: should push publishing handle missing built-in content type fields gracefully (skip/warn and continue), or is this a required receiver setup/starter dependency? Include pros/cons.

Context

When pushing a page with a built-in starter template (Default or Advanced) from a sender instance (loaded with starter-20260430.zip) to a clean receiver instance (no starter loaded), push publishing fails on the first attempt.

Environments:

• Sender: dotCMS instance with CUSTOM_STARTER_URL: starter-20260430.zip
• Receiver: Clean dotCMS instance — no starter loaded

Observed behavior:

1. First push attempt — FAILED_TO_SEND_TO_ALL_GROUPS
   The publishing queue UI shows:

   "Failed to publish because an error occurred: An error occurred when processing Content Type in 'Video' with ID 'c77450b834901a20c8193ef9d561ee5b': Field with id:d6cc889c37b3e0d7fd5c9dae31e558b7 not found"

2. Retry (second attempt) — reports success
   However, after the retry, the page on the sender shows "Nothing Live here yet" — the live version of the page has been wiped.

3. Custom templates — unaffected
   Pages pushed with custom (user-created) templates work correctly end-to-end. The issue is isolated to built-in starter templates (Default, Advanced).

Relevant log entries (sender):

[INFO] PushPublisher: Status Update: Sending to all environments
[INFO] PushPublisher: Status Update: Bundle sent
[INFO] PublisherAPIImpl: [BundleID: 01KS0CTRMNT55QEHV0P7RDN6DW] Completed Publishing Task
[INFO] PublisherQueueJob: -> Status: FAILED_TO_SEND_TO_ALL_GROUPS [4]
[INFO] PublisherQueueJob: -> Re-publish attempts: 1 out of 3
[INFO] PublisherQueueJob: -> NOTE: Bundle ID '01KS0CTRMNT55QEHV0P7RDN6DW' is stalled and its Audit History will NOT be updated properly.

Key classes to investigate:

• com.dotcms.publisher.pusher.PushPublisher
• com.dotcms.publishing.PublisherAPIImpl
• com.dotmarketing.business.PublisherQueueJob

Links

• Push Publisher: dotCMS/src/main/java/com/dotcms/publisher/pusher/PushPublisher.java
• Publisher Queue Job: dotCMS/src/main/java/com/dotmarketing/business/PublisherQueueJob.java

Start with dotCMS/src/main/java/com/dotcms/publisher/pusher/PushPublisher.java and trace the template push into PublisherAPIImpl, then inspect the field-not-found validation path for Content Type processing. Review dotCMS/src/main/java/com/dotmarketing/business/PublisherQueueJob.java alongside the supplied logs to follow retry and publish-state handling. Done means documenting the failure, sender-content wipe, retry correctness, and a recommendation about missing built-in fields.