---
title: "Sitecore Experience Editor Renders JSON as Content"
description: "When Sitecore Experience Editor shows JSON instead of content, the culprit is usually a rendering configuration issue. TechGuilds shares the diagnosis and fix."
canonical: "https://www.techguilds.com/blog/sitecore-experience-editor-renders-json-as-content/"
type: "BlogPosting"
author: "Baraa Mahroka"
publishedAt: "2017-09-25T04:00:00.000Z"
updatedAt: "2026-05-21T19:24:49Z"
source: "https://www.techguilds.com/llms.txt"
---

# Sitecore Experience Editor Renders JSON as Content

For the past week, I was trying to figure out an issue related to the **Experience Editor** in **Sitecore** as it was rendering **JSON** as content. I started to search an existing solution to see if someone ran into it before, and yes! Obviously, a lot of developers saw this before and I found a lot of solutions. Unfortunately non of them worked for me. There is no one reason for this issue, it could be anything. As this was an upgrade project, I decided to install a clean **Sitecore** instance from the exact same version and revision and start comparing files. I started with replacing all core **Sitecore** **DLLs** from the clean instance into the upgraded instance. Unluckily, this idea did not fix the issue.  At a glance, I saw this what called **webedit.css** and I thought this might be the issue. I compared both files from both instances and there were a lot of differences. I decided to replace this file with the one from the clean instance, cleared my cache, tested the **Experience Editor**, problem solved. I suspect the old **webedit.css** found its way to the new instance through the migration process, maybe...

## Steps to reproduce:

1. Navigate to your **Sitecore** client.
2. Pick an item with its **Presentation Details** set so you can view it in your **Experience Editor**.
3. Go to **Publish** > Under **Publish** section choose **Experience Editor**. You will see something like the screenshot below:

## Here are some solutions I came across:

1. Ensure that **Sitecore.MvcExperienceEditor.config** file is enabled.
2. Ensure that **webedit.css** file is getting loaded and accessible.
3. Ensure your **HTML** is not causing any issue and properly closing your tags.
4. Verify that you are not getting any jQuery conflict related errors.

## My Resolution:

**Note:** Remember, this was an upgrade project and this resolution worked for me specifically for this project. It may help you out one day :)

1. Install a clean **Sitecore** instance with the same exact version and revision.
2. Replace your **webedit.css** file from your newly installed clean **Sitecore** instance, Usually located in **C:\\inetpub\\wwwroot\\Your Website Name\\Website.**
3. Issue should be resolved.

Until next time!