Authors is a sibling of Home. If I publish a child of Authors it will always show in umbraco.config before Home (even after re-publishing Home several times), thus breaking the home page.
There are other siblings of Home (e.g. Site Admin Area, External Resources). None of these ever seem to end up before Home in umbraco.config.
Unpublishing Authors eliminates the problem. Although this is more or less to be expected, it isn't a solution of course.
404 after publishing home node (Umbraco 6.1.6)
Every time after I publish the home node I encounter a 404 when I visit the home page. When I publish the page again everything is fine.
No errors in the log, although Url Tracker (correctly) records the 404.
When I looked at umbraco.config after the first and second publish I found that the order of the nodes had changed.
After first publish (the home node is not the first entry):
After re-publish (the home node is the first entry):
A bit more information:
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