diff --git a/client/src/channels/publish.js b/client/src/channels/publish.js
index 0a89feb4..87f69f67 100644
--- a/client/src/channels/publish.js
+++ b/client/src/channels/publish.js
@@ -22,14 +22,29 @@ export const makePublishRequestChannel = (fd, isUpdate) => {
     xhr.upload.addEventListener('load', onLoad);
     // set state change handler
     xhr.onreadystatechange = () => {
-      if (xhr.readyState === 4) {
-        const response = JSON.parse(xhr.response);
-        if ((xhr.status === 200) && response.success) {
-          emitter({success: response});
-          emitter(END);
-        } else {
-          emitter({error: new Error(response.message)});
-          emitter(END);
+      if (xhr.readyState === XMLHttpRequest.DONE) {
+        switch (xhr.status) {
+          case 413:
+            emitter({error: new Error("Unfortunately it appears this web server " +
+              "has been misconfigured, please inform the service administrators " +
+              "that they must set their nginx/apache request size maximums higher " +
+              "than their file size limits.")});
+            emitter(END);
+            break;
+          case 200:
+            var response = JSON.parse(xhr.response);
+            if (response.success) {
+              emitter({success: response});
+              emitter(END);
+            } else {
+              emitter({error: new Error(response.message)});
+              emitter(END);
+            }
+            break;
+          default:
+            emitter({error: new Error("Received an unexpected response from " +
+              "server: " + xhr.status)});
+            emitter(END);
         }
       }
     };