How to set certain web areas to be accessed only after login??

[bnymk]

Hello all:

This is my first time posting a question here but have heard a lot of good things about this forum and hopefully I will get an answer to my question. Namely, I was trying to only show the first page (home/default) page without requiring users to log in. And once they click on any of the links on the home page to access the other areas, to display a login prompt and authenticate users before displaying the other web areas. Unfortunately, I was not successful in doing that.

Here is our development enviroment.

We have developed a website using SharePoint Portal 2003 with SQL server as a back end database. We also have on a separate server an Active Directory where we have added all users who can be able to access the site. The two boxes are in the same domain.
Trying to achieve what I just described above, here are the steps that I did.
1. I accessed the site as an Administrator and clicked on each web area. On the left pane of each web area, I clicked on the link "Manage Security" and set the following.
- "Show to All Users" so all users can see this area on the navigation hierarchy.
- "Disable anonymous" access to the contents of this portal area and all areas that inherit from this area
- Clicked on "New User" tab and added the group from the AD where users who are supposed to access this area belong to and gave them the appropriate roles.
2. On IIS, checked the "Anonymous Access" and reset the service.

When I brought the site, the home page is displayed without requiring users to log in and once they click on any of the links on the home page to take them to the other part of the web area, then it displays the log in prompt where users can type in their username, password and domain. Unfortunately, this is where I get stuck. Even using admin credentials, I get an error saying that "You cannot view this area, either because the area no longer exists, or because you do not have the rights to view this area. To change your rights, contact the site administrator. " Could someone please let me know what I'm doing wrong.

Thanks in advance

"Behind every great fortune there lies a great crime", Honore De Balzac

 

[Thomas2000]

Hello,

You have added this A.D group to all the different areas? Since you removed the inherit permissions each area have it's own unique permissions. So users (usergroup) needs to be a member of appropriate Sitegroup on each area.

Since you can't access the are as a user with Admin rights in SharePoint I would suggest that you use the Domain Administrator account and logon to the server where you have SharePoint Portal intalled, that way you will have access to everything in sharepoint without having to actually add the user in SharePoint and you should be able to reconfigure your user-rights.

Also in IIS make sure that the Windows Integrated Authentication is ticked aswell, so you just not have Anonynous access turned on and then no authentication method when it comes to accessing the different "non-anonymous" parts of the portal.

Not sure if above will help much but when you get this solved please let me know how you solved it.

Regards,
Thomas

 

[bnymk]

Thomas:

I have added the AD group to all the different areas and have assign the proper roles to the groups to all the areas. And I have assigned the users rights to the area after loging in to the server using the administrator credentials. Also on IIS, besides Anonymous access, I also have the Integrated Windows Authentication checked as well. Thanks for your response but I have already done what you suggested earlier. Any other ideas you can run by me that I might have forgotten to do maybe???

Thanks.

"Behind every great fortune there lies a great crime", Honore De Balzac