MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0 Alternate Access Mapping
I did a three day consulting gig 3 months ago where I installed and configured WSS 3.0, trained them on the basics of document libraries and lists, and converted a spreadsheet with multiple pages into a List so that their users could edit items simultaneously. They loved the item-level version history because now they could track changes. To make a long story short, during my exit interview I had mentioned that SharePoint could be accessed directly from home without going through their Citrix VPN if they wanted - they declined.
Yesterday afternoon I got a call from their IT guy and he explained that he is trying to expose the SharePoint portal to the web. He had already set up DNS for the externally facing domain, opened port 443 in his firewall for SSL access to the SharePoint server, and installed the SSL certificate on the Sharepoint portal’s web application. When he hit the SharePoint Portal from outside using https://, it appeared to authenticate him, but then redirected him to http:// which was not configured (and they don’t want to open port 80).
The solution to this problem involves SharePoint’s Alternate Access Mapping. SharePoint stores up to four alternate access paths to the same web application. This is somewhat like the host headers we are all familiar with; however, it isn’t exactly the same. Before I explain the differences, and what is going on here, let me show you how to administer AAM’s.
First, open Central Administration, click on the Operations tab, and then click Alternate Access Mappings
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Next, click the Edit Public Urls tab
Once you get to this page, you need to select the Web Application you want to add a public URL to. In this case I’ve named the portal Client Internal Portal. Then simply add the external URL in the Extranet field.
