SharePoint Lover

​I put myself in a bit of a muddle earlier on today while trying to create an alternate

SharePoint URL to be used on a client’s VPN SSL application. Basically, a web application and

site collection had already existed – which had already been configured to use port 80. A host

header was created in DNS and then the web application was successfully created via  

Central Administration | Application Management | Manage Web Applications – New.

A site collection was then created afterwards using the My Sites template (could be anything,

but just using this as an example as below and the site successfully displayed without having to

enter port 80 in the URL.

Next step was to create the Alternative Access Mapping for the site, so using via

Central Administration | Application Management | Web Applications – Configure Alternate

access mappings  | Alternate Access Mapping Collection (and then changed it to the original web

application created), and then click on Edit Public URLs so as to enter the alternate url

The URL that was to be used for external access was is extranet.sharepointlover.net. I entered this

into the Extranet field as http://extranet.sharepointlover.net. (In the real world, we would be using https and

port 443 for SSL connections, but I am just using this it as it is to demonstrate the point here).

Click on Save and the URL should be created as a public URL. Launching the URL extranet.sharepointlover.net

will then bring the user back to the same site.

So this proves this functionality. However, there are a couple of issues here . Invariably, what has been

created here are host named web applications with a single host name. Host-named site collections have

a single URL and they do not support alternate access mappings and are always considered to be in the Default

zone.

Microsoft says “If you need to support site collections responding to multiple host-name URLs, consider

using path-based site collections with alternate access mappings instead of host-named site collections”.

This could cause problems as in my situation; a web application had already been created. To get around

this I would recommend the following:- Extend the web application and when extending it, use the original

host header of the originating web application, and then in the URL field, insert the URL to be created as an

alternate access mapped url. Lets use an example where an SSL site needed to be made of via the Internet,

so the Url is https://internet.sharepoint.local . Select the web application and then click on the authentication

provider button to ‘look’ at the existing authentication providers”. This would have been set as default i.e.

the original authentication provider created when the web application was created. Close the Authentication

providers focus.

Extend the web application by clicking on “the Extended” button.

You will now be brought to the extend web application to another IIS web site area. Here, you then configure

the host header and the right url for the Internet zone. Since we are also configuring a secure site, then change

the port to use 443 as well. In the host header field, ensure that this is not populated.

In the security configuration setting, ensure that “Use secure sockets layer” is selected.

Next, scroll down to the public url section and enter the url, and re-enter the url as

https://internet.sharepoint.local and select the zone as Internet.

You would then be able to use the extended site as an Internet site. Please note though, you would not able to

access the site until a SSL certificate has been applied and this will be covered in a later story.