Hannah Scott's Blog: Enable Anonymous Access

Thursday, February 14, 2008

First, enable anonymous on the IIS web site:

Or, using the Central Administration section:

Central Administration / Application Management
Select “Authentication Providers” in the “Application Security” section
Click on the “Default” zone (or whatever zone you want to enable anonymous access for)
Under “Anonymous Access” click the check box to enable it and click “Save”

NOTE: Make sure the “Web Application” in the menu at the top right is your portal/site and not the admin site.

You can confirm that anonymous access is enabled by going back into the IIS console and checking the Directory Security properties.

Next, enable anonymous access in the web site.

In your web site navigate to the site settings page. MOSS: Site Actions / Site Settings / Modify All Site Settings. WSS: Site Actions / Site Settings.
Under the “Users and Permissions” section click on “Advanced permissions”
On the “Settings” drop down menu (on the toolbar) select “Anonymous Access”
Select the option you want anonymous users to have (full access or documents and lists only)

Now users without logging in will get whatever option you allowed them.

A couple of notes about anonymous access:

You will need to set up the 2nd part for all sites unless you have permission inheritance turned on
If you don’t see the “Anonymous Access” menu option in the “Settings” menu, it might not be turned on in Central Admin/IIS. You can manually navigate to “_layouts/setanon.aspx” if you want, but the options will be grayed out if it hasn’t been enabled in IIS
You must do both setups to enable anonymous access for users, one in IIS and the other in each site