Hi,
Recently I’ve had an interesting challenge (yes, challenge): building a MOSS portal based on Form Authentication.
I call it a challenge, because it was quite difficult to accomplish. One of the reasons was lack of documantation.
The solution… :)
Chapter 1 – Why FBA??
If sounds funny when you say if ignoring the dots that should be place between the letters. I know!
Anyway, FBA is another means of authentication. The most common is Active Directory (Windows authentication). SharePoint requires a domain for the installation and management. The authentication is accomplished by querying a domain controlller (DC) in the domain.
Another method is Passport. Read about it on your own free time.
Form Based Authentication means the authentication is done query a database (or text files or wherever). The user can create the form the user uses to enter the credentials.
Have a look at this simple example in MSDN.
This method enables you to create your own authentication method, create your own login page, or set up a simple login control on the home page of your site. You could also add cookie support for automatic authentication (i.e., “Remember me”).
You could use ASP.NET’s authentication. That’s what SharePoint does, so we don’t have a lot of choices here.
Chapter 2 – What do we need?
I’ll address the issue regarding MOSS installations. WSS is not as problematic.
- Install MOSS :P
- Go to Google and run a search for FBA SharePoint.
You’ll find several posts, like:
Configuring a Office SharePoint Server 2007 Publishing Site with Dual Authentication Providers and Anonymous Access (Andrew Connell)
Office SharePoint Server 2007 - Forms Based Authentication (FBA) Walk-through - Part 1 (Dan Attis)
Forms Base Authentication Tools and Utils for SharePoint 2007 (CodePlex) – this is a full FBA management solution for SharePoint.
- If you’re going to use user profiles with the FBA site, you’ll have to extend the Shared Services Provider (SSP) to work with the FBA provider.
Check out Dan Attis’ post: Office SharePoint Server 2007 - Forms Based Authentication (FBA) w/MySites Walk-through - Part 2
This is it for now.
Futuristic posts (when I find some free time)::
Chapter 3 – UserProfileManager and FBA (provider issues)
Chapter 4 – Anonymous access to FBA sites