Blog Site in Anonymous Use

By Juha AlhojokiDecember 22 2010 12 comments

Anonymous user cannot enter a blog entry in a SharePoint site if ViewFormPagesLockDown feature is active at site collection level and ViewFormPagesLockDown feature is active if site collection is based on publishing portal. After googling we came accross plenty of resources considering this matter:

We didn’t want use the solutions suggested in the links above. To disable the ViewFormPagesLockDown “…leaves you wide open from a security perspective…”. To have our blog site in another site collection. Well that’s just not what we want to do to solve this tiny little thing with permissions.

Me and Aapo dug with reflector into ViewFormPagesLockDown feature and found out what the feature receiver does.

The highlighted sections of the feature receiver show what happens to Guest’s permissions at rootweb level when you disable ViewFormPagesLockDown site collection level feature.

So why not just take the solution from where it is and develop a web scoped feature which does the exactly same thing to the blog site but not to all webs in the site collection because that’s not what we want.

Develop a feature receiver as follows:

using System;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;

namespace My.Assembly
{
    public class FormPagesLockDownReleaseReceiver : SPFeatureReceiver
    {
        public override void FeatureActivated(SPFeatureReceiverProperties
        properties)
        {
            using (var web = (SPWeb)properties.Feature.Parent)
            {
                var anonymousState = web.AnonymousState;
                // continue only if anonymous use is enabled
                if (anonymousState == SPWeb.WebAnonymousState.Disabled)
                    return;
                web.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;
                 // break inheritance to set permissions per site
                web.RoleDefinitions.BreakInheritance(true, true);
                // permission granting from LockDownViewFormPages
                var byType = web.RoleDefinitions.GetByType(SPRoleType.Guest);
                byType.BasePermissions |= SPBasePermissions.EmptyMask |
                SPBasePermissions.ViewFormPages;
                byType.BasePermissions |= SPBasePermissions.UseRemoteAPIs;
                byType.Update();
                // reset the anonymous state programmatically
                web.AnonymousState = SPWeb.WebAnonymousState.Disabled;
                web.AnonymousState = anonymousState;
                web.Update();
                web.AllowUnsafeUpdates = false;
            }
        }
    }
}

Resetting the anonymous state is just a thing you would have to do from UI when you toggle permissions. Lockdown Mode in SharePoint 2010: “If anonymous is already setup, you may need to disable\re-enable anonymous on the site.”

Then a web scoped feature that consumes the receiver:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<Feature  
  Id="{6189C7B4-6FDC-4BAA-95FD-03DD318031E5}"
  Title="Blog Anonymous Access Staplee"
  Description="Enables Anonymous Access to Blog Entries"
  Scope="Web"
  ReceiverAssembly="My.Assembly,
  Version=1.0.0.0,
  Culture=neutral,
  PublicKeyToken=e3e48257ada349c4"
  ReceiverClass="My.Assembly.FormPagesLockDownReleaseReceiver"
  Hidden="FALSE"
  xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
</Feature>

You could set the feature hidden to avoid accidental feature activations.

Then a stapling mechanism at site collection level to staple the feature to Blog sites by default.

Stapling.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<Elements xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
  <!--BLOG#0-->
      <!--Staple FormPagesLockDownReleaseReceiver to Blog sites -->
      <FeatureSiteTemplateAssociation
    Id="6189C7B4-6FDC-4BAA-95FD-03DD318031E5"
    TemplateName="BLOG#0" />
</Elements>
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<Feature
    Id="{7DF309A4-7E3B-488A-9D2A-F3B88D656465}"
    Title="Blog Anonymous Enabling Stapler"
    Description="Staples Anonymous Access to Created Blog Sites"
    Version="1.0.0.0"
    Scope="Site"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/"
    ActivateOnDefault="FALSE">
    <ElementManifests>
        <ElementManifest Location="Stapling.xml" />
    </ElementManifests>
</Feature>

Voila, you have a mechanism to allow viewing form pages only in blog sites when you activate the stapler feature at site collection level. Of course, if you want, you could even set the needed permissions at list level in the Blog site, I suppose, but that’s not what we’ve done here.

Popularity: 5% [?]

, ,

12 comments to “Blog Site in Anonymous Use”

  1. Website Traffic - An Article That Talks About Blogging And The Availability Of Significant Plugins In Blog Sites says:
    January 7, 2011 at 16:59

    [...] Blog Site in Anonymous Use | SharePoint Blues [...]

  2. SharePoint Daily » Blog Archive » Myths of Collaboration; The Problem with Windows 7 Tablets; Put Your Head In The Clouds says:
    January 7, 2011 at 16:59

    [...] Blog Site in Anonymous Use (SharePoint Blues) Anonymous user cannon enter a blog entry in a SharePoint site if ViewFormPagesLockDown feature is active at site collection level and ViewFormPagesLockDown feature is active if site collection is based on publishing portal. After Googling we came across plenty of resources considering this matter:  [...]

  3. Myths of Collaboration; The Problem with Windows 7 Tablets; Put Your Head In The Clouds - SharePoint Daily - Bamboo Nation says:
    January 7, 2011 at 17:01

    [...] Blog Site in Anonymous Use (SharePoint Blues)Anonymous user cannon enter a blog entry in a SharePoint site if ViewFormPagesLockDown feature is active at site collection level and ViewFormPagesLockDown feature is active if site collection is based on publishing portal. After Googling we came across plenty of resources considering this matter: [...]

  4. Thomas Carpe says:
    August 10, 2011 at 17:30

    Yes, this is exactly what I needed! Thanks guys for having a similar mentality and just digging right into the guts of SharePoint to cut it open, do some surgery, and “staple” it back together again. ;-) You saved my day.

  5. Enabling Anonymous Access on a SharePoint Blog says:
    October 19, 2011 at 01:06

    [...] a post and see the details. They were being prompted to log in. After some looking around I found this great post from Juha Pitkänen. It turns out that there is a ViewFormPagesLockDown feature that gets activated [...]

  6. Blog is moving on WordPress « Kerseub's Blog says:
    April 13, 2012 at 00:14

    [...] LockDown Feature involve Authentication (Guys Really? http://www.sharepointblues.com/2010/12/22/blog-site-in-anonymous-use/) [...]

  7. blog IT says:
    May 20, 2012 at 15:47

    I used to be very happy to seek out this internet-site.I needed to thanks in your time for this excellent learn!! I undoubtedly having fun with each little bit of it and I have you bookmarked to take a look at new stuff you weblog post.

  8. DarkS0ul says:
    January 22, 2013 at 20:13

    Hello,
    I am still new to SharePoint programming and hence “Then a web scoped feature that consumes the receiver” threw me off a bit. Would it be possible to share the source code so I can better understand each step, thank you so much.

  9. DarkS0ul says:
    February 26, 2013 at 21:34

    Perhaps a guidance to what i’m doing wrong?
    http://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/questions/58226/blog-site-in-anonymous-use-in-sharepoint-2010

  10. Antonietta says:
    May 13, 2013 at 09:08

    With havin so much written content do you ever run into any issues of plagorism
    or copyright violation? My site has a lot of completely unique content I’ve either written myself or outsourced but it looks like a lot of it is popping it up all over the web without my agreement. Do you know any methods to help protect against content from being stolen? I’d truly appreciate it.

  11. most effective Male enhancement Product says:
    June 2, 2013 at 06:08

    I am regular visitor, how are you everybody?
    This piece of writing posted at this site is really pleasant.

    Here is my homepage … most effective Male enhancement Product

  12. Launa says:
    August 27, 2013 at 18:15

    You can definitely see your expertise within the article you write.
    The sector hopes for even more passionate writers
    like you who aren’t afraid to mention how they believe. All the time go after your heart.

Leave a Reply

«
»