Extending and Mapping SharePoint Web Application

These past few days I have received several inquiries on how to extend SharePoint Web application to both internal and external users, and a related inquiry on how to access a forms-authentication-based SharePoint Web application in Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007. The answer to both questions is the same: extend and map our SharePoint Web application.

Extending SharePoint Web Application

Microsoft has provided us in the SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration a facility to extend and map our SharePoint Web application.

1.      Let start by opening our SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration. In the Application Management tab, under the SharePoint Web Application Management section, click Create or Extend Web Application. As illustrated below, we will be redirected to Create or Extend Web Application page.

2.      On the same page, let us click Extend an Existing Web Application. It will create a separate IIS Web Site that exposes the same content and reuses the content database from an existing Web application. This is typically used for extranet deployment where different users access content using different domains.

Moreover, since forms-authentication-based SharePoint Web application could not be accessed in Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007, we could set the Authentication Providers settings of our extended Web site to Windows while our default Web application remains its forms authentication configuration.

3.      In the Extend Web Application to Another IIS Web Site page, as illustrated below, let us select the existing Web application we want to extend. For demonstration purposes, we will pick the default Web application to be extended.

If necessary let us change the default settings. In this piece, we will name our extended Web application as PointExtended, the port is set to 3000, and Zone to Intranet.

4.      There we go, by clicking the OK button we have already extended our existing SharePoint Web application.

Mapping SharePoint Web Application

1.      In our SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration, in the Operations tab, under the Global Configuration section, let us click Alternate Access Mappings.

2.      As illustrated below, we will be redirected to Alternate Access Mappings page where our extended web application has already reflected.

3.      Click the corresponding Web application to have the facility of configuring URL Protocol, Host and Port, and the Zone.

And we have already extended and mapped our SharePoint Web application. I am hoping this would help.