Define what "Public" means for Communities

This step only applies to new installs, or to upgrades from versions of Aurea Social before version 2.0. As of version 2.0, Aurea Social allows you to specify what security principals should represent your “public” access.

This is done in Central Admin in the NewsGator Social Platform Services management page. The security principals you specify become part of a SharePoint group called Public Community Members.

When a public community is created, this group is automatically added with read privileges. The creator can also easily opt to add this SharePoint permission group with contribute privileges, in addition to granting it permission using the normal SharePoint methods.

On installation, this group contains, by default, the highest level public principals that apply on your server. To change which security principals comprise this group, click Manage Public Community Members in the Community and Spheres section of the NewsGator Social Platform Management page.

Click Manage Public Community Members

This opens an edit box displaying the current security principals that comprise the Public Community Members group:

Edit box displaying the current security principals

If you are using custom authentication providers, make sure you have in this box the principal that, for your provider, represents All Users. The "All Users (windows)" principal is equivalent to "NT Authority\Authenticated Users". The "All Authenticated Users" principal is all users regardless of authentication mechanism, and is only valid for Claims Authentication environments.

When adding principals to this list, these additions are also automatically made in all existing instances of the Public Community Members group in existing site collections and sites.

Removal of principals from this list is not synchronized to existing instances of the Public Community Members group, and so if desired, removal of the principal from existing instances the group will have to be repeated manually in each site collection.