Permissions and Your MySite Blog

From ctowiki

Your MySite blog has "permissions" settings with which you can control who can post to your blog, who can comment on your blog, and even who can read your blog.

By default, only you can add posts to your blog. Also by default, any logged-in user to MySite can read your blog, but cannot add comments. You can change these settings for your blog without affecting the permission settings for the rest of your MySite. Examples follow.

1 Making Your Blog Readable by Anonymous Users
2 Separate Settings for Who Can Post, and Who Can Comment

Making Your Blog Readable by Anonymous Users

You may want to make your blog readable not just to logged-in users, but to any Internet user (non-logged-in users are called "anonymous" users). You may wish to do this without opening your entire MySite to anonymous readers. Note that the SharePoint platform on which MySite is based does not allow anonymous users to add comments.

Here's how to enable anonymous reading of your blog:

Step 1 - Go to your blog "Home" page


Go to your Blog home page. If you don't know how to get there directly, go to https://mysite.wsu.edu, log in if necessary, then select "View All Site Content" from the left-hand sidebar.
From the "Sites" area of the list, click on the title of your blog [NOTE: the title in this example is "Blog"; your title might be different]:
Be sure that you are on your blog's home page, not your site's home page. You can check the "breadcrumb" at the top-left of the page; it should show "My Site > your name > your blog's title":

Step 2 - Navigate to the Permissions Setting Page


On the blog home page, 1) click "Site Actions" to drop down the menu, then 2) click "Site Settings":
Then choose "Advanced Permissions" from the list on the left side of the page:

Step 3 - Stop inheriting permissions from the parent site

By default, you blog "inherits" whatever permission settings your MySite has. To create different permissions for access to your blog, you need to tell the blog to stop inheriting permissions from your MySite.

On the "Permissions" page, 1) click the "Actions" button to drop down the menu, then 2) select "Edit Permissions":
You will see a dialog box explaining that you are going to create "unique" permissions for your blog; click "OK".

Step 4 - Add Anonymous Access

1) Click the "Settings" button to drop down the menu, then 2) click "Anonymous Access".
Then click "OK" (the default "entire web site" setting refers to your entire blog site -- the rest of your MySite is unaffected. This is generally what you want). Note that anonymous users can never have "write" access to a SharePoint site; they cannot post or comment in your blog.

Separate Settings for Who Can Post, and Who Can Comment

SharePoint blogs use separate lists for Posts and Comments on the posts. Special display pages are used to display the Posts and the relevant comments together. By default, both the Posts list and the Comments list "inherit" their permissions settings from the blog site, so the two lists have the same permissions. You can create separate permissions (for example, setting permissions so that only you can make Posts, but a group of classmates can add comments) by "breaking" the inheritance of permissions for the Posts and Comments lists, and setting unique permissions for each one. There are quite a few steps required to accomplish this, but each step is simple.

Step 1 - Go to Your Blog Home Page

See "Step 1" above.

Step 2 - Go to the "Manage Posts" Page

Click on "Manage Posts" on the right side of the page.

click picture to enlarge

Step 3 - Go to the "Permissions" Page

Click "Settings" in the toolbar just above the list of posts, then select "List Settings".
Click the "permissions for this list" link

Step 4 Give the list "unique" permissions

Click the "Actions" menu in the toolbar, then select "Edit Permissions"
You will see a box warning you that the list will no longer inherit permissions from the web site, but will have its own set. Click OK.

Step 5 - Add users or groups and give them permissions


On the Permissions page, click the "New" button to add new users.
On the Add users page: (1) add the WSU network ID of users you want to have permissions for this list. If you want to add a class, use the Class Enrollment Group or groups. (2) Generally, you will select either "Read" access (view only) or "Contribute" access (view, add, change, and delete). (3) You may wish to have the system send a welcome email and link to the new users. Note that the mail will be sent to the email address as listed in WSU Active Directory (usually an "@wsu.edu" address). (4) Click OK.