Hello there! Hi, our small company is implementing a Sharepoint system using WSS 3.0 and Windows Server 2008 R2. We don't have a domain yet. Just a work group. Using VirtualBox, I have a virtual machine running Windows Server 2008 R2 (Trial Edition) and I have installed Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0 (WSS 3.0). We need user authentication for SharePoint. As I googled it, It says you can use Active Directory Light Weight Services (AD LDS) as an alternate authentication mechanism if you don't have Active Directory. I don't know how to do that. Please help. Thank you!!

Hi, Thanks to share your post in the forum. For the issue that you have encountered, the following link might give you a navigation of how to use the AD LDS: http://msdotnetsupport.blogspot.com/2008/09/moss-2007-forms-based-authentication.html The other two links may also help: http://efreedom.com/Question/2-128346/AD-DS-AD-LDS http://techspedia.com/2010/04/29/understanding-proxy-authentication-in-ad-lds/. Hope this could help! Leo

hello each Sharepoint web application can use several authentication zone simultaneously (max 5 different authentication zones). If you need your application to be accessible in intranet only - you can use OTB Windows authentication (NTLM) - in this case Sharepoint will authenticate users which are stored in web server Windows users storage. If you need your application to be accessible from internet by some domain name (http://www.example.com) - you need to configure FBA authentication zone for Sharepoint web app. For FBA Sharepoint uses standard ASP.Net membership and role providers configured in web.config file of your web application. If you use FBA - you can use different users storage: 1. Active Directory 2. Database 3. Custom If you don't have strong points about using Lightweight AD services, I would recommend to try database storage for FBA. It is standard aspnet_db database available with aspnet_regsql command. In this case you will need to use OTB SqlMembershipProvider and SqlRoleProvider classes. There is also CKS.FBA open source project available in codeplex which can be used for user management (i.e. it contains UI forms for user creation, modification, etc.). I.e. using CKS.FBA you will not need to create UI for user management by yourselfBlog - http://sadomovalex.blogspot.com CAML via C# - http://camlex.codeplex.com Graphs visualization in Sharepoint - http://spgraphviz.codeplex.com

Thanks for the prompt reply. I'll have your suggestion read and I'll see what I can do. Thank you.

@Sadomovalex Our sharepoint will only be inside the LAN. Can you tell me more about this OTB?? Thank you. hello each Sharepoint web application can use several authentication zone simultaneously (max 5 different authentication zones). If you need your application to be accessible in intranet only - you can use OTB Windows authentication (NTLM) - in this case Sharepoint will authenticate users which are stored in web server Windows users storage. Blog - http://sadomovalex.blogspot.com CAML via C# - http://camlex.codeplex.com Graphs visualization in Sharepoint - http://spgraphviz.codeplex.com