Configuring "Alternate Access Mappings" at SharePoint 2010

Once you have your SharePoint site up and running you may want to add/change the URL of your SharePoint site. In very basic terms here how you can accomplish this.

When you want to change or add new URL to your existing SharePoint site.

First thing you need to do is to make sure that the new URL is in your DNS settings. I mean when you ping the new URL it should ping the same IP address of your existing SharePoint site URL.

In my case since I have a single server installation on my desktop all I needed to is to add the new URL to my "hosts" file.

In case if you don't know where is your hosts file here are quick steps for you to get that done.

• Open a Notepad (or any other editor) in "Administrator" mode
• Then go to File->Open and open to "\Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc\Hosts" file:

• Add the IP address and the destination to the end of your hosts file. In my case I added "127.0.0.1        SharePointTidBits" right to the end.
• Save and Close.
• If you have an environment controlled by a DNS server you should add new name to your existing DNS Servers either "A" or "CNAME" record.

Once we handled the DNS/hosts modification then we need to add or modify the "Alternate Access Mappings" (AAM).

Go to :

Central Administration -> System Settings -> Configure Alternate Access Mappings.

Then you click to "Add Internal URLs"

Please select the correct "Alternate Access Mapping Collection". This will be the your site you’d like to add/change the URL. Click "Alternate Access Mapping Collection":

In my case I select "SharePoint - 80" and I enter the URL I would like to add to the appropriate zone which in my case it is my Intranet.

Then I click save and here we go:

You think that its that easy, isn't it?

It should be but in my case when I try to access to the new URL "http://SharePointTidBits", IE is keep prompting me the user name and password.

Here is what I need to do to solve this issue:

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.

2. In Registry Editor, locate and then click the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa\MSV1_0

3. Right-click MSV1_0, point to New, and then click Multi-String Value.
4. Type BackConnectionHostNames, and then press ENTER.
5. Right-click BackConnectionHostNames, and then click Modify.
6. In the Value data box, type the host name or the host names for the sites that are on the local computer, and then click OK.
7. Quit Registry Editor, and then restart the IIS service.

Tadaaa!

I hope this helps.