If you didn't know some time ago me and my team built a proof of concept for providing a Forms Based Authentication (FBA) feature for WSS/MOSS. http://www.codeplex.com/MOSSFormsFeature This was done to demonstrate the development capability of SharePoint and how feature deployment makes it easy to provide solutions on top of SharePoint.
Over the past few months we have had tremendous feedback for this project and over 1000 downloads. If you want to check out what Beta 1.0 does check out my previous blog posts or the CodePlex project site or download the release. http://www.codeplex.com/MOSSFormsFeature/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=1766
Lot of you have requested new enhancements and I have to apologise for the delay in getting our final release on CodePlex. Also one of the most common requests we have had is to provide the solution files and the source.
Also at the same time there is a lot of activity in the Community to enhance FBA for SharePoint. For example, this handy utility from Tony Bierman (http://sharepointsolutions.blogspot.com/) will make setting up FBA much easier. The utility allows you to do the following.
- Create a new aspnetdb user auth store in Sql Server
- Initialize the auth store with an initial user
- Provision the SharePoint Web Application
- Configure membership provider and role manager data in the web application's web.config
- Add top-level site to the web application, turn on forms-based auth, and add the FBA user as admin
You can view a Flash demo of the utility here.
This is one of the enhancements that we have been planning as part of Release 1.0 and now thanks to Tony the community has this cool utility. J
So when is the next Release 1.0?
The FBA CodePlex project will be merged with another great community project which Lawrence Liu http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/lliu/default.aspx from the SharePoint team is running. The project is the Community Kit for SharePoint or CKS. http://www.codeplex.com/CKS
Basically this means that we will make FBA a feature of the CKS edition. This allows Zac http://blogs.provoke.co.nz/zac to co-ordinate the development and release of the FBA feature in conjunction with the CKS team of developers.
There is a work item for CKS 2.0 here which is configuring a FBA feature. So rather than building from scratch we decided to form one team to release and enhance the feature as part of CKS2.0. http://www.codeplex.com/CKS/WorkItem/View.aspx?WorkItemId=1385
Will the Beta 1.0 Source be available for FBA?
Yes, we will make the source code available on the CodePlex site. You are free to use the source but we will be unable to provide any direct support to your issues which relate to actual development but always will keep checking the discussion list on CodePlex.
We will also release a final Release 1.0 with new documentation which will incorporate some bug fixes from feedback we received on Beta 1.0.
When can I have it?
If you need it right now, please drop a comment on my blog with your email and I will email the source files. The final release is about 1 week away and will be on CodePlex.
Once again thanks to everyone who downloaded the FBA feature and gave us feedback. Zac and I are very thankful for your valuable comments.