Everyone,

We are running Liferay EE, latest version - 6.1.20 EE (Paton / Build 6120 / July 31, 2012).

The server is primarily for intranet use; however, there are some resources, pages, and documents, etc. that we would like to make available to the general public. What is the best way to manage this? Should everything be placed under /web/guest/, including Documents and Media or should Documents and Media be placed the Global context? Does it matter? Looking for best practices in the situation where a site is primarily authentication based, but requires some public access (staff directories, fee schedules, maps, room diagrams, etc).

Thanks in advance for your suggestions!

Ben Chapman

Hello,

For documents and media, you can place the portlet on /web/guest or on an organization public page or on a user public page.
When you add a document, you can choose which users can see this document. If you choose (guest), everyone as if not connected user would be able to see the document.

If you want entire pages are visible to guest users, you can put it in /web/guest.

I hope my answer helps you !

Liferay provides public and private pages feature.
You may easily use it. So you can create all authentication required pages under private section and guest pages under public section.

You can also provide permission on individual resource page/document/content by permission settings of that particular resource.

Hope I understood your concern well.

Considering security, the best way probably is to get another server up for the Internet users'. If Internet and intranet server must be on the same server, how about setting up a vm? I'm saying this because Internet site usually resides in DMZ while intranet site usually are placed behind the firewall.
Another option is to setup multi-tenancy to separate the site by domain name.

The next lesser secure option is to create an organization with public site for the Internet users.

Everyone,

Thanks for your replies - the information is helpful. I think it's possible that our situation is slightly unique in that we are a school and so it's a little harder to define what is "external" and what is "internal". Our intranet server is not behind the University firewall and we have a lot of resources that should be available to both internal and external users; therefore, I was hoping that we would not have to maintain separate copies of these resources. I suspect we will go with the idea of putting asset publishers under /web/guest with access to various documents.

Thanks again,

Ben