My Insights

If you have setup your Sharepoint site and it works perfectly but now you want to switch to SSL, keep in mind that not only do you need to make changes to IIS but you also need to add an Alternate Access Mapping from Central Admin for the https://mysharepointsite link.

This issues is most common if you are making a Sharepoint site that is anonymously accessible but should allow administrators to login on any page to make edits.

Here is how to remove the “Sign In” link in Sharepoint and still keep the the Site Actions menu on the top.

1. Open the site’s master page in Sharepoint Designer
2. Look for the <td colspan=”2″ class=”authoringRegion”> tag. The best way to do this is to search for “authoringRegion”. Here is what this td tag should look like:

   
   

3. Encapsulate this tag with a  <PublishingWebControls:AuthoringContainer runat=”server”>. The new code should look like this:

   
   

4. Now go down to the footer of your page (or any other place where you would like to relocate your Sign In link and paste in the following:

   <a href=”javascript:authenticateUser()”>Admin Login</a> 
   

5. As you can see, this new link is trying to invoke a javascript function. We need to add that in ourselves. Paste in the following Code:

    

That’s It! Now your Admins and/or managers can click the “Admin Login” link and the Site Action menu will still appear on top for authenticated users. For anonymous users, the Sign In link at the top right is now gone!