Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Using Alternate Access Mappings to "change" the host header of a SharePoint web application

It looks like there is no easy way to change the host header of a SharePoint web application. This is unfortunate as I want to create many virtual instances of SharePoint and have precanned data for demo purposes. To get around this, I figured I can create the initial copy and then use Alternate Access Mappings (AAM) to provide another way to access my SharePoint sites. It looks like all I have to do is the following:
  1. Go to Central Administration->System Settings->Configure Alternate Access Mappings
  2. Select Edit Public URLs
  3. Change the default setting to the new URL using the new host header
  4. Go to IIS Manager
  5. Locate the IIS web site that has the binding for the old host header
  6. Add a new binding with the new host header
  7. Go to Central Adminstration->Application Management->Manage Service Applications
  8. Manage User Profile Service Application
  9. Click Setup My Sites
  10. Change the My Site Host location using the new host header
That seems to do do the trick. I hope I am not missing anything.

Here are some references:

MSDN Video: Microsoft SharePoint 2010: Alternate Access Mappings (Level 200)
What every SharePoint administrator needs to know about Alternate Access Mappings (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3)

1 comment:

  1. Step 10 got me. I did change the url in the "my site host". reset index, crawl. the pictures does not show up. when i see the properties on the pic it links back to old header. how to fix this?

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