All browsers are requiring a login

Question

This is the current situation:

• We've setup a SharePoint website with 2 types of users: Visitors and Admins.
• The role of a visitor is that they're only able to see the webpages (no document/library involvement), the role of an administrator is like 'full access'.

A few days ago, the SharePoint site was working like it was supposed to. Visitors were able to see the webpages without any authentication of an login prompt. I've checked the permissions of the default.master page and these are setup correct.

Is there a way to fix this?

Answer 1

This was the problem:

• A calendar that was placed on the defaultpage wasn't accesable by 'anonymous acces'.
• Changed this to 'show elements' and the problem was solved.

Answer 2

Did you change anything recently ?

• Any Master page updated but not published / approved ?
• Any Page layout updated but not published / approved ?

Is it occuring on all pages or only on some page ? Did you add a web / user control recently that could require more permissions than what is available for the anonymous user ?

Do you still have your binding under the IIS site ? It will be the first one to challenge you (another site might have *:80 which could take the lead depending on order).

You should fire up Fiddler to see which request and which asset is triggering the authentication. It might be a single (unpublished) image referenced in the master page or a webpart that is forcing a request.