User Guide

20 Preparing Your Network and Installing Contribute
Microsoft IIS web servers
To prevent unauthorized users from accessing Contribute administrative folders under Microsoft
IIS, use access control lists (ACLs) to prevent read access by unauthenticated users of the
operating system as well as by clients connecting to IIS. When you use ACLs to restrict access,
only properly authenticated users can view the contents of the Contribute administrative folder.
Anonymous web clients, or other users with access to the server, cannot view the administrative
folder and its contents.
Note: When setting permissions for Contribute administrative folders, ensure that Contribute has
read/write access to the administrative folders and the files they contain. Contribute uses the settings
in these files to enforce role settings of users connecting to the site.
In addition to securing the administrative folders using the operating system’s permissions and
access control lists, consider using UrlScan to further secure IIS web servers. UrlScan is a security
tool provided by Microsoft that screens incoming requests to the server by filtering the requests
based on rules that you create. Filtering requests helps secure the server by ensuring that only valid
requests are processed.
To learn more about the UrlScan utility, see the Microsoft website at www.microsoft.com.
Other web servers
If you are using another vendor’s web server, refer to the documentation supplied with your web
server software to learn how to prevent users from accessing specific folders and files.
Special files created by the draft review process
The draft review process enables you to send drafts to users for final approval before publishing
pages to your site. When you enable the draft review process, Contribute creates a series of folders
and files used in tracking pages as they make their way through the collaborative approval
workflow. Although there are no site maintenance or planning tasks involved in enabling
approvals for your website, be aware of the additional files and folders that Contribute creates to
manage the workflow.