In this article, I would like to share the procedure to configure the alternate access mappings using Central Administration in SharePoint 2013.
Uses of Alternate access mappings
- It enables a web application that receives a request for an Internal URL in the one of the five zones to return pages that contain links to the public URL for the Zone.
- You can associate a web application by using a collection of mappings between internal and public URLs. Internal refers to the URL of a web request as it is received by SharePoint 2013.
- Public refers to the URL by which SharePoint will format links that correspond to requests that match one of the internal URLs on that zone when it returns a response. The public URL is the base URL that SharePoint 2013 uses in the pages that it returns. If the internal URL was changed by a reverse proxy device, it can differ from the public URL.
Procedure to Configure alternate access mappings
Use the following procedure to configure alternate access mappings using Central Administration.
Step 1: Go to the Central Administration using a farm administrator account as shown below.
![central administration]()
Step 2: In Central Administration, click system settings from the left navigation. Then you will be navigated to the system settings page.
![system settings]()
Step 3: On the system setting page, in the “Farm Management” section select the “Configure Alternate Access Mappings”.
![Farm Management]()
Step 4: When you click on the “Configure alternate”, you will be navigated to the Alternate access settings page as shown below, then click on the “Edit Public URL's”.
![Edit Public URL]()
Step 5: On the “Edit public zone URL's” page, select the site collection from the alternate access mapping collection from the drop down as shown below:
![Edit public zone URL]()
Step 6: When you click on the change alternate access mapping collection option, you will get a pop-up to choose the site collection as shown below. There you can select the site collection that you want to add the URLs in Intranet, Internet, custom and Extranet.
![site collection]()
Step 7: After selecting the site collection, you will have the option to add the URLs as shown below.
![URL]()
Step 8: Then give the URL in the text boxes, which zone you want to access the site and then click Save.
Here I provided the Internet URL for public access.
![Internet URL for public access]()
SummaryIn this article we have explored how to configure the alternate access mapping for a SharePoint web application using Central Administration.