using anonymous links with external users

Question

I have created a blog subsite under my main sharepoint online site.  I want to post blogs on the site, then share them with a host of users separately outside my organization.  To be clear, my organization is an org of 1, me.  I want to post to my Christmas blog, then share an anonymous link to the post.  I just need an anonymous link sent to my gmail account that I can use to send to my followers.

I have used the Office 365 Admin app and setup the following:

1. Allow sharing to authenticated external users and using anonymous links

I also set the following value on the site collections sharing option in the ribbon.

1. Allow sharing with external users, and by using anonymous links.

I then go into the document library on my blog site and share a link to one of my posts and an email is sent to my gmail account, and then when I click on the link i am required to login to a microsoft account.  I do not want my followers to have to create an account as many will not do so.

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Hi Doug,

Since March 9, 2015, Microsoft has no longer offered the SharePoint Online Public Website feature to new customers. New customers who subscribe to Office 365 after the changeover date won’t have access to this feature. Instead, they’ll have the option to subscribe to third-party solutions by using links from Office 365.

Here is an article for your reference: Information about changes to the SharePoint Online Public Website feature in Office 365.

And Post in blog is stored as list item in SharePoint. The blog or the posts cannot be anonymously accessible.

Regards,

Tisky

Answer 2

Msft has made it clear they have no interest in what users want to use Sharepoint for. Everything is subjugated to what sells Office, and anonymous sites don't do that. That is their only priority and  is why they reneged on all their promises about public sites.

Answer 3

My intent WAS to use a SharePoint blog as I have a SharePoint Online subscription that I use for maintaining my SharePoint development and user skills.  At best I am a strong power user of SharePoint and often find myself needing to test out "things" that I am not able to perform at work due to my allotted privileges in the corporate SP world.

Having said that, two things pop in my mind. 

1.  Is there a way to add a public site in a SharePoint Online Plan 2 subscription.  If so, then I could place a blog there and be off and running.  I previously had an o365 E3 plan and did have a public site available, but I was paying twice the monthly rate that I am now and had no need for it, especially since I have a personal O365 account for all my other stuff.
2. I was under the assumption that the Posts item on the site was a document library, but upon further examination realize it is a list.  I guess this rules this out completely.

Thanks for any help you can provide.  I guess I should plan on using something like WordPress instead.  So much for SharePoint Blogs.

Answer 4

Hi Doug,

We can't get a "no sign-in required" link to the post in the default "Posts" list in a blog site.

You can submit feedback via the uservoice link, this is the best way to influence our products.

Regards,

James

Answer 5

This should be straightforward but very little is in sharepoint is due to its hopelessly unfriendly design. Assuming you're not using a SP blog (which you can't share externally unless on the public site), it looks like you can only share documents without a log in required from your my site (aka Delve or One Drive). This is peculiar even by Msft's unfathomable standards because the my site/Delve/OD is supposed to be a private site.  There's no indication of this weird set up anywhere on a site so I'm not sure how anyone would figure it out. If you need help doing it, post back.