Managing My Site Creation and Usage

This blog posting applies to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Permissions may be tailored to control creation My Sites separately from the ability to use the My Profile page. This allows creation of My Sites to be blocked, but still allow users to access their own profile information, and to search for and view profiles of other users.

(SharePoint Central Admin >> [SharedServices1] >> User Profiles and My Sites >> Personalization services permissions)

Default settings are shown here. Grayed-out settings don’t apply to this discussion.

þ Create personal site – enabled by default; clear this to prevent creation of My Sites

þ Use personal features – enabled by default; clear this to prevent use of existing My Sites

¨ Manage user profiles

¨ Manage audiences

þ Manage permissions

þ Manage usage analytics

When the “Create personal site” permission is cleared, the My Site link at the top of all pages is hidden, and the “My Home” tab that appears on MySite web application sites is hidden. If someone enters a URL directly to a My Site that was already created, they will be able to open that page and use it. To prevent this, also clear the “Use personal features” permission. In both of these cases, the “My Profile” link is still available, and appears by clicking links of user names from site settings of users or search results for users.

See also

How My Site pages are organized: MySite Pages and Architecture.
If My Sites are disabled, Where is My Picture stored? What if MySites are off?