Manage Web Applications On SharePoint 2016 Central Administration

Welcome to this article on how to manage web applications on Central Administration of SharePoint 2016. Here, we will see how the Central Admin controls the management of the web application.

Let’s open Central Admin of SharePoint on your machine. On your Windows desktop screen, click Start >> Administrative Tools >> SharePoint 2016 Central Administration.

Run it as an administrator to have elevated privileges.
You will see a screen like below.
Central Admin is configured under the categories given below.
Click on Application Management.
You will see Web Applications.
Click on "Manage web applications".
You will see the following screen.
Here, we can see various options to work with the web applications.
Let’s see them from left to right in different parts of the article.

We have four categories where the events have been categorized.

Contribute
Manage
Security
Policy

Under "Contribute", we have "New".

New
- On clicking on ‘New’, you can create a new web application.
- It opens a form to fill in and complete the configuration.

IIS Web Site
You can either choose an existing IIS web site or create a new one.
If you choose the default one, just select it from the drop-down above or create a new one by adding the name, port number, host header, and path to the IIS website.
Security Configuration
Allow Anonymous - You can allow or disallow access to anonymous users.
User SSL - You can use SSL as per your requirement but if you use SSL, you need to provide an adequate certificate, else the web will not be accessible.
Claims Authentication Types
You can use three types of authentication.

Windows Authentication
- Integrate
  You can integrate Windows Authentication with NTLM or Negotiate/Kerberos, depending on your organization structure. If you choose Kerberos, the application pool needs to be on the Network Service whereas NTLM will work on any application pool.
- Basic
  Basic authentication will use the credentials in an unencrypted manner, to provide you access.
- Form Based
  You can also use form-based authentication which will allow users to enter the credentials on a form and validate accordingly.
Sign-in Page URL
You can choose it if you want to have a sign-in page as default or custom. If custom, you have to provide a URL for the same.
Public URL
The public URL is the domain URL which will act as a front-end link for all SharePoint applications using the web.
Application Pool
Here, you can either choose an old one or a new application pool. This will help you identify the account that will be used to use this service.
Database Names and Authentication
Provide the Database Server and Name for the web application.

Database Authentication
Choose the authentication as Windows or SQL with the database.

Failover Server
Add a mirror database in case of a failed Server.
Service Applications Connections
You can add the service applications which will be connected to the web applications, like metadata, external data, services, and much more.
Customer Experience Improvement Program
You can allow or disallow sending the website analytics but be sure that this will be on the public internet.
Once you complete the configuration, click "OK". The web application will be created.

In this part of managing the web application, we saw how to create a web application. There are more features under managing the web applications which we will see in upcoming articles.

Until then, keep reading and keep learning.