Access to information stored in CentraSite generally requires a user name and password, to ensure that data can only be stored, modified or retrieved by authorized users. CentraSite supports the following types of user repository:

CentraSite maintains information about each kind of user repository in so-called authentication configurations. An authentication configuration specifies the type of user repository to be used and any parameters that are required to configure the user repository. CentraSite is delivered with one predefined authentication configuration, namely the configuration to use an internal text file, and this configuration is the default configuration. You can define additional authentication configurations; also, you can set any one of the defined configurations to be the default configuration.

For information about defining authentication configurations and setting the default authentication configuration, see Creating Authentication Configurations.

In general, user authentication information is stored in the user repository, not in CentraSite. CentraSite can contain a copy of selected data fields from the user repository for each registered CentraSite user. The user information in the CentraSite user registry is stored in objects of the type User. You can associate a CentraSite user object with a user in a user repository. In this case you can map data fields from the user repository into the user object in the CentraSite registry. The data in the mapped data fields is visible when you display the user object in CentraSite.