Branding using Walled Gardens and Redirects
How to reinforce your brand by providing walled garden and redirect pages before and after user login, respectively.
Log into SputnikNet, then select Network Policies from the CONFIG menu.
Walled gardens are internet domains that users can access before they log in. Redirects send the user to a specific web site after they log in. Both present opportunities to put information about your products or services in front of the customer surfs the wider internet.
Walled gardens are "allow/accept" policies that are applied to captive portals because they take effect before the user authenticates. To start creating a new Walled Garden, click on "Network Policies".
Define a new network policy.
Click "Define New Network Policy" to do just that.
Configure the new policy as "allow/accept".
Fill out the following fields:
- Name; the name of your walled garden policy
- Action: should be set to "Allow/Accept", since the policy permits internet access
- Protocol: TCP, for accessing web sites
- Match Destination Hostname: the name of the web site you want to allow access to (skip the http://www)
- Is Dynamic: use if the web site is not at a fixed IP address
- Interval: how often SputnikNet should check for a new IP address
- TCP or UDP Port: set to 80 (for http, standard web protocol)
Click "Add Policy" to do just that.
Your walled garden is now available for use.
Your new policy is added to your list of Network Policies. If you want to allow unauthenticated users to visit additional internet domains, repeat the previous steps.
Apply your walled garden to one or more captive portals.
Find the captive portal you want to apply the walled garden policy to. Click "Walled Garden and Authentication" from the "Configure Portal Properties" menu.
You'll see a list of available walled gardens. (In this example, there is only one.) Check the box next to the walled garden you created, and click "Update".
Users can access walled garden sites before they log in.
Your users will be able to visit www.gourmetselect.com before they log in to take a look at your tasty menu.
Create a redirect rule.
You can redirect customers after they log in to any site you want. This site will override the destination they requested before logging in (for example, their home page). Since they will have authenticated, no policy rule is needed.
To create a redirect rule, select "Settings" in the "Captive Portal Properties" menu. Enter the web destination in the "Redirect URL" field. This time the "http://www" is needed. Click "Save Settings".
Users will be redirected to the site you chose after they log in.
Now, after the user logs in, they'll see you're daily special.