Description

Sitecore provides an RSS feed mechanism to track content changes. The Sitecore RSS feed mechanism is stored in the /sitecore/shell/applications/feeds and sitecore/shell/Feeds folders. As sitecore/shell is considered to be a sensitive folder, it is protected from being accessed by unauthorized users in the Web.config file:

<location path="sitecore/shell">
  <system.web>
    <authorization>
      <deny users="?" />
      <allow users="*" />
    </authorization>
  </system.web>
</location>

The default protection configuration entitles only authorized users to access RSS feeds.

Solution

To allow all users (including anonymous users) to access RSS feeds, add the following configuration to the Web.config file on the Content Management instance:

<location path="sitecore/shell/feeds">
  <system.web>
    <authorization>
      <allow users="?" />
    </authorization>
  </system.web>
</location>
<location path="sitecore/shell/applications/feeds">
  <system.web>
    <authorization>
      <allow users="?" />
    </authorization>
  </system.web>
</location>

You can find more details about security configuration at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/dotnet/netframework-4.0/b6x6shw7(v=vs.100).