I have used a feature in Sakai where you add the “.anon” role to a site and then give .anon site.visit and other permissions as you see fit.
This makes it so that the site is directly accessible via a URL – without any login process at all. You as the instructor have complete control over what these anonymous users see and can do in your site. Sakai smartly hides and shows buttons based on the permissions you give anonymous users.
I have this all set to the point where I have a completely public site for the course I am teaching at
http://www.si182.com/course.htm
Note that you need no account nor login to see my course materials and peruse the site. I currently have the e-mail archive tool hidden for privacy issues. But I could unhide the E-Mail tool and you could see our course mail list too.
I will continue to experiement with this – I have already found a few little things that could be improved for anonymous users – I will file JIRAs on this stuff and work on it.
I take inspiration from this from the excellent keynote from Hal Abelson at the Amsterdam conference where he encouraged us to think open first and then hide materials only when there is a reason to hide the materials. Also Bodington hs the notion of making materials trivially public at its core as well.