Running a SharePoint Site on Windows Home Server : Installing and Configuring Windows SharePoint Foundation 2010 (part 2) - Creating a Top-Level SharePoint Site

Creating a Top-Level SharePoint Site

With the new SharePoint web application created, your next task is to add a top-level SharePoint site—called a site collection—to the application. You can use the top-level site by itself, or you can add sites to it later on.

Here are the steps to follow to create the top-level site:

1.	In the Create Site Collection page (see Figure 4), enter the site title and description. The title appears in the upper-left corner of all site pages, and the description appears on the home page. Figure 4. Use the Create Site Collection page to set up your new SharePoint site.
2.	In the Web Site Address section, use the uniform resource locator (URL) list to define the path used for new sites that you add to the site collection. You have two choices: /— Choose this path if you won’t be adding other sites to the collection, or if you want to place all new sites in the root folder of the site collection. For example, if your SharePoint web application address is http://server:45678/ and you later add a site that uses a folder named wedding, that site’s URL will be http://server:45678/wedding/. /sites/— Choose this path if you want to place all new sites in the sites subfolder of the site collection. SharePoint adds an extra text box so that you can add a folder name for the site collection. If your SharePoint web application address is http://server:45678/ and you specify the site collection folder name as main, your site’s URL will be http://server:45678/sites/main/. Tip You might prefer to store some or all of your SharePoint sites in a subfolder other than sites. For example, if you’ll be creating several blogs, you might want to set up a blogs subfolder. To specify another subfolder, click the Define Managed Paths link to open the Define Managed Paths page. In the Add a New Path section, type / followed by the folder name, click OK, and then click the Back button until you return to the Create Site Collection page. To see the new folder in the URL list, you need to refresh the page. (If you made a long entry in the Description box, copy it before refreshing the page; otherwise, you’ll lose the text and have to retype it.)
3.	In the Template Selection section, select either the Collaboration or Meetings tab, and then select the template you want to use as a starting point for the site. When you click a template, a description of the template appears in the Template Selection section, as shown in Figure 5. If you’re not sure which template to use, a good all-purpose choice is Team Site. Figure 5. Select the template you want to use as a starting point for your site.
4.	In the Primary Site Collection Administrator section, type the name of the user who will be the main administrator of the site collection. Click the Check Names icon to ensure that you’ve entered an existing username.
5.	(Optional) If you want to designate a second user as an administrator of the site collection, in the Secondary Site Collection Administrator section, type the name of the user. (Again, click Check Names to ensure that you’ve entered an existing username.)
6.	Click OK to create the site collection. When the operation is complete, SharePoint displays the Top-Level Site Successfully Created page, which includes a link to the site, as shown in Figure 6. Figure 6. You see this page when SharePoint has successfully created the site collection.
7.	Click OK to return to the Web Application Management page. You should now see three Web applications listed, as shown in Figure 7: the default application on port 80; the new application you just created; and the Central Administration application. You’ll use this page to remove the default SharePoint web application, as described in the next section. Figure 7. The Web Applications Management page now shows three applications.