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Creating Sites and Subsites (Windows SharePoint Services 2.0)

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You can use top-level Web site and subsites to divide site content into distinct, separately manageable sites. Top-level Web sites can have multiple subsites, and subsites can also have multiple subsites, down as many levels as your users need. The entire structure of a top-level Web site and all of its subsites is called a Web site collection. The following diagram shows this hierarchy of sites and subsites.

Windows SharePoint Services logical architecture

This hierarchy allows your users to have a main working site for the entire team, plus individual working sites or shared sites for side projects. Top-level Web sites and subsites allow different levels of control over the features and settings for sites.

The administrator of a site collection can control settings and features for both the top-level Web site and any subsites beneath it. For example, an administrator of a site collection can:

  • Add, delete, or change user permissions.

  • View usage statistics.

  • Change regional settings.

  • Manage Web Part and template galleries.

  • Manage Web discussions and alert.

  • Change the site name and description, theme, and home page organization.

  • Configure settings, such as regional settings, for the top-level Web site and all subsites.

The administrator of a subsite can control settings and features only for that subsite, and the administrator of the next subsite down can control settings and features for only that subsite. For example, an administrator of a subsite can:

Allowing Users to Create Their Own Top-Level Web Sites and Subsites

Depending on the amount of customization and control you want to allow your users, you can let them create either top-level Web sites or subsites. The Self-Service Site Creation feature gives users the ability to create top-level Web sites on their own. For more information, see Configuring Self-Service Site Creation (Windows SharePoint Services 2.0).

Users can also create subsites of any site for which they have the Create Subsites rights. The Create Subsites right is included in the Administrator site group by default, so any member of the Administrator site group for a site can create a subsite of that site. You can assign this right to other site groups by using the Manage Site and Workspace Creation page. For more information about managing site and workspace creation, see Managing Site Groups and Permissions (Windows SharePoint Services 2.0).

Creating Top-Level Web Sites for Users

You can give users the ability to create their own top-level Web sites by enabling Self-Service Site Creation. If you want to control top-level Web site creation yourself, however, you can disable Self-Service Site Creation and create top-level Web sites on your users' behalf from SharePoint Central Administration. To create a top-level Web site outside of Self-Service Site Creation, you must be an administrator of the local machine on which the site will reside or a member of the SharePoint administrators group.

Note

When you are running a server farm with multiple host names or are in Active Directory account creation mode, you cannot create a top-level Web site from SharePoint Central Administration. To perform this action in Active Directory account creation mode, you must use the command line or object model. For more information, see Using the Object Model to Manage Windows SharePoint Services 2.0.

Create a top-level Web site from SharePoint Central Administration

  1. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click SharePoint Central Administration.

  2. Under Virtual Server Configuration, click Create a top-level Web site.

  3. On the Virtual Server List page, click the virtual server under which you want to create the top-level Web site.

  4. To create a site under a predefined Uniform Resource Locator (URL) path for the virtual server, on the Create Top-level Web Site page, select Create site under this URL; in the Site name box, type the name for the top-level Web site; and then in the URL path box, select the path to use.

    The name and URL path are combined with the server name to create the full URL to the site. For example, on https://servername, if you create a top-level Web site at the /sites URL path, and use Site001 as the name, the full path to the new top-level Web site is https://servername/sites/site001.

  5. To create a site at a predefined URL path, select Create site at this URL, and then in the URL path box, select the URL to use for the top-level Web site.

    The site is created at the top level of the URL path you select. For example, on https://servername, if you select /portal as the path, the site is created at https://servername/portal.

  6. In the Site Collection Owner section, type the user name (in the form DOMAIN\username) and e-mail address (in the form someone@example.com) for the user who will be the site owner and administrator.

  7. If you want to identify a user as the secondary owner of the new top-level Web site (recommended), in the Secondary Owner section, type the user name and e-mail address for a secondary owner and administrator of the new site.

  8. If you are using quota, in the Quota Template section, select a quota template to use.

  9. In the Site Language section, select the language to use for the top-level Web site.

  10. Click OK.

The site owner can select a template for the site when first browsing to the URL, or you can browse to the URL on the confirmation page and select one yourself. You must alert the site owner and secondary owner when you have created the site with the URL. They are not notified automatically when you create a site.

Creating Subsites

You can create a subsite of a current site by using the Manage Sites and Workspaces page.

Create a subsite

  1. On a site, click Site Settings.

  2. Under Administration, click Manage sites and workspaces.

  3. On the Manage Sites and Workspaces page, click Create.

  4. On the New SharePoint Site page, in the Title and Description section, type the title and description for the new subsite.

  5. In the URL name box, type the URL for your subsite.

  6. In the User Permissions section, select either Use same permissions as parent site or Use unique permissions.

    Select Use same permissions as parent site if you want to share users with the parent site, or Use unique permissions if you want to maintain a separate list of users for your subsite. For more information, see Managing Site Groups and Permissions (Windows SharePoint Services 2.0).

  7. In the Language section, select the language to use.

  8. Click Create.

  9. On the Template Selection page, select a template to use, and then click OK.

Creating Sites and Subsites from the Command Line

If you are an administrator of the server computer, you can also create sites and subsites by using the Stsadm.exe command-line tool. To create a top-level Web site, use the createsite operation. To create a subsite, use the createweb operation.

Note

You can also use the createsiteinnewdb operation to create a top-level Web site and a new content databases at the same time. For more information about this operation, see Command-Line Operations (Windows SharePoint Services 2.0).

The createsite operation takes the following required parameters: url, ownerlogin, owneremail, and the following optional parameters: ownername, lcid, sitetemplate, title, description, and quota. For example, to create a top-level Web site called site1 on https://server_name/sites, you would use syntax similar to the following:

stsadm.exe -o createsite -url https://server_name/sites/site1
 -ownerlogin <DOMAIN\user> -owneremail <someone@example.com>
 -ownername <display name>

The createweb operation requires the url parameter and takes the following optional parameters: lcid, sitetemplate, title, description, convert, and unique (used to specify unique permissions for the subsite). To create a subsite called subsite1 under the site you just created, you would use syntax similar to the following:

stsadm.exe -o createweb -url https://server_name/sites/site1/subsite1

For more information about using the createsite and createweb operations, see Command-Line Operations (Windows SharePoint Services 2.0).