Using Managed Paths to create Site Collection(s) at the root level of your Web Application – Option 1

Do you always want to use /sites/ or /personal/ to create your site collections? Would you ever wanted to create a site collection off the root of your site such as http://extranet.company.com/PartnerName, only to find you can’t?

Well, If you don’t want your new site collection to be under /sites/ and need the ability to put in under (/).

Can it be done, why yes it can, but.. If you want to go down this road, you will NOT be able to have a site collection that resolves at the main root (http://extranet.company.com). This is a good approach depending on your particular requirements.

Here are steps that you can follow to update your managed paths:

1. First you will see that when trying to add a new site collection you are limited to only the managed paths available.
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2. To add a managed path you can select “Define Managed Paths” from the link in the Create Site Collection screen, but you need to know what you are doing.
3. Or, you can go to Application Management, “Manage web applications”, Select the Web Application of your Choice and then select Managed Paths in the ribbon.
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4. Going to the managed paths page, we see something like this.
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5. By default, SharePoint 2010 adds a (root) “Explicit inclusion” to you managed paths for each Web Application created.
6. First step is to delete this “Explicit inclusion” from your Managed Paths.
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7. Next, Create the new “Wildcard inclusion” / .. (select Add Path)
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8. Now your new Path is available.
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9. Now lets create the new Site Collection.
   1. Go to Application Management
   2. Select Create Site Collection under the Site Collection Section
   3. From the Drop down select the correct Web Application
   4. Provide it a name
   5. Under Web Site Address select the Drop Down and you will now be able to select “/”.
   6. Put in the Name of your new site collection.
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   8. Pick your Template
   9. Select Ok
   10. Complete.
10. Now you can create sites under the root “/” .
11. But remember, this approach leaves you with no main root site collection but allows you to easily manage site collections at the root “/” without having to have a managed path for each new site collection.
12. See Blog post Option 2 if you need both the root and “/”.

Hope this helps.