Creating Top-Level Sites

After you have performed your installation and initial SharePoint configuration, you can proceed with creating and configuring your portal or top-level site collection.

Creating a top-level site is the fun part of the installation process because you finally get to see the results of your SharePoint installation efforts. The process is slightly different depending on whether you have installed WSS or MOSS, mostly with regard to the site templates and services that are available. For MOSS installations you are creating a top-level site that is a portal because it has all the portal services such as search available to it. See Chapter 3 for a complete description of the site templates.

Creating your first site in a WSS installation

To start working with your WSS installation, you need to create a Web application and a site collection on which users can start working. If you have multiple front-end servers, create the Web application on the server that is hosting SharePoint Central Administration.

To create a Web application, follow these steps:

1.	Open SharePoint Central Administration and select the Application Management tab.
2.	Click Create or extend Web application in the SharePoint Web Application Management page.
3.	Click Create a new IIS Web site and change the port setting to 80 so that users will not have to specify the port number in the URL. Port 80 is the standard port expected by Web browsers.
4.	Select NTLM or Negotiate (Kerberos) as the appropriate authentication provider in the security configuration section. NTLM is recommended, but if you choose Kerberos, it must be supported by your environment.
5.	Click Create new application pool in the application pool section.
6.	Type the name of your application pool or use the default name in the Application pool name field.
7.	Enter your Web application identity account credentials in the username and password field in domainusername format. For more information about the Web application identity account, see the prepare administrator accounts section in this chapter.
8.	Verify the database information in the database name and authentication section.
9.	Click Windows Authentication in the database name and authentication section.
10.	Specify the search server in the search server section. For information on configuring the search server, see the “Enabling Windows SharePoint Server Search” section in this chapter.
11.	Click OK.
12.	Verify that your new Web application has been created on the application created page.
13.	Open a command prompt window, type iisreset, and then press Enter.

After your Web application has been created, you can proceed with creating a site collection for it. Follow these steps:

1.	Open SharePoint Central Administration and select the Application Management tab.
2.	Click Create Site Collection.
3.	In the Web application pull-down menu, select the Web application that you created in the previous steps.
4.	Enter a title and description for your site.
5.	Click the Create site at this URL option, and then in the Web site address section choose root in the URL path.
6.	Enter the username for the site collection administrator in the primary site collection administrator section.
7.	Select no quota in the quota template section. Alternatively, you can create a quota template by clicking the Manage Quota Templates link in that section and apply it to this site collection.
8.	Select your template for the site collection from the available templates in the template selection section.
9.	Click OK.

Creating your first MOSS site

To start working with your MOSS installation, you need to create a Web application and a top-level site collection on which users can start working. If you have multiple front-end servers, create the Web application on the server that is hosting SharePoint Central Administration.

To create a Web application, follow these steps:

1.	Open SharePoint Central Administration and select the Application Management tab.
2.	In the SharePoint Web Application Management section, click Create or extend Web application.
3.	Click Create a new IIS Web site and change the port setting to 80 so that users will not have to specify the port number in the URL. Port 80 is the standard port expected by Web browsers.
4.	Select NTLM or Negotiate (Kerberos) as the appropriate authentication provider in the Security Configuration section. NTLM is recommended, but if you choose Kerberos, it must be supported by your environment.
5.	In the Application Pool section, click Create new application pool.
6.	Type the name of your application pool or use the default name in the Application pool name field.
7.	Enter your Web application identity account credentials in the username and password field in domainusername format. For more information about the Web application identity account, see the “Preparing administrative accounts” section in this chapter.
8.	Verify the database information in the Database Name and Authentication section.
9.	Click Windows authentication in the Database Name and Authentication section.
10.	Specify the search server in the Search Server section. For information on configuring the search server, see the “Enabling Windows SharePoint Server Search” section in this chapter.
11.	Click OK.
12.	Verify that your new Web application has been created on the application created page.
13.	Open a command prompt window, type iisreset, and then press Enter.

After your Web application has been created, you can proceed with creating a site collection for it. Follow these steps:

1.	Open SharePoint Central Administration and select the Application Management tab.
2.	In the SharePoint Site Management section, click Create Site Collection.
3.	In the Web application pulldown menu, select the Web application that you created in the previous steps above.
4.	Enter a title and description for your site.
5.	In the Web site address section, click the Create site at this URL option and then choose root in the URL path.
6.	Enter a username for the site collection administrator in the Primary Site Collection Administrator section.
7.	Select No Quota in the Quota Template section. Alternatively, you can create a quota template to limit the size of the site collection by clicking the Manage Quota Templates link in that section and apply it to this site collection.
8.	Select your template for the site collection from the available templates in the template selection section. A suggested template for intranet portals is to select the Corporate Intranet Site template from the Publishing tab.
9.	Click OK.