Before creating a site collection, you must first create a Web application because site collections reside in a web application. Here is the full structure of SharePoint site collection:
You can see in structure that a site collection is the collection of one top-level site and sub sites. All content of a site collection stored in a single content database. You can clearly see the figure that the top level of organization is web application. Web applications also need at least one content database to store all data. Now let’s move the steps to create a web application in SharePoint 2013:
Create web application:
SharePoint 2013 Central Administration > Application Management page
To create a new web application, click on manage web application
After that click on new button
After that you will see that the page is about to load.
After the page is load, you will see “Create New Web Application” dialog window:
When you scroll down the this dialog windows, you will see various settings like:
- Allow Anonymous- NO
- Use SSL- NO
- Check Enable Windows Authentication Check Box
- Check Default Sign in Page
- Check Create new application pool
- Enable Customer Experience Improvement Program: Yes
After applying above settings, click on Register new managed account & you will see following window:
After that click on OK, Next window will come like this:
After loading, this windows will come & confirm that you web application is about to create.
Click on Ok to successfully create a web application.
Here is the first look of your new created web application which is listed in SharePoint Central Administration Web Application under Central Administration > Application Management > Manage web applications
You can also delete a web application if needed; go to Central Administration’s Application Management page. Under the SharePoint Web Application Management section, click Delete Web application. This case comes when you are unable to access your site collection and web application. It happens when the web application get corrupted and unusable. In this case, you could be forced to delete the web application or you have use third party SharePoint Recovery Software to successfully repair your inaccessible web application. Check this presentation to know more about SharePoint Recovery Software:
If you have accidentally deleted your web app & you want to restore it then you have restore all content databases and site collections in the farm.
Create Content Database:
Before creating a site collection, first create a content database:
From Central administration screen and under "Application Management" click on Manage Content Database
After that click "Add a Content database"
If you create a new site collection then you need a particular Content Database to store it. Before creating site collection, you must check that the status of each content database is set to stop. You only need to start content database that is required.
click on all Database names and change Database status from ready to offline & click ok.
After creating & managing the content database, you can create site collection. Now let’s move the steps to create a site collection in SharePoint 2013:
Create Site Collection:
Click on Central Administration > Application Management > Create Site Collections
First select the web application in which you want to create a site collection.
Mention the title and description for your site.
After that select the template according to your need such as Collaboration, Meetings, Enterprise, Publishing & Custom.
Click ok.
You can see your created site collection by clicking "Application Management" from central admin. Click on "View All site collections" under Site collections section.
Here is list of Site Collections:
Here is the first look of your site collection:
If you want to delete the site collection, you can do it by following steps:
- Start SharePoint 2013 Central Administration
- On the start screen click on SharePoint 2013 Central Administration.
- On the Central Administration website>>click Application Management.
- In the Site Collections section, click on the Application Management page then click Delete a site collection.
- On the Delete Site Collection page>>click Change Site Collection.
- Now you will see Select Site Collection dialog box.
- In the Web Application list>>click Change Web Application.
- Now you will see Select Web Application dialog box.
- After that Click the name of the web application which contains the site collection that you want to delete.
- Click the relative URL of the site collection that you want to delete, and then click OK.
- Verify that the site collection information is correct or not.
- On the Delete Site Collection page, click Delete.
- After that site collection will get successfully deleted.
If you want to restore deleted site collection, you can do it by using Restore-SPDeletedSite Windows PowerShell cmdlet. Because when a site collection is deleted, it stored in the SPDeletedSite object.
After creating the site collection, you can create sub sites. Now lets move the steps to create a sub sites in SharePoint 2013:
Create Sub Site:
This site will create under site collection. For this click on Settings button and then select Site Contents option & then click on Site Contents page.
After that Click on new subsite link.
Mention the site title, description, web site address & then select the Template for your subsite. Also set the permissions and navigations according to your need. After that Click on Create button to start creating a new subsite
Now you will see that your sub site has been created.
Congratulation, you have successfully created your web application, site collection and subsites.
