How to Create a SharePoint Site: Step-by-Step Guide
Requirement: Create a new site collection in SharePoint Online.
How to Create a Site Collection in SharePoint Online?
Are you looking to create a central repository for all your team’s collaboration needs? Do you want to set up a team site or communication site for your team or employees to use? If so, you must create a site collection in SharePoint Online. This blog post covers the different steps involved in creating a site collection in SharePoint Online.
Site collection in SharePoint is a logical group site with a common top-level site and zero or more subsites organized as a hierarchy. Every site collection shares a common top site, navigation, security, content types, etc. Site collections are an easy way to organize and manage your SharePoint content, and they’re a great way to share documents with team members. Let’s walk through the simple step-by-step instructions for SharePoint admins to manually create site collections, modern team sites, and communication portals using the SharePoint admin center.
The Anatomy of a SharePoint Site Collection
A Site Collection is the highest level in the site hierarchy. It consists of one top-level site and all the associated subsites. In some cases, organizations may create separate site collections to better manage their content and permissions. SharePoint Site Collections comprise various components, including master pages, content types, list templates, library templates, workflows, and site columns. It is organized in a hierarchical structure, with the top-level site being the parent and subsites being the child sites. Alright, let’s see how to create a site in SharePoint!
Create a Site in SharePoint Online as an End-User
The purpose of creating a Site Collection in SharePoint is to organize sites into distinct collections with common characteristics, settings and permissions, enabling efficient collaboration and content management.
To create a SharePoint Online Site collection as an end-user, follow these steps:
- Open https://www.office.com in the web browser, and log in with your username and password.
- Click on the App launcher icon (9 little dots waffle) in the top-left corner and click “SharePoint” from the applications list. This takes you to the SharePoint start page or Homepage (https://Domain.SharePoint.com/_layouts/15/sharepoint.aspx)
- Click the “Create site” button in the toolbar to create a new site collection.
- The New Site Collection page appears. Select the site Template for your site collection. Typically, the SharePoint Team Site will do.
- Set properties according to your requirement to create a site collection, such as:
- Title and site description for your new site. Validate the Site Address (URL path) and Group Email address for the site it assigns by default.
- Set the default language and privacy settings and click on the “Next” button. Add any additional members to the site.
- Click on the Finish button to complete creating the site collection.
Wait a moment, and your site collection should appear in the site list. This is called “self service site creation”. You can also create a site collection using the Sharepoint Online Admin Center.
Create Modern Site Collection in SharePoint Online:
To create a modern team site collection in SharePoint Online, use the “SharePoint admin center” at https://<YourDomain>-admin.sharepoint.com/ (SharePoint server On-Premises Central Administration equivalent!).
Create a new site collection as a SharePoint Administrator
As a SharePoint Administrator or Global Administrator, To create a team site or communication site, follow these steps:
- Sign in to Microsoft SharePoint Admin Center at https://YourDomain-admin.sharepoint.com as a Tenant or SharePoint Online administrator >> Click on “Create” from the “Sites >> Active Sites” in the left navigation.
- On the template selection, pick either the “Team Site” or “Communication Site” option to create a modern site collection with Office 365 group or the “Other Options” to create a modern team site without Office 365 group.
- Pick the Team site template and provide the name and primary site collection Administrator options. There are no secondary site collection administrator options available in SharePoint Online, but you can add additional site collection admins to the site once the site is created. On the “Advanced settings,” you’ll get a description and time zone. Click on “Finish” to create a modern site collection in SharePoint Online.
- If you pick the “Team site”, It creates a group-connected modern SharePoint site. You’ll be asked to provide the Group owner for your new site collection and choose whether it should be public or private.
The new site collection will be created immediately, and you can begin adding content to it, such as customizing the home page, adding relevant web parts and components to it, creating document libraries, lists, add/edit pages and publish, etc. Make sure you set up the necessary permissions for everyone who needs access to the site. By default, new site collections are private and not open to all users, but you can choose to grant access to your site collection to specific groups of users.
To bulk create site collections in SharePoint Online, use: How to Create Multiple Sites in SharePoint Online using PowerShell?
Team Sites vs. Communication Sites: Choosing Wisely
When deciding between SharePoint team sites and communication sites, it is important to consider their primary distinctions. Here are some key differences:
- Team sites leverage Microsoft 365 Groups for permissions, whereas communication sites utilize SharePoint groups.
- Team sites are designed for internal team collaboration, while communication sites are purposed for public sharing and can form the foundation for a company portal.
- Communication sites feature a more visually appealing and modern interface, while team sites have a more ordinary look.
- Additionally, communication sites offer a wider range of features and customization options compared to team sites.
Common applications for SharePoint team sites include an intranet portal, document management system, content management system, project management tool, event management, and human resources portal. The advantages of using a SharePoint team site include integration with Microsoft 365, collaboration capabilities, customizability, and security measures.
Best Practices for SharePoint Site Collections
Site collections in SharePoint serve as a top-level container within a SharePoint farm or SharePoint Online environment, encapsulating sites, lists, libraries, and other components. Here are some best practices for managing site collections in SharePoint:
- Planning and Structure:
- Define Your Information Architecture: Before creating site collections, plan your information architecture carefully. Consider how content will be organized, who will need access, and how users will navigate the content.
- Use Templates: Utilize site templates to ensure consistency across your organization. Templates can help enforce branding, features, and content types.
- Manage Permissions Wisely:
- Least Privilege Principle: Assign permissions based on the least privilege necessary for users to perform their tasks. This reduces security risks.
- Manage Groups: Use SharePoint groups to manage permissions efficiently. It’s easier to add and remove users from groups than to manage individual user permissions.
- Audit and Review Permissions: Regularly review permissions to ensure they’re still appropriate as users’ roles change within the organization. Periodically review site collections for relevance, security, and compliance with governance policies. Audit logs can be used to monitor and report on activities within the site collection.
- Storage and Quotas:
- Set Quotas: Implement storage quotas to prevent uncontrolled growth of site collections, which can affect performance and manageability.
- Monitor Usage: Regularly monitor storage usage and adjust quotas as necessary. Encourage site owners to clean up unused content.
- Navigation and Usability:
- Intuitive Navigation: Design navigation to be intuitive and consistent across site collections. Use managed navigation for a more controlled experience.
- Customize Navigation Elements: Utilize breadcrumbs, quick launch, and top link bars to enhance user navigation.
- Content Management:
- Content Types and Metadata: Define and use content types and metadata to ensure content is organized and easily searchable.
- Retention Policies: Establish retention policies to manage the lifecycle of documents and other content.
- Governance: Establish governance policies for site creation, usage, and archiving.
- Site Collection Policies: Develop and enforce site collection policies to manage features, branding, and customizations.
- Training and Support: Provide training for site owners and users to ensure they understand how to use and manage their sites effectively. Educate users about SharePoint features, best practices, and governance policies.
- Search Configuration:
- Optimize Search: Configure search settings within site collections to provide relevant search results, including managed properties and result sources.
- Monitoring and Reporting:
- Usage Reports: Utilize usage reports to understand how the site collections are being used and to identify any potential issues.
- Customization and Third-Party Solutions: Be cautious with extensive customization and third-party solutions. They can complicate upgrades and migrations and may affect performance and stability. Minimize the use of large images or custom web parts that can slow down page load times.
- Backup and Disaster Recovery: Regularly back up site collections and have a disaster recovery plan in place. This ensures that you can restore data in case of accidental deletion or other data loss scenarios.
By following these best practices, you can ensure that your SharePoint site collections are well-organized, secure, and optimized for performance, providing a robust and user-friendly environment for collaboration and content management.
Wrapping up
In conclusion, SharePoint Site Collections provide a powerful platform for collaboration and document management, enabling organizations to create, manage, and customize sites to fit their unique needs. Following the steps explained in this guide, SharePoint administrators can swiftly deliver tailored sites for any team, department, or business initiative requiring their own unique collaborative workspace with properly scoped access and permissions. Whether creating one of many site collections to organize divisions or spinning up modern team sites to support working groups, the SharePoint admin center provides an intuitive point-and-click interface to build them manually.
Is it possible to create a SharePoint site with PowerShell? Of course, yes! To create a new site in SharePoint Online, use: New-SPOSite cmdlet in SharePoint Online Management Shell or New-PnPTenantSite cmdlet of PnP PowerShell. You can also use the CSOM PowerShell script to add a new site.
More info: Create a SharePoint Online site collection using PowerShell
To get a list of sites, you can go to the SharePoint admin center (https://YourDomain-admin.sharepoint.com) >> Expand “Sites” >> Active Sites. You can also use PowerShell cmdlets Get-SPOSite or Get-PnPTenantSite to get all sites in SharePoint Online.
More info: Get a List of Site Collections in SharePoint Online
To get all site collection administrators, You can use one of SharePoint Admin Center, the Site Collection Administrators page of the site settings, or PowerShell methods.
More info: Get a SharePoint Site collection administrator in PowerShell
Yes. 2 Million sites per tenant and 2000 subsites per site collection!
More info: SharePoint Limits
You can set the SharePoint Online site’s Privacy as “Public” so that everyone in your organization who is authenticated can access the SharePoint site. However, you cannot create a public-facing website using SharePoint Online. It’s worth noting that it is possible to share a file or folder with anyone without authentication using the “Share” feature, provided the “Anyone” option is set.
To make a SharePoint site available to external users, you need to enable external sharing in the SharePoint admin center. To configure site-level SharePoint external sharing settings, go to the SharePoint admin center, Under Sites >> Active sites >> Select the site you want to share. Choose “Sharing” from the Toolbar. Set the external sharing setting to Anyone or New and existing guests. More here: How to Enable External Sharing in SharePoint Online?
To enable subsite creation in SharePoint Online, follow these steps: Go to the SharePoint admin center >> Click on “Settings” >> Click on “Classic settings page”, Find the “Subsite Creation” section >> Choose the option to allow users to create subsites. This will enable users with the appropriate permissions to create subsites within your SharePoint Online environment.
To add a subsite in SharePoint Online, follow these steps: Navigate to the SharePoint site where you want to create the subsite >> Click Site contents on the left menu or from site settings. On the site contents page, Click New >> Subsite. Fill out the required fields, such as Title and Description, URL, Template, Permissions, and Navigation. Click Create at the bottom of the page. More: How to create a Subsite in SharePoint Online?
It is so frustrating to find an article, that TALKS about creating a SITE COLLECTION but clearly has no idea what that really is. You outline creating a regular site, NOT a collection. Please get your terminology correct.
Well, In SharePoint world: “Site” is the new name for “Site Collections”!
Hi Eric, Salaudeen is correct. When you create a Site, as he showed then you can create sub-sites under that Site. Simply goto Site Contents then click on New – Subsites.