Section 2.12. Enabling Self-Service Site Creation

2.12. Enabling Self-Service Site Creation

One of the advantages of hosting SharePoint yourself is that you can let members of your network create and maintain their own SharePoint sites without much intervention. To enable self-service site creation:

1. On the server, choose Start Administrative Tools SharePoint Central Administration to display the Central Administration site.

2. Select Configure Self-Service Site Creation.

3. Turn Self-Service Site Creation on and click OK. SharePoint activates site creation and adds an announcement to the site featuring a link to the site creation page ( scsignup.aspx ).

SharePoint grants site creation rights to the Reader members group . You may want to remove that permission so that only Contributor or higher-level members can create new sites. To do that:

1. Display the SharePoint top-level site and choose Site Settings Go to Site Administration Manage site groups.

2. Select the Use Self-Service Site Creation permission to clear the check box next to it and choose Submit to make the change.

   

   If you allow anonymous access over the Internet, those users can't create sites since members must sign on to use scsignup.aspx . Only authenticated users can create sites.

   
   

The site creation page ( scsignup.aspx ) allows members to create new sites in the /sites folder of the parent site as shown in Figure 2-30.

animal 2-30. Using self-service site creation

The creator of a new site owns the sites under the new site. For example, in Figure 2-30 Beige Bond owns all of the sites under http://wombat1/sites/BeigeBond. He can create and delete sites, add content, etc. If you didn't restrict site creation to Contributors, that means Readers can create new sites and add content on your server. But that's not as quite as risky as it sounds, because SharePoint allows you to:

• Set quotas to restrict the amount of space used.

• Alert owners of unused sites and automatically delete the site if there is no response.

• Monitor, lock, and delete sites as the collection administrator.

These tasks are performed from the SharePoint Central Administration site. For example, to configure SharePoint to automatically delete unused sites after a certain period:

1. On the server, choose Start Administrative Tools SharePoint Central Administration to display the Central Administration site.

2. Select Configure site collection use confirmation and auto-deletion. SharePoint displays Figure 2-31.

3. Choose the confirmation options and click OK.

animal 2-31. Using confirmation/auto-deletion to help with housekeeping

The SharePoint Services Administrator's Guide contains good information on other related management topics. See the "Configuration" and "Maintenance" sections of the guide's Table of Contents for that help file.