TechTips - How to Setup a New Website in SharePoint 2007

SharePoint 2007 can be overwhelming when you first start working with the software. I know it took me a few weeks of playing around with it to know where everything can be found. There weren't a lot of simple to follow guides explaining each piece of the setup steps. So I set out to do just that to try to help people avoid spending extra time doing things within SharePoint 2007. This guide will explain step by step how to setup a new site within SharePoint, what each step is for and what to watch out for.

So to get started you will need to open SharePoint 2007 Central Admin on your host server (if you have a server farm then you can open it from any server and if your network allows the connection you can open Central admin from your desktop).

Central admin will open and you will be greeted with the home page; this page basically shows you your server setup. Mine setup is a SharePoint farm with several web heads, a SQL backend and a mail server. This information doesn't really have anything to do with the setup of the website we are going to build I just wanted you to be aware of what this page is.

So now we will build our website and configure all of its settings. To build a new SharePoint Website follow these steps:

• Click the Application Management Tab

• Click Create or Extend Web Application (under SharePoint web application management)

• Click Create new web application

• Click Create a new IIS website

• Type name of site in Description (this is how it will show up in IIS)

• Type port number you want to use (I usually just leave this as what SharePoint decides but you can change this)

• Type Host header value (if you want to, you can always edit this later in IIS)

• Type the Path you want to use (I change the end of this to the name of my site, example would be C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\TEST) this makes it easier to know what directories go to what sites if it's simply a port number you have to do a lot of double checking

• Authentication provider - NTLM (I have to use this my network settings won't allow Kerberos to work properly)

• Allow anonymous - I always put YES (this won't turn it on but gives you the option to turn it on later)

• Use SSL - No (I set this up in IIS but you can use it if you want)

• URL - I leave it and setup my URL in IIS

• Zone - I leave it as default

• Click Create new application pool (name it the same as your site, TEST)

• Configurable - Service account name and password must be entered (Service account needs domain admin rights and rights to SQL server)

• Restart IIS - set to manual

• Database Server - type server name of your SQL server you want to use

• Database name - change to something that will specify your site (TEST_DB is what I use for my test)

• Data base authentication - I use Windows authentication

• Click OK

Not all of these settings have to be configured how I have mine set, you make changes to them as you see fit as long as your network and servers security configurations will allow the setup to complete you can change any of these as you need.

SharePoint will show a progress bar and might take some time (usually 3-10 minutes) to build the site. Once it is complete it will give you a success message and ask you if you want to build the site collection at this time. Click the Create Site collection link it will take you to a page to configure the site collection and what kind of SharePoint site you want to setup. These setup options are pretty straightforward, Title of your site, a description, types of site you want (collaboration, wiki, blog, etc...) you should know what to set in this window. When complete click the OK button at the bottom of the page.

SharePoint will again show a progress bar as it builds the site collection (again 3-10 minutes is typical). You will get another message saying the site was created and a link to the new SharePoint site, if you click on this link it will take you to the site.

That is all there is to it, now you have a SharePoint site that is ready to go.