Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services allows members of the Administrator site group to create subsites off of their Web sites. These subsites can be fully functioning SharePoint sites, complete with a home page, document libraries, and other features, and they can even have their own unique permissions. Self-Service Site Creation is enabled by administrators and allows users to create their own top-level Web sites. The user does not need administrator permissions on the server or virtual server, only permissions on the Web site where Self-Service Site Creation is hosted. The user simply enters some basic information and the new top-level Web site is created with the user as the owner and administrator. When you enable Self-Service Site Creation, you do not have to create top-level Web sites on demand for your users — they can do it themselves.

You turn on Self-Service Site Creation from the Configure Self-Service Site Creation page for the virtual server you want to enable. When you turn on Self-Service Site Creation, an announcement is added to the home page of the top-level Web sites on that virtual server, with a link to the signup page (Scsignup.aspx). Users can click the link to go to the signup page and create their sites. This announcement is set to never expire, but if the Announcements list is long or is removed from the home page of your site, the announcement may not appear. If you want to ensure that the link always appears on the home page, you can customize the home page in a Web page editor compatible with Windows SharePoint Services to include the link in a prominent position, such as the top link bar.

Security and Self-Service Site Creation

Self-Service Site Creation allows users to create and manage their own top-level Web sites automatically. This capability can affect the security of your Web server running Windows SharePoint Services. Self-Service Site Creation is disabled by default — you must turn on the feature to use it. You enable Self-Service Site Creation for a single virtual server at a time. If you want to use it on all virtual servers in your server farm, you must enable it for every virtual server individually.

The Administration pages for Self-Service Site Creation are part of the virtual server administration pages, which can only be accessed by local computer administrators or members of the SharePoint administrators group. Access to the signup page follows the same security rules as other Web site pages. By default, the Use Self-Service Site Creation right is included in all site groups except the Guest site group, and it gives users access to the signup page and the ability to use Self-Service Site Creation to create their own top-level Web sites.

Note that because Self-Service Site Creation simply creates new top-level Web sites on an existing virtual server, any new sites automatically conform to the virtual server's quota settings, unused Web site notification settings, and other administrative policies.

By default, Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 enables Self–Service Site Creation within portal site installations. This is how the "Create Site" feature in the Site Directory works. If you disable Self-Service Site Creation, the “Create Site” feature will not to function.

Managed Paths and Self-Service Site Creation

By default, when you install Windows SharePoint Services, a URL path called /sites is added to your virtual server. When you enable Self-Service Site Creation, that path is the default path for sites that your users create. For example, a user can create "MyTeamSite" under /sites on Server 1. Using the defaults, the path for this site would be similar to the following: http://server/sites/MyTeamSite. You can use the default /sites path for users' Self-Service Site Creation sites, or you can create additional paths. You specify which URL paths are available for users to create sites under by adding managed paths. If you do add more URL paths for Self-Service Site Creation to use, when users go to the Scsignup.aspx page, they see a drop-down box listing the various paths available, and they can choose which path to create their site under. For more information about defining a URL path, see Managing Paths.

Enabling Self-Service Site Creation

You can use either HTML Administration pages or the command-line tool to enable and configure Self-Service Site Creation. Either method allows you to turn Self-Service Site Creation on or off and allows you to specify required information for each site.

Configuring Self-Service Site Creation from HTML Administration Pages

To enable Self-Service Site Creation for a virtual server, use the Configure Self-Service Site Creation page for that virtual server.

Enable Self-Service Site Creation

1. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click SharePoint Central Administration.
2. On the SharePoint Central Administration page, under Virtual Server Configuration, click Configure virtual server settings.
3. On the Virtual Server List page, click the virtual server to enable.
4. On the Virtual Server Settings page, under Automated Web Site Collection Management, click Configure Self-Service Site Creation.
5. In the Enable Self-Service Site Creation section, next to Self-Service Site Creation is, select On.
6. If you want to require two contact names for each site, select the Require secondary contact check box.

   Requiring a secondary contact is highly recommended if you are using site use confirmation and have enabled automatic Web site deletion. For more information, see Managing Unused Web Sites.

7. Click OK.

To disable Self-Service Site Creation, go to the Configure Self-Service Site Creation page; next to Self-Service Site Creation is, select Off, and then click OK.

Configuring Self-Service Site Creation from the Command Line

You use the enablessc operation to enable and configure Self–Service Site Creation from the command line. The enablessc operation requires the URL parameter, and optionally takes the requiresecondarycontact parameter. For example, to enable Self-Service Site Creation for a server called MyServer and require two contact names for each site, you would use syntax such as the following:

stsadm -o enablessc -url http://MyServer -requiresecondarycontact

You can disable Self-Service Site Creation by using the disablessc operation. The disablessc operation takes only the URL parameter. So, to disable Self-Service Site Creation for MyServer, the syntax would be:

stsadm -o disablessc -url http://MyServer

Related Topics

For more information about using command-line operations, see Command-Line Operations.