Forum Discussion
Difference between ".com" and the ".com/sites/" site collections
Hi all,
I've inherited a new O365 environment where everything has been built in the
https://<company name>.com root site collection rather than a
https://<company name>.com/sites/<...> site.
The admin was experimenting and has activated some SC features (such as the Publishing Infrastructure). I'm still trying to find out what else has been done, as a complete record has not been kept. I'm planning to start a new build (with proper IA) in another SC and eventually steer the users to the new "home".
(i.e. https:// <company name>.com/sites/ <new SC>)
1) What is potential impact that these changes could have to all subsequent SC's. (I know it will depend on exactly what has been done, just looking for opinions at this stage.)
2) Once all other SC's have been built (with full IA) and users are migrated to the new version, is it possible to do the equivalent of a "factory reset" on the root SC (i.e the .com)?
3) If so, what could be the impact of doing so?
Thanks.
9 Replies
Someone with deeper knowledge of the root site collection will come along I'm sure, until then I'll share what I know.
- Functionally, the root site collection is its own environment--as far as I have been aware and have informed myself, the only change you could make to the root site collection that would have an effect on all other sites would be deleting it (which you really shouldn't be doing anyway). Deleting its subsites should be safe, though.
- I have read that a "factory reset" of the root site collection can be accomplished by deleting the root site collection and making a new site collection in its place, but, my knowledge of this is very limited and I'm not sure it's guaranteed to be bug-free. Given the immense risk involved, aka you could lose access to all of your site collections, there is comparatively little benefit to trying this. As for site collection features, I don't think there's much risk in trying to revert those--I believe turning off publishing infrastructure affects only the things you've built in your site collection, so if you're stripping all of that out anyway, you shouldn't have much issue getting that site usable to your specifications again.
Your first line of (1.) is what i'm hoping.
Something in the back of my head tells me that once the Pub.Inf is switched on, there are residual bit's left behind even if turned off.
Thanks for your contribution.
Removing/recreating the rootsitecollection will cause problems as a few things are done for the whole environment. I would prefer to disable the features that are activated. by comparing a new sitecollection to the root sitecollection. After that i would suggest to look at the libraries so you can remove the libraries that are overhead. Hope this helps
