Forum Discussion
SharePoint sites vs. Site Collections - CONFUSED!
All,
Tried following in a trial O365 (E3) account (tenant name: "blithe1"):
1. Created 2 additional "collections', in addition to main site collection :
https://blithe1.sharepoint.com <-- 'ROOT' collection created by default
https://blithe1.sharepoint.com/teams/Collection-1 <-- Created new collection with "../teams/.."
https://blithe1.sharepoint.com/sites/Collection-2 <-- Created a new collection with "../sites/.."
2. When we see the properties of each of above collections then it shows that it has "1 subsite". I think this is for the "Home" site of that collection (i.e. the above URLs themselves).
3. When we log into Office-365 and select the SharePoint "TILE" then it directs to:
https://blithe1.sharepoint.com/_layouts/15/sharepoint.aspx <-- This is not a "site" since the gear icon doesn't have "Site Setting" option etc
4. Here when we click the "+ Create Site" it asks for "Team Site" or "Communication Site". I created "Team Site" and site name as "PSO". It creates a site with URL https://blithe1.sharepoint.com/sites/PSO
AT THIS POINT IT DOES NOT GIVE US ANY OPTION TO SELECT SPECIFIC COLLECTION TO CREATE THE SITE IN. When we go to our three site-collections one-by-one and see "Site Contents" then none of the collection lists this "PSO" as a "subsite", so it's effectively not in any collection (and is obviously not a new collection in itself since it's not listed in collections list).
5. Next created a subsite under the "root" collection (by visiting collection-URL, then gear icon "Site Contents" and click "+ New" and select "Subsite").
URL (Fixed part): https://blithe1.sharepoint.com/
URL (Editable) : /Subsite-in-Root-Collection
It created the subsite and directed us to URL:
https://blithe1.sharepoint.com/Subsite-in-Root-Collection/SitePages/Home.aspx
5. Similarly created a subsite under "collection-1":
URL (Fixed part): https://blithe1.sharepoint.com/teams/Collection-1/
URL (Editable) : /Subsite-in-Collection-1
It created the site and directed us to URL:
https://blithe1.sharepoint.com/teams/Collection-1/Subsite-in-Collection-1/SitePages/Home.aspx
So from a "non-developer" perspective with no knowledge of actual low-level coding and structure of collections etc. it seems like all Site-Collections by default have a "HOME" site created (and with a set template "Project Site", "Team Site" etc). In case we don't intend to create additional sub-sites then this HOME site itself can serve the complete purpose. A collection is site itself and everything else is SUBSITE because home site (https://blithe1.sharepoint.com/teams/Collection-1/SitePages/Home.aspx) will contain all the subsequent sites in that collection (https://blithe1.sharepoint.com/teams/Collection-1/Subsite-in-Collection-1/SitePages/Home.aspx)
However rebellious it may sound, from a "non-techie" view, the "collection" may be just a "terminology" in SharePoint, it's actually just SITES and SUBSITES. In fact the collections like any other site also has users and permissions with names like "Collection-1 Visitors", "Collection-1 Members" etc.
One-Drive (https://blithe1-my.sharepoint.com/) listed as site collection, may be another special site providing ability to everyone in the organization to create their own quick "folders" in this site and able to share among each other.
Ofcourse there are other state of the art stuff in the actual features in these sites/subsites like "Flow", Power BI, External Data Sources, MetaData etc.
I'm not quite sure if there are any questions in this post, but your observations and testing have not uncovered anything unusual or unexpected.
In regards to item 4, you can control how that works by going to the SP Admin Center, Settings page.
A collection is an important object for administration and security. Site collection administrators have more power than a Site Owner.
Site collection features apply to all sites in the collection, site features only apply to the site in which they are activated.
Search scopes can easily be constrained to limit results to content from a specific collection.
While it doesn't matter in SPOnline, in SP on-premises, different site collections can be assigned to different databases which can help out for backup/restoration issues.
Thanks Dean. Appreciate all the insights.
(a) In a fresh office 365 tenants, we have following site collections. Just wondering about the 2nd and 3rd, what are these collections used for.
1. https://tenant.sharepoint.com
2. https://tenant.sharepoint.com/portals/hub
3. https://tenant.sharepoint.com/search
4. https://tenant-my.sharepoint.com(b) While setting up new structure from scratch, how do we decide if we should create our sites/subsites in base-collection (number 1 in above list) or should we create a new collection (say https://tenant.sharepoint.com/teams/collection-1) and define our sites/subsites under that. I assume any collection level setting done on "base-collection" (number 1 in above list) does not affect the new collection created (https://tenant.sharepoint.com/teams/collection-1).
I am thinking of reserving the "base-collection" for any future use and creating the structure in the collections we create. Or having "organization wide" stuff in "base-collection" and "department wise" stuff in self created collections etc. Even though base-collection and other collections are independent of each other in there manageability, but the resulting URLs can give the right visual impressions.
(c) When we go to "portal.office.com" and then select "SharePoint" the resulting page shows the various "tiles" for all the collections in our SharePoint, on this page there is option of "+ Create Site" if I create a site here, then this does NOT create a new collection in my collection list. I think above posts indicated it does, but my experience is different.
Thanks.
In regards to (a) #3 is the SharePoint Enterprise Search Center.
We have been recommending to our clients that they use the /teams/ path for
- group enabled modern sites that may have a MS Team connected to them,
- private sites, project sites and/or externally shared sites
and that they use the /sites/ path for sites with large numbers of users, e.g. classic sites, communications sites, intranet sites.
In regards to (b) , your assumption is correct. The root site collection is a special site collection and you don't have the same level of control over it as you do with a site collection created in /sites/ or /teams/ paths.
In regards to (c), MS is about to release a new SPO Admin center that will show the group enabled modern site collection. Until you get that in your tenant, you need to use PowerShell to get a listing.
MS has announced that they will be releasing a new type of Hub site that will make it easy to connect separate site collections into a common navigation structure with common branding, so this eliminates several of the traditional reasons for a hierarchical site collection.
MS is recommending that for most organizations a flat site collection structure should be used.
