SharePoint sites vs. Site Collections - CONFUSED!
So, SharePoint sites vs. Site Collections has completely baffled me despite reading endless articles and watching many videos! As a very advanced end user, with very little admin. experience, I've recently been given the task of sorting out the existing O365 SharePoint sites / hierarchy in my new company *HURRAH*. However, I'm utterly confused! Here's what I know: All sites / sub-sites to date appear to have been setup in a single site collection (https://<mycompany>.sharepoint.com/) - I've checked this via SharePoint Admin Centre and SiteManager. All sites setup to previously appear to be 'old-style' team sites with 10 or so directly under the root (https://<mycompany>.sharepoint.com/<site name>/). There are then various levels of sub-site beneath these 10. When I go to the Office 365 home page (https://www.office.com/), click the SharePoint tile and then the '+ Create Site' button it unexpectedly appears to create a new Site Collection under https://<mycompany>.sharepoint.com/sites/<site name>/. If I go to the SharePoint Admin Centre and create a new site collection, it creates it under https://<mycompany>.sharepoint.com/sites/<site name>/. So, my questions are: When I go to O365 > SharePoint > '+ Create Site', is it creating a SharePoint Site Collection, just a Site or something else entirely (e.g. Site Collection with all the other new Groups functionality thrown in). If I'd like to create 3 'buckets' into which all new and existing content could be put, what should I be using (Site collections, Sites, Groups, something else ...)? The buckets I'd like are: Operations (for internal employee use only; with 3 subsites (e.g. Finance; HR; Marketing). Associates (for use by employees or external consultants who have been provided with an Office 365 account by my company; with no subsites). Projects (for sharing project documentation with external clients; with a separate site / subsite for each project). If I'd like to restructure all the existing sites (which are currently in a single site collection) so that they are in the 3 'buckets' above how do I best go about this? When I'm creating new 'sites', what should I be using?: Create Site option on SharePoint homepage. New > Site in SiteManager. Something else. I appreciate that this is a lot of questions, but I've done a lot of reading, watching videos and viewing webinars and I'm at a loss! Thanks in advance for any help you can provide! Oz
