Create a Site Collection in a new Content Database with PowerShell

Creating a SharePoint site collection has always been a pain. Especially if you do it properly so that there is only 1 site collection per content db. In the past, we always used stsadm but with the improvements in PowerShell, it can be done without much user intervention.

My goal was to create a PowerShell application that would only prompt for the bare requirements to build a new site collection. The long term goal is to add an interface so that site managers (essentially power users) can manage all this themselves. Personally, I think this would make a great SharePoint 2013 app which could be easily accomplished with NAPA.

What we did was create a site collection baseline. This is just a site that we will base all our site collections on. It has all the custom templates, list/libraries, branding, and so forth. That being said, let’s step through the code!

The first step is to gather the required information for the new site collection, create a new content db, and create the site collection. We are not adding a template because we will be importing the baseline site collection for that.

$ErrorActionPreference = “Continue”;

#Get input from user
$name = Read-Host “Enter New Site Collection Name”; #Prompts for Site Title (you can change this later)
$site = Read-Host “Enter New Site Collection URL”; #Prompts for your new site collection URL (https://url.webapp.com/sites/newsitecoll for example)
$dbname = Read-Host “Enter Content Database Name”;

#Default values, change to your values
$owner1 = “domain\owner1”;
$owner2 = “domain\owner1”;
$server = “MY_CONTENT_DB_ALIAS”; #This is the alias you setup to your database server. You did do that, right?
$webapp = “https://url.webapp.com”; #This is the root URL to your web app

#Create content db
Write-Host “Creating Content DB”
New-SPContentDatabase -Name $dbname -DatabaseServer $server -WebApplication $webapp
Write-Host “Content DB Created Sucessfully”

#Create the site collection
Write-Host “Creating Site Collection $site”
New-SPSite -URL $site -OwnerAlias $owner1 -SecondaryOwnerAlias $owner2 -ContentDatabase $dbname
Write-Host “Site Collection $site Created Sucessfully”

#Set the content db so it will only contain 1 site collection
Get-SPContentDatabase -Site $site | Set-SPContentDatabase -MaxSiteCount 1 -WarningSiteCount 0
Write-Host “Set Content DB to only contain 1 Site Collection”

At this point we have a new site collection so we are going to export the baseline site collection and import it into the new site collection. I do a fresh export every time in case the users have made changes.

#Export baseline site collection
Write-Host “Exporting New Baseline Site Collection”
export-spweb -identity https://url.webapp.com/sites/extranetbaseline -path d:\backup\baseline\baseline.cmp -force -includeusersecurity
Write-Host “Exported Baseline Site Collection Sucessfully”

#Import the baseline site to the new site collection
Write-Host “Importing Baseline into new Site Collection”
Import-SPWeb -Identity $site -Path d:\backup\baseline\baseline.cmp -includeusersecurity -force
Write-Host “Baseline Imported Sucessfully”

At this point we have a new site collection that is identical to the baseline site collection. My customer wanted to delete some of the default security groups. So the code below will do just that. You can either not use this or change it as needed.

#Delete the unwanted default groups
Write-Host “Deleting Site Groups”
$web = get-SPWeb $site

$objSiteGroup = $web.SiteGroups[“Designers”]
$web.SiteGroups.Remove(“Designers”)
Write-Host “Designers Deleted”

$objSiteGroup = $web.SiteGroups[“Hierarchy Managers”]
$web.SiteGroups.Remove(“Hierarchy Managers”)
Write-Host “Hierarchy Managers Deleted”

$objSiteGroup = $web.SiteGroups[“Approvers”]
$web.SiteGroups.Remove(“Approvers”)
Write-Host “Approvers Deleted”

$objSiteGroup = $web.SiteGroups[“Style Resource Readers”]
$web.SiteGroups.Remove(“Style Resource Readers”)
Write-Host “Style Resource Readers Deleted”

Now comes the fun part. They also wanted to add their group to site collection administrators. As simple as that sounds, the SharePoint team didn’t plan for that. On top of this, we are using claims based authentication which has no groups. Otherwise, I would just put in the AD group and be done with it. Below is a the more long winded approach.

#Add additional users as site collection administrators
$sp_web = Get-SPWeb $site

#Add first user
$Account=”domain\user1″
$Email = “user1@domain.com”
$sp_web.AllUsers.Add($Account, $Email, “”, “”)
$user = Get-SPUSER -identity $Account -web $site
$user.IsSiteAdmin=1
$user.Update()

#Add second user
$Account=”domain\user2″
$Email = “user2@domain.com”
$sp_web.AllUsers.Add($Account, $Email, “”, “”)
$user = Get-SPUSER -identity $Account -web $site
$user.IsSiteAdmin=1
$user.Update()

Write-Host ” “
Write-Host “Site Collection at” $site “has been created in the” $dbname “content database” -ForegroundColor Yellow

That wraps it up. If you need to add anything to this script, just leave me a comment. Next time you see this, it will be 2013 App!

Here’s the whole script for you to copy and paste. Just save it as a .ps1 file and run it as a farm account:

$ErrorActionPreference = “Continue”;
#Get input from user
$name = Read-Host “Enter New Site Collection Name”;
$site = Read-Host “Enter New Site Collection URL”;
$dbname = Read-Host “Enter Content Database Name”;

#Default values
$owner1 = “domain\owner1”;
$owner2 = “domain\owner2”;
$server = “MY_CONTENT_DB_ALIAS”;
$webapp = “http://my.rootwebapp.com”;

#Create content db
Write-Host “Creating Content DB”
New-SPContentDatabase -Name $dbname -DatabaseServer $server -WebApplication $webapp | out-null
Write-Host “Content DB Created Sucessfully”

#Create the site collection
Write-Host “Creating Site Collection $site”
New-SPSite -URL $site -OwnerAlias $owner1 -SecondaryOwnerAlias $owner2 -ContentDatabase $dbname | out-null
Write-Host “Site Collection $site Created Sucessfully”

#Set the content db so it will only contain 1 site collection
Get-SPContentDatabase -Site $site | Set-SPContentDatabase -MaxSiteCount 1 -WarningSiteCount 0
Write-Host “Set Content DB to only contain 1 Site Collection”

#Export baseline site collection
Write-Host “Exporting New Baseline Site Collection”
export-spweb -identity http://my.rootwebapp.com/sites/baseline -path d:\backup\baseline\baseline.cmp -force -includeusersecurity
Write-Host “Exported Baseline Site Collection Sucessfully”

#Import the baseline site
Write-Host “Importing Baseline into new Site Collection”
Import-SPWeb -Identity $site -Path d:\backup\baseline\baseline.cmp -includeusersecurity -force
Write-Host “Baseline Imported Sucessfully”

#Delete the unwanted default groups
Write-Host “Deleting Site Groups”
$web = get-SPWeb $site

$objSiteGroup = $web.SiteGroups[“Designers”]
$web.SiteGroups.Remove(“Designers”)
Write-Host “Designers Deleted”

$objSiteGroup = $web.SiteGroups[“Hierarchy Managers”]
$web.SiteGroups.Remove(“Hierarchy Managers”)
Write-Host “Hierarchy Managers Deleted”

$objSiteGroup = $web.SiteGroups[“Approvers”]
$web.SiteGroups.Remove(“Approvers”)
Write-Host “Approvers Deleted”

$objSiteGroup = $web.SiteGroups[“Style Resource Readers”]
$web.SiteGroups.Remove(“Style Resource Readers”)
Write-Host “Style Resource Readers Deleted”

#Add additional users as site collection administrators
$sp_web = Get-SPWeb $site

#Add first user
$Account=”domain\user1″
$Email = “user1@domain.com”
$sp_web.AllUsers.Add($Account, $Email, “”, “”)
$user = Get-SPUSER -identity $Account -web $site
$user.IsSiteAdmin=1
$user.Update()

#Add second user
$Account=”domain\user2″
$Email = “user2@domain.com”
$sp_web.AllUsers.Add($Account, $Email, “”, “”)
$user = Get-SPUSER -identity $Account -web $site
$user.IsSiteAdmin=1
$user.Update()

Write-Host ” “
Write-Host “Site Collection at” $site “has been created in the” $dbname “content database” -ForegroundColor Yellow