Learn SharePoint Series - Part Three - Site Collections

Introduction

This article is the third part of the SharePoint series.

1. Learn SharePoint In Series-Part One-Introduction.
2. Learn SharePoint In Series-Part Two-Web Application

In the previous articles, I have described basic level information about SharePoint Introduction and SharePoint Web Application in the context of SharePoint Online and SharePoint On-Premises. So, in this article, I am moving one more step ahead. I will be talking about SharePoint Site Collection in terms of SharePoint Online and SharePoint On-Premises.

In this article, I am going to cover the following topics:

• Introduction to Site Collection
• Site Collection In SharePoint On-Premises
• Creating Site Collection in SharePoint On-premises
• Site Collection in SharePoint Online
• Creating Site Collection in SharePoint Online
• Summary

Introduction to Site Collection

As SharePoint Web Application is an entry point to SharePoint, a Site Collection is the entry point to Web Applications. Whenever we create a SharePoint Web Application and try to open the URL of the Web Application then we might get an error. In order to access the SharePoint Web Application, you need to create a Site Collection.

Site Collection is a top-level site that will define the structure of the site. It will contain major settings that will be inherited by each and every site within the site collection. Site Collection can also be thought of as containers or collections of multiple sites. Some of the important settings will be residing in the Site Collection level, such as List template management, Display template settings, etc.

To understand the Site Collection, let us compare SharePoint with a Windows Explorer system. Where your Operating system is like SharePoint Farm, your every drive is a Web Application and the top level folder in Drive is a Site Collection. So, whatever permission is set to your SharePoint Web Application, the Site Collection will inherit it. The object inside the site collection will inherit the permission of the Site Collection.

Site Collection In SharePoint On-Premises

If we are creating a Site Collection in SharePoint On-Premises then we have control over which content database will be maintained. We can store one Site Collection in only one database. We cannot assign multiple content databases to a single site collection. although we can create multiple Site Collections to single Content Databases. Limits and boundaries related to SharePoint On-Premises Site Collections are given here https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/install/software-boundaries-and-limits#site-collection-limits.

Creating Site Collection in SharePoint On-premises

Step 1. Open Central Administration and click on Create Site Collections under the Site Collection menu.

Step 2. Enter the Title, Description URL, and template for the Site collection. Template refers to the type of site collection. For more information on a template of site collection please refer to this link. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/sites/sites-and-site-collections-overview