How to: Create “My Site” host

When you setup your SharePoint environment you will create an initial web application and site collection. Also, a “My Sites” host will be created automatically. Your best move is to delete that host and create one manually.

Delete My Sites Host

In “Central Administration”, click on “Application Management” and then, under “Site Collections”, click on “Delete Site Collection”. Make sure you select the correct site collection in the drop down on the right hand side (click on the drop down, select “Change Site Collection”, select the appropriate web application in the drop down menu on the next page and then, select the site collection you wish to erase in the list below) click on OK and then, on when it takes you back to the previous screen, just click on “Delete”. That will erase your automatically created My Sites host.

Next, you need to create  new web application to host your My Sites.

Create My Sites Host

In the “Central Administration”, under “Application Management”, click on “Manage web applications”. On the ribbon, click on “New” and create a new web application as you normally would. Give it a sensible name (eg. My Sites) define an appropriate port number and so on. You can host your My Sites on one of your available web applications (like your core SharePoint web application) but it makes sense to create a new web application that will be dedicated to your My Sites.
Now that you have your new web application, go back to “Central Administration” and, under “Application Management” click on “Create site collections”. Select the correct web application in the drop down menu on the right hand side, give it a sensible name and description, leave the URL field empty (or, change to your liking), select the “My Site Host” template in the “Enterprise” section of the available templates, define a site collection administrator and click on OK.

In “Central Administration”, click on “Manage Service Applications” and then select the “User Profile Service Application”. On the new page, under “My Site Settings”, click on “Setup My Sites”. Under “My Site Host location” you need to enter the URL of the web application that you just created earlier. End it with “/” as per the example under the type-in field. In the “Location” field below, enter the name of the subfolder where you wish for each of the separate “My Sites” to be created.

Decide on how you wish to resolve any conflicts (what happens when two people with the same name attempt to create their My Site).

Sort out the rest of the options and click on OK.

Configure self-service site creation

Go back to “Central Administration” and click on the web application that you set up earlier for use with your “My Sites”. On the ribbon, click on “Managed Paths”. On the new window, in the type-in field that reads “Path”, enter the full URL of the site collection, followed by the same text that you entered in the “Location” field of your “My Site” site collection earlier. Make sure you got that right by clicking on “Check URL”. Also, make sure that you define the type of the new path as “Wildcard Inclusion”.

note: “wildcard inclusion” should be used with ALL self-service site creation. It allows SharePoint to automatically manage the URL you define and any subfolder that resides under it (since My Sites will be created under the specified URL, it makes sense to allow SharePoint to automatically manage them). “wildcard exclusion” would restrict SharePoint to only manage the specified URL. Nothing under it.

That’s it. You’ve now created the web application and site collection that will host your separate “My Sites”. Navigate to the URL you defined as the host of your “My Sites” and you will be presented with the generic “My Sites” site collection. In order to create your private “My Site”, you will have to click on “My Content” which is the third link on the top link bar. You will notice SharePoint building your “My Site” and then you will be logged into it.