Moving host header site collections to a different URL

Background:
We have a SharePoint 2010 farm with a single web app. Within this web app, we have over 40 site collections. Unfortunately when they were created, they were all put under their own explicit managed path. So now we have over 40 managed paths
and the recommended number of managed paths is 20. We are planning to create wildcard managed paths and move site collections from
https://servername/sitename to
https://servername/U/sitename to reduce the number of managed paths.
The implications of this are clear for site collections that are not host header site collections. Site collection admins will have to adjust any URLs that refer to items in the site collection. It is less clear for host header site collections.
From the user's point of view, the host header URL itself will not change.
1. Will internal links in the host header site collections need to be adjusted like in regular site collections?
2. Will the e-mail address of e-mail enabled lists and libraries change?
I would be grateful if anybody has an answer to this.
Sheila

If you moved http://sitename.webapplication.domain.com (ie. a host named site collection) to http://webapplication.domain.com/managedPath/sitename then it would obviously have a different URL.
That is not what you were describing in your first post, the terminiology is a little specific and I think you're getting it a bit wrong. A web application (often) has a host header, that will not change moving a site from an explicit path to a wilcard path.
A host named site collection is very different and more complicated
If you are planing on converting
http://webapplication.domain.com/site1
http://webapplication.domain.com/site2
http://webapplication.domain.com/site3
to
http://webapplication.domain.com/sites/site1
http://webapplication.domain.com/sites/site2
http://webapplication.domain.com/sites/site3
Then you are not using Host Named (or host header) Site Collections, those are bog standard managed path site collection addresses.
Now to answer your question: for users to access the sites after the move they must use the /sites/siteX version, if they use an old link then it will not work.
There is a trick in SharePoint that will keep links that exist within the site collection consistent so that some URLs will be maintained. This is called a relative URL and means that URLs that are within the same Site Collection will automatically work
with the new URLs.

Similar Messages

Host Header Site Collection and Web App Setup - Thoughts

I am trying to understand relation between AAM and web app extension .Please share your expert opinion. I have not seen any TechNet article talking about it clearly.
Here it goes: in 2010 it was recommended Not to use AAM with IIS bindings without extending the web application. This was mentioned in several TechNet articles also its a known “Mistake #4” on TechNet articles.
So question is, is that still the same case in 2013?
Most of the times it is recommended to remove web app host header from IIS if you are using this web app for HHSC, otherwise sites will not be accessible. I have find no issues by leaving web app host header and adding more bindings for host header site
collections any thoughts on this ?
Thanks.

Hi,
I found some articles for helping understand Extend web application and
Alternate access mappings.
“If you want to expose the same content in a Web application to different types of users by using additional URLs or authentication methods, you can extend an existing Web application into a new zone. When you extend the Web application into a new zone,
you create a separate Internet Information Services (IIS) Web site to serve the same content, but with a unique URL and authentication type. An extended Web application can use up to five network zones (Default, Intranet, Internet, Custom, and Extranet). For
example, if you want to extend a Web application so that customers can access content from the Internet, you select the Internet zone and choose to allow anonymous access and grant anonymous users read-only permissions. Customers can then access the same Web
application as internal users, but through different URLs and authentication settings..”
After you extend web application, there is a new site created in IIS but the content are the same. We extend it to a new zone for different authentication methods, so that we could support different security between Internet site, Intranet site and Extranet
site.
“Alternate access mappings direct users to the correct URLs during their interaction with SharePoint 2013. Alternate access mappings enable SharePoint 2013 to map web requests to the correct web applications and sites, and they enable SharePoint 2013 to
serve the correct content back to the user.”
AAM is to offer different urls to users to access one site. Sometimes the url of a site is not easy to remember , we could use AAM to create simple url.
Regards,
Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help and unmark them if they provide no help. If you have feedback for TechNet Subscriber Support, contact
[email protected] .
Rebecca Tu
TechNet Community Support

Open list form across host header site collections via Modal Dialog window

Hello, I have a web application that has two host header site collections in it. When a user is on Host Header A, I need to open a list's display form that's located on Host Header B. I'm using the JS function SP.UI.ModalDialog.showModalDialog(options)
to open a dialog window to the host header B list's display form. It loads and shows all the columns, but there are a couple issues.
1) The scroll bar on the dialog window is not active (can't scroll up or down to see all the columns). This is an issue on all browsers (IE 8 &9, Chrome, FF)
2) In IE, the SP ribbon does not display. In Chrome and FF the ribbon does display and the buttons work fine.
There's no errors in the ULS logs, and if I use IE8, there's a JavaScript "Access Denied" error. I've confirmed the user account has permissions on both sites & list.
My first thought had to do with anonymous access being turned on at the web application level (not the site level) and the credentials not being passed to the new site collection. But this isn't the case because in Chrome, the ribbon shows and the
buttons are security trimmed correctly based on the users permissions. So I know the credentials are getting passed through the dialog window. And when I use the "Edit' button on the ribbon in chrome, it opens a new dialog window and everything
works correctly (Scroll bar and ribbon).
Has anybody been able to successfully open a list form across two separate host header site collections?

I ended up getting around the cross site collection in the modal window issue by using a custom ASPX page that works as a redirect using JS.
The link the end user clicks pops open the aspx page in a dialog window. I then pull the URL of the list item I want to open from the URL and have JS open that form in the modal window. The key seems to be to open the redirect aspx page under
the same site collection as the list item you want to view.
Here's the JS that's in the aspx page.
<script type="text/javascript">
// We name the current dialog windown
window.name = "newSiteWindow";
// wait until we know the the JS lib is loaded
ExecuteOrDelayUntilScriptLoaded(loadNewSite, "sp.js");
function loadNewSite() {
//grab the list item URL from the URL of the dialog window using a pre created function
newURL = GetUrlParmByName("listItem");
//append our dlg query to the end so everything displays correctly. If you do not use IsDlg=0, the ribbon does not display and the window will not scroll.
newURL = newURL + "&IsDlg=0";
//use the current window to open the list item we want to go to.
window.open(newURL, "newSiteWindow");
</script>

Load balancing host named site collection

I am jumping into the realm of host named site collection. While the learning experience has been good, still there are some questions unanswered. Please bare patience since my questions are long.
- I have a non host header site on port 80 that has https certificate added to IIS for supporting app store in https mode.
- I tried to created the host name site collection using https in this default port 80 non host header web application and was greeted with error. Then i extended the web app to different zone with port 443 . Then created the host header site collection
with https with web application name for extended 443 one. Creation went in fine.
- I tired to use IPs on now extended IIS site and bind certificates on that one. The site does not load. I do the same again in the default zone iss site, bind ips on that one and site loads. Now question is even though host header site collection was created
using extended web application url , why binding had to be done on default zone IIS site?
- Second test, i changed the authentication mode for extended, no effect on host named site collection but as soon as i changed it in default zone it reflected in host named site collection. I am confused why it needs extended zone url to create the https
site but every change done in default zone is getting reflected on this host named site collection.
Now for load balancing , it works fine with IP? But how to load balance these host named site collection using url. I talked with f5 team and they said i need to send some reply query string from each site. Where do i do that? Or is it even needed?
Accoring to this link : https://devcentral.f5.com/articles/name-based-virtual-hosting-with-ltm
. If the site hosts an application, though, the monitor should request a dynamic page on each webserver which forces a transaction with the application to verify its health and returns a specific phrase upon success.
For application monitoring, the recommended best practice is to create such a script specific to your application, configure the monitor Send string to call that script, and set the Receive string to match that phrase.
Has any one done this before? I tired to search for resource regarding this for iis or sharepoint but was not able to get anything.
Thank you for your patience for reading such a long question.
Adit

first part of question:
Default Web Appliction in port 80: Creating https host named site collection fails.
Extend default web application on port 443 : Https hostnamed site collection created when web application name is passed for extended web application on port 443. This means this site collection is associated with this extended web application correct? But
all the changes made in IIS only reflect if it is made to port 80 web application. Also changing authentication scheme from Central Admin, only changes on default zone reflects on site collection not the one in extended web application? Why if the site
was only created on extended web application paremeter, changes on default are reflecting on it but not from extended.
Second part of question:
Each Hostnamed site collection when load balanced thorough f5 using IP for 3 WFE uses 3 IPs for each. This way we will run out of IPs pretty soon. I want to know if there is way to load balance these sites using Hostname or anyother paramenter through f5
and if any body has done it?
https://devcentral.f5.com/articles/name-based-virtual-hosting-with-ltm link talks about sending reply string
from application but i do not know where to set it up or how to do it? No resources in the net. Just asking if any one else has done it.
Adit

Best Practice for Host Named Site Collections and Web Apps

Looking for advice on setting up the host named site collections. If I am reading many of the technet articles and blogs correctly I should 1) have only 1 top level web app for host named site collections and 2) not have a host header for that web
app. If that's correct I am looking for advice. We have 7 separate domains that we support in our farm. Currently each of those domains is divided into web applications based on the domain, *.contoso, *.trains.com, *.bakers.com, etc.
Is the concept now that all of the host named site collections fall under that one web app? How do we deal with the SSL for each of those separate domains which all have their own certificates?
Thanks in advance for your comments.
NLewis

Yes, for creating host named site collections, first you create a host header less web app and then create host named site collections under that web app. However this is only for the cases where all the host named site collections ends in one domain. So
you can create host named site collections as intranet.contoso.com, my.contoso.com, portal.contoso.com etc as they are all ending in *.contoso.com.
As per your environment, if you have web apps which caters to different domains like *.contoso.com, *.trains.com, *.bakers.com, you need to create separate web apps as they are all ending in different domains. Then you can have a separate wildcard SSL certificate
for each of those web apps.
Hope this helps.
Thanks
Mohit

Crawl issue - warning: "This URL is part of a host header SharePoint deployment and the search application is not configured to crawl individual host header sites. This will be crawled as a part of ....a start address"

Hello all,
I have a multi-tenant environment in SharePoint 2010 server. Different tenants are hosted by one web app.
One content source has been created to crawl the all shared environment. (the only URL added in the content source settings = URL of the
web app)
Crawl everything under the hostname for each start address has been selected when creating this content source.
Now I have created a new tenant hosted by the same web app. For this new tenant I want to have a different crawl schedule. Simple , I just create a new content source and add the host URL of this tenant. With the same settings has the other content source.
After having started a full crawl I get 0 success and 1 warning : “This URL is part of a host header SharePoint deployment and the search application is not configured to crawl
individual host header sites. This will be crawled as a part of the host header Web application if configured as a start address.”
The first content source is well crawling the new tenant freshly created. Could you tell me where I’m wrong?
Thanks in advance
Regards
Baldo

Baldo,
In the configuration that you described you now have 2 content sources set to crawl the same content. If you have a content source with a start address of http://servername/ then it is going to crawl everything past that address. If you are now changing
the crawl schedule based on the individual site collections, you will need to move your start addresses further down the URL.
For Example:
1st Content Source:
http://servername/ as a start address would now become
http://servername/site1
http://servername/site2
2nd Content Source:
http://servername/site3
Also remember that all crawling must happen on the default zone. If you are trying to crawl a zone that the web application has been extended into, that will not work.
ScottC - Microsoft SharePoint Support

Error Accessing Host Named Site Collections In SharePoint Foundation 2013

We have a new SharePoint Foundation 2013 server that has one web application two host named site collections. We get the "This page can't be displayed" message when we try to navigate to either of the site collections. Adding the server's IP to
the host file on the machine we are testing from doesn't help. We can ping the new sites from that machine. The web application does not have a host header.
Web application URL = http://servername
Site collection #1 URL = http://customer.company.com
Site collection #2 URL = http://vendor.company.com

Hi,
I recommend to verify the things below:
Check if site can be accessed with site collection administrator.
Add the SharePoint sites to a trusted zone to see if the issue still occurs.
As this issue can be caused by many reasons, you may check the ULS log for more detailed errors.
For SharePoint 2013, by default, ULS log is at C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\15\LOGS.
Best regards.
Thanks
Victoria Xia
TechNet Community Support

How can I create a host name site collection when I have a 443 web application already created for App model?

Hi all,
I have a 2013 farm set up with the App model
1 web application for path based site collection using host name
1 web application with SSL (no host name)
1 web application for mysite
My business request is that I need to migrate SSL enabled 2007 content to this farm and use host name site collections. I tried to create one more web application for this without any luck (the 443 IIS folder is already used by another web application).
I thought I bind the previous 443 web application with another IP address should be fine. Seems like the IIS site is taken (https://server name:443) so it will not let me create one more. How can I solve this problem so I can create the web application
to host those host name site collections? Any suggestion is greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
Sally

Hi Trevor,
Thanks again for your quick reply. I try the option 2 right after your post. I use my front end server name for public URL (https://WFEName:443) and it fails again. The error message is:
The directory C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\443 is already being used by another IIS Web Site. Choose a different root directory for your new Web application.
After reading more, I saw mix Hosted Name Site collection and Path-based site collection aren't recommended. Unfortunately I already have Path-based site collection created with App model web application
(the web application without host name) in my farm. In my Option 2, that web application without host name is used for App routing. This takes the root folder 443 which will not allow any other web application to use the same name again.
Does that mean we can't create Host Named Site collection in the same farm? Is there any configuration I need to check?
Thanks again.
Sally

Document ID moving across the site collection

Thanks for reading, let me explain my scenario before my question
1. we have huge site collection with full of documents
2. want to enable document id feature to track of documents
3. we want to run the process to archive docs which are older than 6 months into different site collection.
4. after 2 years, we will have 4 archived site collections, documents are spread across the various site collection
Does document id move across the site collections, still users can get old document using initially assigned document id after archive into different site collection?
I read some documentation on document iD that it is targeted for Site Collection level.
S.Venkata Appaji

Hi Appaji,
According to your description, my understanding is that you want to preserve the Document ID when moving the documents across site collections.
Per my knowledge, the document id will be preserved when the document has been moved from one Site Collection to another Site Collection.
During move operations, SharePoint Server 2010 keeps the document ID. During copy operations SharePoint Server 2010 assigns a new document ID. You can control this by setting a Boolean operator on the PersistID column.
More references:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee559302(v=office.14).aspx
http://www.sharepointeurope.com/blog/2013/6/26/sharepoint-moving-a-document-with-a-document-id-to-another-site-collection
Best regards.
Thanks
Victoria Xia
TechNet Community Support

Robots.txt and Host Named Site Collections (SEO)

When attempting to exclude ALL SharePoint Sites from external indexing, when you have multiple web apps and multiple Host Named Site Collections, should I add the robots.txt file to the root of each web app, as well as each hnsc? I assume so, but, thought
I would check with the gurus...
- Rick

I think, one for each site collection as each site collection has different name and treated as web site.
"he location of robots.txt is very important  It must be in the main directory because otherwise user agents (search engines) will not be able to find it.  Search engines look first in the main directory (i.e.http://www.sitename.com/robots.txt)
and if they don’t find it there, they simply assume that this site does not have a robots.txt file"
http://www.slideshare.net/ahmedmadany/block-searchenginesfromindexingyourshare-pointsite
Please remember to mark your question as answered &Vote helpful,if this solves/helps your problem. ****************************************************************************************** Thanks -WS MCITP(SharePoint 2010, 2013) Blog: http://wscheema.com/blog

Help needed on Host Named Site Collection creation --- please help

Hi Friends,
Question 1
Can we create Host Named Site Collection following the pattern below?
We will have three Department head Host Named Site Collections, names –
HRHead.ourdomain.com
MarkettingHead.ourdomain.com
AdminHead.ourdomain.com
Under each of these department head sites, there will be 3 or 4 Host Named Site Collections. The site structure will be like:
HRHead.ourdomain.com
n
HR1.ourdomain.com
n
HR2.ourdomain.com
n
HR3.ourdomain.com
MarkettingHead.ourdomain.com
n
MarkettingProduct1.ourdomain.com
n
MarkettingProduct2.ourdomain.com
AdminHead.ourdomain.com
n
AdminCountry1.ourdomain.com
n
AdminCountry2.ourdomain.com
n
AdminCountry3.ourdomain.com
Question 2
If we want to use common template (like header, footer, company icons) for inner sites (e.g. AdminCountry1.ourdomain.com, AdminCountry2.ourdomain.com, AdminCountry3.ourdomain.com) how to create that template for Host Named Site Collection? If these were
sub sites, we can take help of site templates. But these are Host Named Site Collections, how to use common design for Host Named Site Collection?
Any hint from you will be really helpful. Thanks for your comments.

Yes you should be able to create a site collection using a custom template. Here's a BLOG on how to create a site collection with a custom template in 2010. It should still work the same way.
http://www.toddklindt.com/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=218
Paul Stork SharePoint Server MVP
Principal Architect: Blue Chip Consulting Group
Blog: http://dontpapanic.com/blog
Twitter: Follow @pstork
Please remember to mark your question as "answered" if this solves your problem.

AAM for Host named site collection

I have non-host header web application at port 80:http://wwwserver
It is AAM to https://wwwserver in same zone.
Now when i create host named site collection using http it works fine
New-SPSite http://hostheader.site.com/ -OwnerAlias domain\username -HostHeaderWebApplication http://wwwserver -Template "STS#0"
But when i do
New-SPSite https://hostheader.site.com/ -OwnerAlias domain\username -HostHeaderWebApplication https ://wwwserver -Template "STS#0" i get error Warning: The port specified for the new host header site does not match any known bindings in the specified
web appplication . The new site will not be accessible if the web application is not extended to an IIS web site serving this port.
Now when i try to extend web application on port 443 it says it is already used by sharepoint. I do not want to screw aam since all my app store urls are configured through https://wwwserver. Any way to achieve https in host named site collection?
sachin
sachin

Hi Sachin,
Powershell New-SPSite is specifically looking for a web application that responds to
http://www, not http://www. I don't think AAM applies for web applications, only for the URLs that the web application responds too.
Information on configuring HNSC and SSL in this blog as well:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/russmax/archive/2013/10/31/guide-to-sharepoint-2013-host-name-site-collections.aspx
Regards,
Gavin McKay

Redirect HTTP to HTTPS with Host Name Site Collections

By using Alternate Access Mapping, its possible to redirect HTTP to HTTPS.
as explained in this thread
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/eaab487a-bc94-4f06-981b-c62711764367/redirect-http-to-https-for-sharepoint-2013
However what if I am using Host name site collections? My understanding is that the AAM will not work then... so how can I sure that
http://intranet.contoso.com is automatically redirected to https://intranet.contoso.com ?
val it: unit=()

This is not correct. You can't use URL rewrite with Host Named Site Collections in SharePoint. For URL rewrite to work you need to set bindings on web application which overrides Host Named Site Collection bindings in SharePoint (you have to chose either
web application bindings or let SharePoint handle that).
If you want to use URL Rewrite you need to create new Site in IIS7 which will listen on port 80 and rewrite URLs to port 443. This will create small overhead but you can save on resources by leveraging HNSC and have minimal number of web applications on
the server.
----Edit on 1/16/2014-----
I stand corrected. Above statement is NOT CORRECT. You can indeed perform HTTP to HTTPS URL rewrite with Host Named Site Collections (HNSC) quite elegantly. You do not need any additional web applications. In essence you can
build you whole farm with single web app on IIS (well two, since second one would be used for SharePoint services). Below is the example where I created single URL rewrite rule which handles any new host name provided they use same domain name (i.e. xxxxx.domain.com).
I have 20+ HNSCs in single web application and all of them are using URL rewrite.
<rewrite>
<rules>
<rule name="Redirect to HTTPS" stopProcessing="true">
<match url="(.*)" />
<conditions>
<add input="{SERVER_PORT}" pattern="443" negate="true" />
</conditions>
<action type="Redirect" url="https://{HTTP_HOST}.domain.com/{R:1}" />
</rule>
</rules>
</rewrite>
You need to install URL rewrite plugin and configure binding the following way on your web app in IIS. This will allow rewrite to work and SharePoint will be able to handle hoast header bindings internally.

Content Search Web Part over HTTPS for a Host Named Site Collection

Hello
I have a host named site collection http://media.contoso.com which is a media portal that stores videos and pictures. On my parent site collection http://site.contoso.com homepage I have a Content Search Web Part that displays videos from the media portal.
Both sites work over https.
When I edit the content search web part and enter the URL http://media.contoso.com in the 'Change Query' box, search returns the results as expected but when I enter the URL as
https://media.contoso.com no results are returned.
I have removed the binding in IIS to point to http://media.contoso.com.
I need it to be https so that I don't see "HTTPS security is compromised by http://media.contoso.com" on my site collection homepage.
Any idea why this is happening?
Thanks
Yoshi

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee792873%28v=office.15%29.aspx
In the Search SSL Settings dialog box, do one of the following:
If you do not want the crawler to crawl a site when there is an SSL certificate warning, make sure that the
Ignore SSL certificate name warnings check box is cleared. For security reasons, the check box is cleared by default.
If you want the crawler to crawl a site even if there is an SSL certificate warning, make sure that the
Ignore SSL certificate name warnings check box is selected.
If this helped you resolve your issue, please mark it Answered. You can reach me through http://freeit-support.com/

Migrating a Path Based Site Collection to a Host Named Site Collection where the content database is greater than 135 GB

Hi
I have a 136 GB content database which will not back up via Backup-SPSite ( Microsoft say you cannot backup more than 100GB).
So with out Backup / Restore how can I convert a Path Based Site Collection to a Host Named Site Collection with my 136 GB content database which incidentally uses Remote Blob Storage ?
Thanks
Nigel
Nigel Price NJPEnterprises

I see two options:
Make the Backup-SPSite work despite being over 100GB (that's going to be a supported limit rather than a hard boundary)
Externalise some of the content and then re-insert it after the move.

Moving host header site collections to a different URL

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