Host Named Site Collections SharePoint

What is Host Named Site collections?

Host-named site collections are the best option if you want to create multiple root-level site collections within a web application. (Or Unique URL for each site collection)

* SharePoint supports both path-based & host-named site collections.
* The primary difference:

 All path-based site collections in a Web application share the same host name (DNS name), where as each host-named site collection in a Web application is assigned with a unique DNS name.

In other words:

Host-named site collections allow you to create many root-level host-named sites within a single Web application.
With path-based sites, you are limited to a single root-level site collection within a Web application

What are the advantage/dis-advantages:

Path-Named:

* These sites can be accessed from any zone that you configure.

* Alternate access mappings feature, which provides support for SSL, works with all path-based sites. * you are limited to a single root-level site collection within a Web application, But the managed paths option allows you to create top-level sites beneath the initial root-level site collection.

Host-Named:

They give you more control over URLs.
* Host-named site collections are only available through the default zone.
* The alternate access mappings feature does not work.
* You can't use both HTTP and HTTPS together.
* You can create up to 100,000 host-named site collections within a single IIS Web site

How to Create Host-Named site collection?

Well, Create a web application with out Host header(You can create using SharePoint Central Administration or with PowerShell New-SPWebApplication cmd-let) , and execute the PowerShell command, Of course, Host-named site collections can be only created by using the Windows PowerShell only:

New-SPSite http://<URL-For-Site-Collection> -OwnerAlias Domain\username -HostHeaderWebApplication <Web-App-URL>

This creates a host-named site collection with the URL <URL-For-Site-Collection> in the SharePoint 2010 Web Application with the URL <Web-App-URL>.


To Change URL of the Host Named site collections, use: Stsadm -o RenameSite. E.g.

stsadm -o renamesite -oldurl "http://intranet.crescent.com/" -newurl "http://portal.crescent.com"
Don't forget to update IIS!

Add IIS Binding:

Don't forget to add IIS bindings! Otherwise, your host named site collections will not be accessible.

* Go to IIS, Pick the Web Applications which hosts the Host Named Site collection.

* Click on Bindings,  Add the Host header URLs of Host Named site collections.

Its also possible to add site bindings from PowerShell. Here is the script:
  
Import-Module WebAdministration
New-WebBinding -Name "<Web Site Name in IIS>" -Port 80 -Protocol http -HostHeader "prod.crescent.com"

Plan for host-named site collections