When I first installed and started playing with SharePoint 2010 one of the first “huh” moments was the mystical dissapearance of the Collaboration Portal template. I later learnt (via blogs and @ the Boot Camp) that the template was in fact not missing, but simply hidden from the interface.
Why was this completed? Who was responsible? Well, too be honest, I can think of no logical explanation as to why Microsoft would want to move away from this portal template as it really just worked. In any event, here we are, SharePoint 2010 portals flying up everywhere with the Team Site as the basis. Do I have a fundamental issue with the new template? Nope, but it still didn’t cure my sadness (sheds a small tear).
Microsoft have done a great deal of work when it comes to the upgrading of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to SharePoint 2010. I’m not going to go into too much detail, but part of this work was making the older templates available via code to ensure that upgrading / migration is a lot more seamless.
To use these templates all you need to know is their site definition name & number. A found a fantastic blog which lists all of them, you can view them here – http://www.toddbaginski.com/blog/archive/2009/11/20/which-sharepoint-2010-site-template-is-right-for-me.aspx. Thanks Todd.
Okay, enough of my random ramblings, let’s get down to what brought you to this post. Let’s create the site using the Collaboration Portal site template. It’s quite simple, simply open PowerShell and execute the following command (obviously adding your own paramenters where applicable):
New-SPSite -Url http://intranet/sites/collabportal -OwnerAlias contoso\administrator -Name “My Intranet” -Template SPSPORTAL#0
After a couple of seconds the operation will complete with the following result:
Tagged: PowerShell
