How to best duplicate a site?

Question

I'd like to confirm the "best practices" of what I am trying to achieve.

Currently, I have 1 SP 2010 application with 1 site that has users, (grouped appropriately) that have different permissions for each page and although the users in each group each have a different "use" of the site, they are very much related to one another in workflows. The site contains pages, lists, documents, workflows, and some 3rd party webparts. Let's call this Area A.

Now, I'd like to duplicate Area A, for Area B, Area C, and Area D. Although none of the content, users, or data will be utilized or carried between A and B (or C or D), the same exact framework (grouping, lists, pages, etc.) will be the same.

There will be absolutely no interaction between A, B, C, & D. For all A users would know, they would be the only site and users in my web application (they would not be aware of B, C, D or any other "Area")

Now, Should I create different site collections (4) for A, B, C, & D (thus 4 sites)? Should this be under 1 web application? Can the 3rd party webpart be used in all the site collections? Or should it be 1 collection, w/ 4 sites? Each area would not be larger than 100 MB.

I'm sorta leaning towards the 4 site collections, but not sure if that would create any unecessary overhead/issues. Also, would they all be under the same content db?

It would be great to have http://www.mysolution.com/AreaA ......http://www.mysolution.com/AreaB (etc.)

Also, on a different note, should I strip down Area A and save it as a template or do an export/import? (or even a backup/restore) Is there any fundamental differences/best way to achieve my goal between these?

Thank You

Answer 1

A site collection per area would be the most logical way to go in my opinion. Separate site collections give you the user/permissions/content isolation level you seem to be looking for.

Since you want to have all four sites under the same host domain, you will need them to be all hosted within the same web application, and by default will all live in the same content db (however you can separate them into their own db if you really wanted to)

In order to have each site with a first level path (ie /AreaA, /AreaB) you will need to set up an explicit managed path within central admin for each area, before creating the sites.

I would say saving the site as a template is probably the way to go. You'll need to register the template in Cnetral Admin using stsadm -o addtemplate though in order to be able to create site collections from it. Backup/restore in this case probably won't work because you'll likely get errors about duplicate guids, since when restoring to a new url the original site will still exist.

As for the third party web part, I doubt there's any technical reason for not being able to use it on multiple site collections. You might need to check for any licensing issues however.

Hope that helps