Reconfigure My Sites to use a new web application in Sharepoint 2010

Question

I want to re-do our use of the My Sites feature to point to a separate web application (instead of the current web app which is Sharepoint - 80).

I'm confused about where to create the My Site Host site collection that uses the Enterprise site template named My Site Host

I've created the new web app as SPSTAFF:8080. There was by default a single managed path for this new web app called /sites (which I may delete later because I'm thinking this web app will be dedicated to personal sites.

I went ahead and added a managed path to this new web app as /mysites with wildcard inclusion.

Should I create the My Site Host site collection at the root of the newly created web app?

http://spstaff:8080

or Should I create this My Site Host site collection at a URL that includes the managed path?

http://spstaff:8080/mysites/

Ultimately, I want to delete all current content under My Sites at the port 80 web app (it was just for "practice") and I want to have all users create their personal sites at a URL that includes the above /mysites/ segment

(e.g. http://spstaff:8080/mysites/someUsername)

Answer 1

You will want to create the site collection at the root to use the URL structure like http://server:port/managedpath/user.

If you created the site collection via the second method you listed, the URLs would look like http://server:port/sitecoll/managedpath/user.