Creating SPSiteCollection, top level site programmatically

Question

I have been given a task to create an event that dynamically creates new site collections on our sharepoint webApp. Thing is using Central Admin I can create "http://testsite.com/sites/newSite_1" and it is a top level site.

However SharePoint does not seem to allow new top level sites created from code?

 private void createSite(String newUrl, SPSite Sender, SPUser current)
 {
      SPWebApplication webApp = Sender.WebApplication;
      SPSite mysite = webApp.Sites.Add(newUrl, "Title", "Desc", 1033, null, current.LoginName, current.Name, current.Email))

 }

So. CA -> add "http://testsite.com/newSite1" = top level site

But c# ->add "http://testsite.com/newSite2" = sub site

Where do I go wrong?

Answer 1

Normally when you do this, you need to make use of the Managed Paths and create the new site collections under that. In most cases, this is /sites/ but can be changed to whatever suits your needs.

In your example, you would have the root site collection under /newSite1 and then all subsequent site collections would be under /sites/newsite2, /sites/newsite3, and so on.

This approach also makes it very clear where the boundary is for site collections for the purposes of management and administration.