How to create site collection with blank site template in SharePoint Online

Question

Is there any way to create a site collection in SharePoint Online using the blank site template, STS#1 via PowerShell?

I have attempted to do so already using the New-PnPTenantSite cmdlet and providing STS#1 as the Template parameter but it returns an error message saying the web template is not available.

Is there any workaround to allow me to create a blank site collection?

What I'm ultimately trying to achieve is creating a new classic site collection and applying a web template to it which I have in a WSP file. The steps I was hoping could achieve this were:

1. Create a blank site collection
2. Upload, install and activate the web template WSP to the site collection
3. Apply the web template to the root web of the site collection

Answer 1

That's correct, the STS#1, or Blank site template, is not available in SharePoint Online, but that's not what you want anyway. You can't apply a template to a site that already has a template.

What you want to do is use the "select template later" option. In the UI, click the "Custom" tab and "Select Template Later".

Then once the site is created you can upload your WSP.

If you need to do this programmatically you can call New-PnPTenantSite with no Template parameter. This will acheive the same thing.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/sharepoint-pnp/new-pnptenantsite?view=sharepoint-ps

Answer 2

To achieve the above requirement from PowerShell way use below.

Note: we need to explicitly mention the -template switch with no value i.e., "" (blank double quotes)

$conn = Connect-PnPOnline -Url "https://test-admin.sharepoint.com" -Credential (Get-credential)
New-PnPTenantSite -Title test -Url /sites/testhello1 -Owner "[email protected]" -TimeZone 4 -Template "" -Connection $conn