SharePoint 2013 – Create A New Site Collection Using a Custom Template

You’ve just created a new site template and you’re now wondering if you could use the custom site template to create a new site collection using PowerShell.

Follow these steps and you’ll be sweet.

Log into the SharePoint Application server hosting the Central Admin website with the Farm account.

Add new Content DB via Central Admin and give the Setup account used to run SharePoint setup DBOwner rights to the database in SQL Server Management Studio > Security > Logins.

Open PowerShell in Administrator mode

$mainurl = ‘http://coolwriteupsnewsite.root.internal/’

New-SPSite $mainurl –HostHeaderWebApplication ‘http://coolwriteups.root.internal/’ -OwnerAlias ‘coolwriteups\svcSetup’ -Name ‘EPP Prototype’ –Description ‘EPP Prototype Site’ –language 1033 –ContentDatabase WSS_Content_EPPPrototype

Turn on the Publishing, PerformancePoint and PowerPivot features under Site Collection features and Site Features.

Add-SPUserSolution -LiteralPath ‘D:\_Local\Software\EPPPrototype.wsp’ -Site $mainurl   $ErrorActionPreference = “silentlycontinue”

do{Write-Host “.” -NoNewline -ForeGroundColor White;Start-Sleep -Seconds 5;try{    $testsolution = Get-SPUserSolution -Identity EPPPrototype.wsp -Site $mainurl}catch{}}while(!$testsolution);

$ErrorActionPreference = “stop”
Install-SPUserSolution -Identity EPPPrototype.wsp -Site $mainurl

Get the GUID of the custom template

$site= new-Object Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite($mainurl)
$loc= [System.Int32]::Parse(1033)
$templates= $site.GetWebTemplates($loc)
foreach ($child in $templates){write-host $child.Name “” $child.Title}
$site.Dispose()

You should see something like this

{2AE95BB2-A62A-40FF-A852-8560258A08B1}#EPPPrototype EPPPrototype

Apply the template to the newly created site collection

$web = GET-SPWeb $mainurl

$web.ApplyWebTemplate(“{2AE95BB2-A62A-40FF-A852-8560258A08B1}#EPPPrototype”)

That’s all it takes to create a new site collection using a custom template.

Advantages

• Has own database
• Easy to set up with script – 40 mins
• Own security
• Easy to migrate the content database to a new farm
• Performance is good on the server

Disadvantages

• Some links will break but should be able to re-add them.

If you need assistance feel free to post your queries in the comments section below. Thanks for reading.

Credit to one of the authors found here.