This presentation will give you some insight about SharePoint 2010 site and site collection which will help you to take a decision as I hope

1. SharePoint 2010 Site
Structure Plan
Ahmed Naji
SharePoint Specialist
MCC 2012 Award
MCTS | SharePoint 2010
MCTS | ASP.NET 3.5
MCP | .NET Framework

2. SharePoint 2010 Web Application
• Contain one or more Site Collection
• site collection isolated from each other
• The maximum recommended number of site collections per Web application is 250,000.
• Different quota size for each site collection according to the business needs.
• Site collection can be normal site collection (under domain) or hosted site collection (Sub domain)
Web Application
Site Collection

3. Site Collection Hierarchy
• A site collection is a hierarchical set of sites that can be managed together
• Sites in a site collection have common features, such as shared permissions, galleries for
templates, content types, and Web Parts, and they often share a common navigation
• The default web site called Root web and others called sub site
• Site Collection administrator can control the whole sub sites but not other site-collections
• Sub site itself can contain other sub sites
• Site owner can control his site and sub sites under his site
• The maximum recommended number of sites and sub sites is 250,000 sites.
• All sites in a site collection are stored together in the same SQL database
Root Web
Site Collection
Site
Page

4. Examples
Address Pattern Address Name
{Root Web} http://codereloaded.com
{Root Web/Default page} http://codereloaded.com/pages/home.aspx
{root web/sub site} http://codereloaded.coma/admission
{Root Web/sub site/pages/page name} http://codereloaded.com/admission/pages/inde
x.aspx
{Root Web/sub site /sub site} http://codereloaded.com/dit/network
{Root Web/sub site/Sub site/Sub site} http://codereloaded.com/dit/network/firewall
{Root Web/sub site/Sub Site/Sub Site/page} http://codereloaded.com/dit/network/firewall/
pages/home.aspx
{Root web/sub site/sub site/pages/folder/page http://codereloaded.com/dit/pages/faq/index.as
name} px
{Root Web/Managed Path/site collection} http://codereloaded.com/faculties/admission
{Root Web/Managed Path/site collection/sub http://codereloaded.com/faculties/admission/it
site}
{Subdomain.domain.com} http://sharepoint.codereloaded.com

5. Determine types of sites
• Type of site can be determined based on user requirements
• Type of sites can be
•Application sites
•Internet presence sites
•Publishing sites
•Social sites

6. Determine site collections
• All sites in a site collection are stored together in the same SQL database. This can
potentially affect site and server performance, depending on how your site
collections and sites are structured, and depending on the purpose of the sites.
• Microsoft recommend the following approaches
• Keep extremely active sites in separate site collections with separate Content DB
• Creating too many sites below a top-level site in a site collection might affect
performance and usability. Limit the number of sites of any top-level site to a
maximum of 2,000.
• The following kind of site should be on separate site collection
• Internet sites
• All team sites related to a divisional site or Internet site
• Document Center sites
• Records Center sites

7. Single Site Collection VS Separate Site Collection
Before making the decision to choose one of the Below approaches, you need to study and review your
solution carefully and make sure that it covers the requirements. In addition you need to consider the
operational & administration effort behind each approach.
Separate Site Collections
Pros
• Unique set of users and permissions
• Unique and separated content databases are possible, which allow for multiple large
(200GB+) sites
• Unique set of workflows, site content types, site columns
• Unique quotas
• Upgrade to next version can be done in a phase approach
• Can support dedicated URLs per Team
• Supports multiple quota templates.
Cons
• No out of the box solution to roll up data from site to site
• If using separate content databases, increase farm administration tasks to backup each
database/site.
• Navigation is tougher, no automatic hierarchy or inheritance between site collections
• Solution management and deployment is harder as each site collection needs to be
activated individually
• Each site collection has an isolated administration configuration
• Each site collection must be added separately to Search.
• Additional effort is needed to aggregate SharePoint resources (ex: create a hub to
manage content types).
• Requires additional administration efforts (Backup, Restore … etc.).

8. Single Site Collection VS Separate Site Collection
Single Site Collection
Pros
• Easier data propagation and collaboration, share data and content from site to site.
• Shared permission management across all sites.
• Single content database makes backing up easier.
• True site hierarchy and navigation.
• SharePoint resources can be shared among all subsides (like content types, workflows,
design … etc.)
• Search is easier to configure.
• Easier to administer and operate (ex: single backup & restore)
Cons
• Single content database, could be a size issue down the road.
• Permission management can get chaotic if the amount of users and sub sites are high
• Restoring a content database will mean that the entire site is down
• Potentially longer restore times as the database would be larger.
• Cannot divide quota equally between the sites

9. References
• http://sp365.co.uk/2012/01/initial-topology-planning-
site-collections-vs-subsites/
• http://blogs.technet.com/b/meamcs/archive/2012/09/2
3/divisional-portal-single-vs-multiple-site-
collections.aspx
• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/cc262787%28v=office.14%29.aspx
• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/cc263267%28v=office.14%29.aspx