One of the first things many administrators will notice on a new SharePoint Server 2010 install is the lack of a Site Directory (well, lack of a Collaborative Portal template completely). If you've upgraded from 2007, then your current Site Directory will still work - otherwise, you're out of luck, kind of...

I got to looking around Central Administration:

and I noticed that we still had the Site Directory configuration settings. It looked just like 2007. So, how do we get the Site Directory back?

I first tried just unhiding the site template in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\1033\XML\webtempsps.xml:

Just change the Hidden="True" to Hidden="False"

But when I went to create a new site, it didn't show in the available templates. I also noticed in the xml (what appears to be a new function) VisibilityFeatureDependency= 5F3B0127-2F1D-4cfd-8DD2-85AD1FB00BFC. Hmmm... so what if we activate that feature on the Site Collection where we want to host our Site Directory? Yes - that works! You activate the feature by:

stsadm.exe -o activatefeature -id 5F3B0127-2F1D-4cfd-8DD2-85AD1FB00BFC

    -url http://portal.contoso.msft

By the way, that feature is called PortalLayouts, if you are curious.

Getting there from scratch

Now, the easiest way to get a site directory is by first installing the feature, and second by creating the site. I created a Publishing Portal as the top level site:

Next, activate the feature on the Site Collection

stsadm.exe -o activatefeature -id 5F3B0127-2F1D-4cfd-8DD2-85AD1FB00BFC

    -url http://portal.contoso.msft

Finally, create the sub-site via stsadm.exe (or you could do it from the UI if you unhide the template)

stsadm.exe -o createweb -url http://portal.contoso.msft/sitedirectory -sitetemplate

     spssites#0 -title "Site Directory"

You now have a Site Directory!

Cheers, and I hope this helps.

Thanks to Jim Curry for hacking around a bit with me to solve this.

Ben Curry

SharePoint MVP