..and we're back.

• Enabling multiple Site Directories

By default, a Sharepoint installation comes with a Site Directory where WSS sites are listed and found. Each Site Directory holds a custom list called Sites which contains metadata about the site - Owner, Division and Region are among the default properties. We will often wish to add custom fields to the site metadata (which is easy, same as any WSS list), but sometimes we will wish to have differents sets of metadata - internal company sites might have a Department or TargetAudience property, while external sites have a Rating property. Maybe we just want to have logical, visual seperation of the two types of site. Whatever.

Creating a second Site Directory is easy:

•  Enable different Area Templates to be created under the Portal root (by default only Topic areas are created):
  Home Page -> Settings (from the sidebar) -> Page (tab) -> Sub areas can use any template. Now, when we create a sub-area, we can choose the Site Directory template.
• Create a new Site Directory and customize its metadata. This metadata will automatically be crawled and indexed in the Portal_Content index.
• By default, all sites defined in the main Site Directory are crawled and their contents added to the index. To have SPS index sites in our new Site Directory, we'll have to create a Content Source for it:
• Site Settings -> Search Settings -> Other Content Sources -> Add Content Source
• Choose Sharepoint Portal Server Site Directory in the Non_Portal_Content index.
• Write the full URL to your new Site Directory. If you're working on the server itself, make sure to write the real URL and not http://localhost/ in there. Add it to the Site Directory source-group, or create a new one if you prefer.
• Run an update of the Non_Portal_Content index to have sites under the new Directory indexed.

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