Create a Team Site in SharePoint 2010 with PowerShell including Default Security Groups

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Create a Team Site in SharePoint 2010 with PowerShell including Default Security Groups

Added by Spike Xavier March 4, 2013

Many times when testing, or teaching SharePoint 2010 I need to spin up a quick site collection. Of course the fastest way to do this is through PowerShell using the New-SPSite commandlet and passing in a couple of parameters. Recently at one of the AZSharePoint Pros user group meetings I joked about how amazing this was except that then you had to write a bunch more PowerShell commands to get the default groups created. Luckily for me Lester from Neudesic was there and emailed me a quick PowerShell Code Snippet to save me a ton of time. (Thanks Lester!)

I wanted to do a blog post about it so I can always have the snippet handy (I edited it ever so slightly to fit my needs of course).

First I use my initial method

I run a New-SPSite Commandlet passing in the url to the new site collection, the template, the primary and secondary owner alias.

Check the newly created site collection

As soon as I see the URL pop up in the PowerShell window I open up the browser and voilà, there is my new site collection using the Team Site as the top level site of the site collection.

Check the security groups

I go Site Actions> Site Settings > Site Permissions and take a look at the security settings.

Notice the lack of Owners Members Visitors Groups?

I see the primary and secondary site collection administrators as well as the system account and Viewers (SharePoint Group) but no Owners, Members, and Visitors.

Try again adjusting the script

I adjust the script. I create a new site collection, but this time i put it into a variable $sc everything else is the same. After a few moments I type in $sc and get the URL so I open the browser and go to the newly created site collection.

I check the security on the second Site Collection

Once again it's Site Actions > Site Settings > Site Permissions

Still no Default Groups

I knew this was going to happen because putting the Site Collection into a variable was just setting up the next move.

Run 2 more lines of PowerShell

I switch back to PowerShell and create a new variable $w and using the $sc.RootWeb property, put the top level SPWeb object into it, then I use the method CreateDefaultAssociatedGroups and pass in $w.site.owner and two $null parameters (thanks again Lester!)

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