1.3. SharePoint Sites and Databases

SharePoint needs at least two different IIS Web Sites (otherwise known as SharePoint web applications) to function. These web applications contain the web pages that you will access to either administer SharePoint or actually use SharePoint's lists, sites, and libraries.

The Central Administration Web Application

This web application controls the configuration and administration of all servers on the server farm, as well as all web applications. This site is set up on a completely different and unique port than the standard one for HTTP. If you do a server farm installation, you can specify the port or use the one suggested. If you do a Basic or Stand-Alone installation, then the port will be chosen at random for you during installation and configuration. The range is somewhere between 1023 and 32767. The unique port helps obscure this site from anyone surfing the standard ports on the server.

The SharePoint Site

The default name for the first SharePoint web application (that isn't dedicated to Central Administration) is usually SharePoint-80. It will contain the first top-level site for SharePoint, just to get you started (or in a server farm installation, you will have to create if yourself). Web applications were meant to contain site collections, which are literally collections of sites, starting with a top-level site, but can also include additional subsites. Web applications can contain as few as one site collection with one top-level site, or many site collections, each with multiple subsites. Because a web application is essentially a container for your SharePoint sites, when you configure settings at the web application level, they can affect all sites contained therein.