Creating new My Site hosts for MOSS 2007


If you should happen to recreate your SSP or your MySite host in MOSS 2007, you may find that the wizard that helped you out the first time with properly configuring your MySites host may have flown the coop and you’re left at sea about how to proceed. I know I was.

On trying to create a new My Site (for a user that doesn’t already have one), typical error messages will tell you that Self-Service Site Creation is disabled, or that there was an error in creating your personal site. Both error messages will entreat you to contact your administrator.

Here’s the full scoop on creating a My Site host in MOSS 2007 by hand from the ground up (i.e. at Web application creation on up):

Prepare new web application to take up My Site host duties:

  1. Create a new web application (e.g. http://mossdev1:25000/)
  2. Inspect Managed Paths for the new web application. You should already have:
    1. (root) - Explicit inclusion
    2. sites - Wildcard inclusion
  3. Delete managed paths:
    1. sites - Wildcard inclusion
  4. Create managed paths:
    1. personal - Wildcard inclusion
    2. mysite - Explicit inclusion
  5. End state for managed paths should be:
    1. (root) - Explicit inclusion (thanks to imsaurabh for catching this!)
    2. personal - Wildcard inclusion
    3. mysite - Explicit inclusion
  6. Create a site collection at /mysite/ managed path. This will use a My Site Host template:
    1. Choose correct web application (e.g. http://mossdev1:25000/)
    2. Title: My Site Host (doesn’t matter, really)
    3. URL: http://mossdev1:25000/mysite (no fill-in because path is explicit in managed paths)
    4. Template: Enterprise (tab) -> My Site Host
    5. Specify primary and secondary administrators.
    6. Click OK.
  7. Create a blank site collection at the / managed path to enable self-service site creation:
    1. Choose correct web application (e.g. http://mossdev1:25000/)
    2. Title: Blank site (doesn’t matter, really)
    3. URL: http://mossdev1:25000/ (no fill-in because path is explicit in managed paths)
    4. Template: Collaboration (tab) -> Blank Site
    5. Specify primary and secondary administrators.
    6. Click OK.
  8. Enable Self-Service Management. Choose from Application Management -> Application Security.

Now that you’ve created the host, here’s how to make sure it works properly in the SSP’s My Site Settings:

  1. Navigate to My Site Settings (go to your SSP’s admin pages, it’s the 3rd link in the 1st section).
    1. For form’s sake, inspect the Preferred Search Center entry. This URL should end in /SearchCenter/Pages/.
    2. Set Personal Site Services to http://mossdev1:25000/mysite/. Note that this points to the URL for the explicit inclusion path and My Site Host Template site collection you created above.
    3. Set Personal site Location into just personal. Note that this points to the URL (after SharePoint puts context to it) for the Wildcard inclusion managed path you created above.
    4. Choose the 2nd Site Naming Format: User name (resolve conflicts by using domain_username).
    5. Enable Allow user to choose the language of their personal site.
    6. Disable My Site to support global deployments.
    7. Default Reader Site Group: NT AUTHORITY\authenticated users.

Now try to navigate to your MySite link and you should be golden. Creation should go just fine.

Good luck!


12 responses to “Creating new My Site hosts for MOSS 2007”

  1. Hi Malcolm,

    Thanks for the great how-to. It really helped me a lot. I just wanted to point a typo in Step 5.a, you ask that the end state should be:

    (root) – Wildcard inclusion

    when it should really be

    (root) – Explicit inclusion

  2. Just wanted to let you know that you saved my day and the evening too.

    Accidentally got an illegal character in the creation of SharedServices/MySite, as a result the provisioning never finished and finally I had to delete the MySite web.

    This page got me up running in minutes, thanks.

    Oletho

  3. Thanks a lot for the info, it was quite helpfull and pointed me in the right direction. There is one issue that I’m running into though.

    When I go to create a mysite (by clicking on the link) it gives me the “Please wait… ” and after about 3 minutes, hangs IE7. With FireFox it gives me a time out error. I’m seeing nothing in the application event log that would point me to the problem.

    Any suggestions?
    ~J

  4. I’d look at the SharePoint Trace logs (and make sure you’re logging at least Critical events, and maybe even consider logging events lower priority than that). I’d also look into permissions, and make sure you have all the permissions you need in the DB, especially, for the service accounts you’ve configured. Especially check the service accounts running your SSP, as well as those running your MySites Host web applications.

    Timeout issues can indicate lots of potential troubles – are you seeing timeout issues anywhere else in your farm?

  5. I recreated the Mysite Host and now the SearchCenter within Mysites are messed up. In the center sear , under “SharePoint Sites” there is a link called “Find all documents by *username*”. The Link goes to a test page’s SearchCenter that now longer exists. Newly created personal Mysites all get this incorrect link. How/where is this stored and how can I correct it?

  6. David, Apologies, but I don’t really know how to fix that part of the recreated MySites. In my current job, our primary work is supporting SharePoint 2003, but our migration to 2007 is coming soon, so perhaps then I’ll be able to help out. Otherwise, I can only suggest searching other SharePoint resources, including, of course, the newsgroups hosted by Microsoft. Good luck!

  7. Dear Malcolm,

    I followed the process above exactly to the letter. And yet, the My Site creation failed and in the event viewer, I saw this error message:

    My Site creation failure for user ‘SHAREPOINTPLUS\Administrator’ for site url ‘http://www.sharepointplus.co.uk:14000/personal/administrator’. The exception was: Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.PersonalSiteCreateException: A failure was encountered while attempting to create the site. —> System.ArgumentException: Value does not fall within the expected range.
    at Microsoft.SharePoint.Library.SPRequestInternalClass.SscCreateSite(Guid gApplicationId, String bstrUrl, String bstrServerRelativeUrl, Int32 lZone, Guid gSiteId, Guid gDatabaseId, String bstrDatabaseServer, String bstrDatabaseName, String bstrDatabaseUsername, String bstrDatabasePassword, String bstrTitle, String bstrDescription, UInt32 nLCID, String bstrWebTemplate, String bstrOwnerLogin, String bstrOwnerName, String bstrOwnerEmail, String bstrSecondaryContactLogin, String bstrSecondaryContactName, String bstrSecondaryContactEmail, Boolean bADAccountMode)
    at Microsoft.SharePoint.Library.SPRequest.SscCreateSite(Guid gApplicationId, String bstrUrl, String bstrServerRelativeUrl, Int32 lZone, Guid gSiteId, Guid gDatabaseId, String bstrDatabaseServer, String bstrDatabaseName, String bstrDatabaseUsername, String bstrDatabasePassword, String bstrTitle, String bstrDescription, UInt32 nLCID, String bstrWebTemplate, String bstrOwnerLogin, String bstrOwnerName, String bstrOwnerEmail, String bstrSecondaryContactLogin, String bstrSecondaryContactName, String bstrSecondaryContactEmail, Boolean bADAccountMode)
    at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPSiteCollection.Add(SPContentDatabase database, String siteUrl, String title, String description, UInt32 nLCID, String webTemplate, String ownerLogin, String ownerName, String ownerEmail, String secondaryContactLogin, String secondaryContactName, String secondaryContactEmail, String quotaTemplate, String sscRootWebUrl, Boolean useHostHeaderAsSiteName)
    at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSite.SelfServiceCreateSite(String siteUrl, String title, String description, UInt32 nLCID, String webTemplate, String ownerLogin, String ownerName, String ownerEmail, String contactLogin, String contactName, String contactEmail, String quotaTemplate)
    at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfile.c__DisplayClass2.b__0()
    — End of inner exception stack trace —
    at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfile.c__DisplayClass2.b__0()
    at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSecurity.CodeToRunElevatedWrapper(Object state)
    at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSecurity.c__DisplayClass4.b__2()
    at Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.SecurityContext.RunAsProcess(CodeToRunElevated secureCode)
    at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(WaitCallback secureCode, Object param)
    at Microsoft.SharePoint.SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(CodeToRunElevated secureCode)
    at Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles.UserProfile.CreateSite(String strRequestUrl, Boolean bCollision, Int32 lcid).

    Help in this matter would be greatly, greatly appreciated.

    Regards,
    Justin

  8. Justin,

    I’ve had random failures in MySite creations before, and have generally been okay deleting the site from the profiles dB and recreating the site.

    Failing that, I would double- or triple-check the permissions, including the Policy for the My Sites Web Application.

    Also, using Google on the phrase:
    sharepoint 2007 “value does not fall within the expected range” brings up this page as one of the first hits.

    Apparently a lot of folks on that thread found it helpful to add the App Pool identity for the Default Web Site to the Farm Administrators group.

    Give that a try too.

    Google may provide other options.

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