Completely Delete a Site and URL from a SharePoint Portal

Note to self, you'll need this later...

So one of the issues with SharePoint is the fact that the tasks you need to complete anything are pretty straight forward as long as nothing goes wrong. Case in point: I tried to deploy one of the "Fab 40" templates on a VPC and forgot that I had not previously deployed the application core template on that machine. The solution deployment went fine and the site template was available for creating a new site. Good to go except the site creation failed. Whoops. Look up the GUID of the feature that the error message listed and realized my error. No problem: delete the site (url is important in this case), deploy the application core wsp and start over.

WRONG

After doing my thing, I get an error saying "The web site "/MyURL" address is already in use." How can that be since I deleted the site? Turns out I deleted the site but not the URL leaving the URL an orphan. I don't know if this is absolutely correct and appropriate but these steps were tested by me and they worked.

1. Navigate to the home site
2. Select View All Site Content and find the site in the Sites and Workspaces list
3. Click on the link for the site
4. Click Site Actions --> Site Settings
5. Click Site Administration --> Delete this site
6. Click Delete and confirm

You should have just deleted everything but you need to back check. If you encountered an error in provisioning the site, the above may not work. So go look at the site hierarchy.

1. Navigate to the hom esite
2. Select Site Actions --> Settings Settings --> Modify All Site Settings
3. Under Site Collection Administration, click on Site hierarchy
4. If the URL is not there, you're done, if it is there, click on Manage
5. Under Site Administration, click Delete this site
6. Click Delete and confirm

That should actually kill the site and the URL.

JJ