What Is a Site?

The structure of SharePoint sites (sometimes referred to as webs) is very different from the structure of typical Internet sites that contain only pages. In SharePoint, a site can house more than just pages. It is a container that holds lists and libraries, and it can have other sites under it.

For example, a corporate portal might have a home site called SharePoint Intranet that contains information that people see when they browse to that site. That portal also might have a subsite called Human Resources that stores forms such as travel requests, expense claims, and other forms. The two sites are linked because the Human Resources site is under the SharePoint Intranet site. The two sites may share some attributes, such
as security (who is allowed to do what in the sites) and navigation (so that visitors to the sites can navigate between the sites), but they have separate contents—for example, different pages, libraries, and lists.

Every SharePoint site is a member of a site collection. As the name implies, a site collection is a collection of sites. Every site collection has a single site as its root site, and other sites can be built under the root site. A site collection has some attributes that are common to all the sites in that collection (for example, some search settings, a Recycle Bin for deleted items).