Microsoft Sharepoint is a collaboration and document administration platform based on the browser. It is owned by Microsoft. Many companies use this platform for creating websites, mostly for business websites.

Sharepoint is also a very reliable place to accumulate, organize, share, and retrieve data from any device. The only thing you need to have is a web browser like Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, or Opera Browser.

There are many tools and products that come under Sharepoint like Sharepoint Online, Sharepoint Server, Sharepoint Designer 2013, Sharepoint Foundation, and OneDrive for Business sync.

Benefits of using Microsoft Sharepoint

Here is a list of advantages you can get by using Microsoft SharePoint 2013.

  1. Microsoft Sharepoint is a platform that keeps control of the complete platform in existence. The manager can easily gain retrieval of application management properties, system settings, keep a sharp look on Sharepoint provisions, operate backups and restores data. It also handles privacy and security settings.
  2. Sharepoint gives the teams every unique set of pieces of equipment they actually require to get the work get fully accomplished.
  3. This platform also beneficial in maintaining collaboration. It avails the team members to easy remain informed and stay connected throughout the whole life cycle of the project.
  4. Encouragement of site consolidation is a very important advantage of Sharepoint. It blends all sites under a single site while decreasing the total costs associated with each of the platforms.
  5. Well, we should not forget about the amount of strong protection and integrity it provides the users. It offers security at a board item level as well as the single item level.
  6. Sharepoint, as complicated as it sounds, is very simple and straightforward to use. It will help you in developing a business tool and way-outs you require without the help of a developer.

Knowing a bit More About SharePoint

Sharepoint is a web application that works as a storehouse of one or more site collections. Web applications avail us of the link to the corresponding web site in Internet Information Services (IIS).

Web applications also provide the link to a specific content database in the structured query language (SQL) server for the piling up of site assemblages along with associated content.

Steps to Create a Web Application in Sharepoint 2013

There are a bunch of simple steps to build up a web application in SharePoint 2013. The first thing you need to do is get on to Microsoft Sharepoint 2013 Central Administration site.

The next thing you need to do is navigate to Application Management followed by Manage web applications.

Then what you need to do is click on the “New” button which you will get to see on the ribbon.

Now you need to fill up the details for your brand new web application such as Web and click on “Create” to put together a web application in SharePoint 2013.

Create a web application in Sharepoint 2013 with PowerShell

In this article, I will let you know how to create a brand new web application in SharePoint 2013 using a task framework from Microsoft known as Powershell.

Let us Know First What is PowerShell

PowerShell is a task framework that Microsoft owns and is operated by a piece of largely automatic equipment. It can be rooted within other software applications with a command-line shell and a scripting language commingled into the .NET foundation.

Powershell is something that does the automatic batch processing and turns out tools for system management.

This scripting language is inclusive of more than 130 typical command-line tools for functions. It also enables administrations to operate tasks on local as well as remote Window systems through retrieval to the Component Object Model (COM) along with the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI).

There are a total of four types of commands that Windows PowerShell executes. They are:

  1. PowerShell functions
  2. PowerShell scripts
  3. Cmdlets
  4. E\xecutable programs

Data language, PowerShell remoting, Modules, Scriptcmdlets, Eventing, Background Jobs, and many more new features came up with the latest PowerShell V2.

Example of Creating a Web Application in Sharepoint 2013 using Powershell

The following is a Powershell script to bring web application into existence in SharePoint 2013:

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

#Define Variables for Web Application Creation

$WebAppName = “Crescent Portal”

$HostHeader = “Portal.Crescent.com”

$WebAppURL = “http://”+$HostHeader

$WebAppPort = 80

$ContentDBName = “SP13_Content_Portal”

$AppPoolName = “Portal AppPool”

$AppPoolAccount = “Crescent\SP_Farm”

$AppPooPassword = “<<Password>>”

#Authentication Provider

$AuthProvider = New-SPAuthenticationProvider -UseWindowsIntegratedAuthentication -DisableKerberos

#Create new Managed Account

$SecurePassword = ConvertTo-SecureString -String $AppPooPassword -AsPlainText -Force

$cred = new-object -typeName System.Management.Automation.PsCredential -argumentlist $AppPoolAccount,$SecurePassword

New-SPManagedAccount -Credential $cred

#Create new Web Application

New-SPWebApplication -name $WebAppName -port $WebAppPort -hostheader $HostHeader -URL $WebAppURL -ApplicationPool $AppPoolName -ApplicationPoolAccount (Get-SPManagedAccount $AppPoolAccount) -AuthenticationMethod NTLM -AuthenticationProvider $AuthProvider -DatabaseName $ContentDBName

Creating Web Application using an Existing Managed Account

Now let me show you the use of an account that is already existing and already taken forward. This is how you can create a web application in SharePoint 2013 using this second technique in Powershell.

$AuthProvider = New-SPAuthenticationProvider -UseWindowsIntegratedAuthentication -DisableKerberos

New-SPWebApplication -Name “Crescent Portal” -Port 80 -HostHeader “portal.crescent.com” -DatabaseName “SP16_CrescentPortal_Content” -URL “http://portal.crescent.com” -ApplicationPool “Crescent Portal AppPool” -ApplicationPoolAccount (Get-SPManagedAccount “Crescent\Sp2016_Service”) -AuthenticationProvider $AuthProvider

SSL Enabled web Application

Also, let us have a look at the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Web application. This is also another way to create a web application in SharePoint 2013.

$AuthProvider = New-SPAuthenticationProvider -UseWindowsIntegratedAuthentication -DisableKerberos

New-SPWebApplication -Name “Crescent Internet” -ApplicationPool “Crescent Internet AppPool” -ApplicationPoolAccount (Get-SPManagedAccount “Crescent\SPS2016_AppPool”) -URL “https://crescent.com” -Port 443 -HostHeader “crescent.com” -DatabaseName “SP16_CrescentInternet_Content01” -Path “C:\Crescent_Internet” -SecureSocketsLayer -AuthenticationProvider $AuthProvider

This is how you can create a web application in SharePoint 2013, a brand new one. But hold on. You are not done with the complete procedure yet. When you are going for making a brand new web application in SharePoint, you have to build up the root site collection for the web application.

Developing a Top-level Site Assemblage with Powershell

You will get to see the “HTTP 404” error on your browser screen if you make an effort to browse to the web application by not creating a site collection of very good quality.

This is how you need to bring a high-level site collection into being with the help of Powershell.

#Create Top-Level Site collection in SharePoint 2013

$SiteURL=”http://portal.crescent.com”

$SiteName=”Crescent Portal”

$SiteOwner=”Crescent\SP_Farm”

$SiteTemplate=”STS#0″

#Create new Site collection

New-SPSite –url $SiteURL -Name $SiteName -OwnerAlias $SiteOwner -Template $SiteTemplate

This set of scripts you require to write using Powershell to create a web application in SharePoint 2013. This process is also applicable to creating a new web application in SharePoint 2010 as well as in SharePoint 2016.

Concluding Remark

This is a detailed step by step guide that will help to create a web application in SharePoint with a prominent application of Powershell scripting.

Always remember one thing. The number of web applications and IIS websites should be as low as viable. This is very helpful in getting better performance.

You should not create more than 20 web applications for every SharePoint server farm. You need to use host-named collections of sites for providing multiple paths to your sites.

That was it. I hope you got enough help from this piece. Leave a comment below if you have created a new web application in this manner. Your feedback will help us improve.

Check out our other articles to get to know about other scripting languages or other related headings.