In Central Administration, on the top link bar, click Application Management.

On the Application Management page, in the SharePoint Site Management section, click Create site collection.

On the Create Site Collection page, in the Web Application section, if the Web application in which you want to create the site collection is not selected, on the Web Application menu, click Change Web Application.

On the Select Web Application page, click the Web application in which you want to create the site collection.

In the Title and Description section, type the title and description for the site collection.

In the Web Site Address section, under URL, select either the root directory ("/") or an included path (for example, "/sites/") to use for your URL.

If you select a wildcard included path such as /sites/, type the site name to use in your site's URL.

Note:
The paths available for the URL option are taken from the list of managed paths that have been defined as wildcard inclusions. For more information about managed paths, see the topic Define managed paths (Office SharePoint Server Central Administration Help).

In the Template Selection section, in the Select a template list, on the Collaboration tab, click Blank Site.

In the Primary Site Collection Administrator section, specify the user name for the user who will be the site collection administrator.

You can type the user name in the User name box or use the Browse button to search for a user.

If you want to designate a user as the secondary administrator of the new top-level Web site (recommended), in the Secondary Site Collection Administrator section, specify the user name for the secondary administrator of the site collection.

If you want to use a quota to limit resource use for site collections, in the Quota Template section, select a template in the Select a quota template list.

Click OK.

For information about how to perform this procedure using the Stsadm command-line tool, see Createsite: Stsadm operation (Office SharePoint Server) and Addpath: Stsadm operation (Office SharePoint Server).