View all site collections (SharePoint Foundation 2010)

Applies to: SharePoint Foundation 2010

A site collection is a group of Web sites that have the same owner and share administration settings, for example, permissions. Site collections are created within a Web application. When you create a site collection, a top-level site is automatically created in the site collection. You can then create one or more subsites below the top-level site. The entire structure of the top-level site and all its subsites is called a site collection.

View the site collections in a Web application

Use the following procedures to view all the site collections in a Web application.

To view all site collections by using Central Administration

1. Verify that you have the following administrative credentials:

   • To view all site collections, you must be a member of the Farm Administrators group on the computer that is running the SharePoint Central Administration Web site.

2. On the Central Administration home page, click Application Management.

3. On the Application Management page, in the Site Collections section, click View all site collections.

   The Site Collection List page lists all the site collections in the Web application.

4. To display more information about a site collection, in the URL column, click the site collection.

   The following information about the site collection appears in a table on the right side of the page.

   Item	Description
   URL	The URL of the site collection.
   Title	The title that was provided when the site collection was created.
   Description	The description that was provided when the site collection was created.
   Primary administrator	The primary administrator for the site collection.
   E-mail address	The e-mail address for the primary administrator.
   Database name	The content database that is used by the site collection.

5. If you want to change the selected Web application, click the Web Application box, and then click Change Web Application. Use the Select Web Application page to select another Web application.

To view all site collections by using Windows PowerShell

1. Verify that you meet the following minimum requirements: See Add-SPShellAdmin.

2. On the Start menu, click All Programs.

3. Click Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products.

4. Click SharePoint 2010 Management Shell.

5. At the Windows PowerShell command prompt, type the following command:

   Get-SPWebApplication "<WebApplicationURL>" | Get-SPSite | Format-Table -Property URL,ContentDatabase
   

   Where <WebApplicationURL> is the URL of the Web application whose site collections you want to view.

For more information, see Get-SPWebApplication and Get-SPSite.