Addpath: Stsadm operation (Office SharePoint Server)

The addpath operation specifies where new site collections can be created by using the URL parameter.

You cannot have both an explicit inclusion and a wildcard inclusion using the same path on a Web application.

You may use non-ASCII characters in your inclusion path name.

Note:
In Windows SharePoint Services 2.0, you could only use ASCII characters.

The following table shows example URLs and explains the types of paths.

Path type	Example URL	Path name	Comments
Explicit inclusion	http://server1/site1	/site1	Identifies the Web site at /site1 as a SharePoint site.
Wildcard inclusion	http://server1/sites	/sites	Identifies all sites below the /sites/ path as SharePoint sites.
Top-level Web site explicit inclusion	http://server1	/	Indicates an explicit inclusion for the top-level Web site. Only the top-level Web site is a SharePoint site; any sites below the top-level Web site are not.
Top-level Web site wildcard inclusion	http://server1	/*	Indicates a wildcard inclusion for the top level of the virtual server. Every directory under the specified path is a top-level SharePoint site. Important: Do not use “/*” to indicate wildcard managed sites at the root of the site collection. Using this wildcard prevents a site being created at the root of the Web application. Many SharePoint features rely on having a site collection at the root of the Web application, and if this is missing, these features will not work correctly. For example, Explorer View will not work for a document library.

Web server performance declines linearly with the number of inclusions and exclusions. You can minimize performance impact by using wildcard inclusions rather than many explicit inclusions, and by putting as many excluded applications under the same excluded path as possible.