Managed Paths: How to change sites to something else

In many of the SharePoint web applications which have more than one site collections you see "sites" in the path.
http://server/sites/sitecollection1
http://server/sites/sitecollection2 etc.

So I was curious that what if someone wants to change it and make it more meaningful like In a School they want to have school name instead of that. That's where Managed Paths comes into Play.

Central Administration --> Application Management --> Define Managed Paths.

You can specify two kind of Paths

Explicit Inclusion

:means that whatever mentioned in here is actually a site collection

WildCard Inclusion

: means that All children of whatever mentioned here are site collections.

By defining managed paths, you can specify which paths in the URL namespace of a Web application are used for site collections. You can specify that one site collection or more than one site collection exists at a specified path. For example, an explicit path of hr indicates that the URL http://server/hr is a site collection, whereas a wildcard path of "sites" indicates that child URLs of http://server/sites/, such as server/sites/team, are site collections.

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.


1.On the top navigation bar, click Application Management.

2.On the Application Management page, in the SharePoint Web Application Management section, click Define managed paths.

3.On the Define Managed Paths page, if you want to define managed paths for a Web application other than the one that is selected, in the Web Application section, click Change Web Application on the Web Application menu.

◦On the Select Web Application page, click the Web application for which you want to define managed paths.

4.In the Included Paths section, to delete a path or paths, select the check boxes for the paths that you want to delete and then click Delete selected paths.

5.In the Add a New Path section, to include a new path within the URL namespace, type the path in the Path box.

6.Click Check URL to check the URL. A Web browser will open to the specified path.

7.In the Type list, click one of the following:

◦Wildcard Inclusion. Select this option to include all paths that are subordinate to the specified path.

◦Explicit Inclusion. Select this option to include the site that is indicated by the specified path. Sites subordinate to the specified path are not included.

8.Click OK.