When creating wildcard inclusion managed paths, I’ve typically used single-level options – like those that are available with the out of the box configuration. ‘/sites/’ and ‘/personal/’ for example. While handy, this method can still be somewhat limiting when trying to organize sites that have more than one way of being categorized. For example, you may want to organize sites by the type of site (projects, proposals, etc) or by an organizational division (State Dept, Dept of Agriculture, Homeland Security). What I hadn’t previously considered, but does work just fine is multi-level options like ‘/departmentname/projects/’.
Now, I’m sure some of you are already doing this, but I hadn’t considered it until playing around with things the other day and tossing some organizational ideas around.
There are of course some caveats to this approach. If you have a lot of departments and a lot of site types, you’re likely not going to use this as you’d end up with a ton of managed paths that need to be… managed. Multiply the number of site types with the number of departments and you’ll get the number of managed paths you’d need to create. This also might not be an approach to use if you’re concerned about regularly occurring re-orgs that would impact the managed paths named after departments.
But there are some scenarios where this would work just fine. Namely with a limited number of first-level and second-level groupings.
It would be REALLY nice if there was a way to attach metadata to sites (and lists for that matter) with out of the box functionality, but alas, we don’t have that this time around. We’ll have to stick with adding information to sites via code customizations when needed by using the property bag.
Now remember, managed paths are only used for the URL management of site paths. They have nothing to do with what types of sites (templates or definitions) can be used within a managed path or how the content databases are organized (a topic in its own). They could, however, be useful when customizations use URL strings to sort and filter lists of sites. (Hmm… I’ll have to see what we can do in CQWPs or SharePoint Designer along those lines..)
Another reminder: Managed paths are created for a single web application. Make sure you have the Depending on your taxonomy and needs, you may need to replicate them across web applications.
Carry on!