Creating SharePoint site collections using powershell

We come across this scenario very often. We need to create a SharePoint site collection using an existing site template using power shell script.
To find the available templates you can use the below command :

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell
Get-SPWebTemplate | Sort-Object "Title"

Some of the widely used templates are

SRCHCENTERLITE#1     Basic Search Center
BLOG#0                            Blog
BICenterSite#0                   Business Intelligence Center
SRCHCEN#0                     Enterprise Search Center
CMSPUBLISHING#0        Publishing Site
WIKI#0                              Wiki Site


The below script will create a site collection using Enterprise Search Center

try
{

Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell –ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

 

## create the prerequisite

$webApplicationUrl = "http://server"

$siteCollectionUrl = "http://server/sites/SearchCenter"

$siteCollectionName = "Search Center"

$siteCollectionOwner1 = "DOMAIN\user1"

$siteCollectionOwner2 = "DOMAIN\user2"

$siteCollectionTemplate = "SRCHCEN#0"

 ## Check if the site collection exists or not

$SiteCollection = Get-SPSite $siteCollectionUrl -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue if ($SiteCollection -ne $null) { Write-Host "Search center already exists at " $siteCollectionUrl } else { ## Create the site collection New-SPSite -URL $siteCollectionUrl -OwnerAlias $siteCollectionOwner1 -SecondaryOwnerAlias $siteCollectionOwner2 -Name $siteCollectionName -Template $siteCollectionTemplate Write-Host "Search center created successfully" }

}

 

catch { Write-Host -ForegroundColor red "There were some problem in creating the search center" }

You can use any template as per availablilty .