The My Site host is a site collection based on the My Site Host site collection template. Al- though the My Site host doesn’t have to be created in its own web application, in all but the smallest of implementations it should have its own. This way, multiple content databases can be added as needed to accommodate for the growth of the individual site collections, as well as to allow for separate administration.
Creating the My Site host is done in the same way as in SharePoint 2010. Assuming that a web application has been created and that alternate access mapping has been configured, you can create the My Site host by following these steps:
1. On the home page of Central Administration, click Create Site Collections in the Application Management section.
2. Change the web application to the one created for the My Site host in the Web Application section.
3. Type a title in the Title section and a description in the Description field.
4. Leave the Web Site Address alone. It should be at the root of the web application. 5. In the Select Experience Version section, leave 2013 selected.
6. On the Enterprise tab, select My Site Host.
7. Enter a primary and secondary site collection administrator.
8. In the Quota Template section, choose an appropriate quota or create a new one. 9. Click OK.
The My Site host should be created shortly after you click OK.
User photos are stored in the content database of the My Site host like they were in SharePoint 2010. When a user uploads a profile picture, it’s converted into three thumb- nails—small, medium, and large—in three different subfolders in the Profile Pictures folder. (The original isn’t saved.) These thumbnails don’t take up much space—less than 40 or 50 KB per person—so storage concerns should be minimal for photos unless the number of users is extremely high (10,000 users would still be less than 1 GB). However, in SharePoint 2013, attachments can be added to posts. These attachments are stored in the My Site host content database and, depending on how frequently people add attachments and the limit of upload size, the database could grow rather large. The default upload size for a web application is 250 MB. Be careful when adjusting this size because it affects all the site collections (SkyDrive locations) under it.
After a My Site host is created, you need to configure it in Central Administration so that the farm knows about it. You can configure it only after the User Profile service application is started, as discussed later in this objective. After the User Profile service is started and the My Site host is created, you can configure the host as follows:
2. Click Manage Service Applications in the Application Management section.
3. Click the User Profile Service Application link (this might be called something else if it was created with a different name).
4. On the Manage Profile Service page, click the Setup My Sites link in the My Site Settings section.
5. Type the preferred search center location for the My Site host in the Preferred Search Center text box. (If a search center hasn’t been created, this can be left blank until that task is completed.)
6. Choose a scope for finding people in the Search Scope For Finding People drop-down list. (The scope People is created by default when the Search service application is created.)
7. Choose a scope for finding documents in the Search Scope For Finding Documents drop-down list. The scope All Sites should be available.
8. In the My Site Host Location text box, enter the URL of the My Site host.
NOTE SETTING THE MY SITE HOST URL
The value in the My Site Host URL in Active Directory section can’t be set directly. It has to be set on the Exchange Server node with a PowerShell script that contains the location of the My Site host URL. This enables Exchange Auto Discovery.
9. In the Personal Site Location section, enter where personal sites should be located. If the location hasn’t been created yet, a wildcard inclusion managed path needs to be created in the My Site host web application.
10. Choose a Site Naming Format option. If the My Site host has users from only one do- main, leaving the default User Name option is adequate.
11. Select whether users can choose their language in the Language Options section. Op- tions depend on which language packs are installed.
12. The Read Permissions Level section lists who has read permissions to the personal site collections when they are created. Changing this value affects only sites created going forward.
13. Choose the appropriate Security Trimming Option, as shown in Figure 2-5, to deter- mine which links to show in notes, activity feeds, ratings, and social tags based on whether the user has permissions to the linked item. The options include showing all the links, trimming all the links that users don’t have permission to access, or trimming ones only in certain directories.
FIGURE 2-5 Security Trimming Options in My Site Settings
14. Choose whether to enable newsfeed activities in the Newsfeed section. You can also choose whether to include SharePoint 2010 activities.
15. In the Email Notifications section, choose whether users should get My Site-related emails (such as when a person posts on a site). If this setting is enabled, you need to provide a sent-from email address; it doesn’t need to be a real email address but should be one that isn’t blocked or sent to the junk folder.
16. In the My Site Cleanup section, choose whether to have delegation and who the secondary owner is. When a user profile is deleted, the corresponding site collection is deleted after 14 days. The person’s manager and/or secondary owner can access the site to retrieve data before the 14 days are up.
17. In the Privacy Settings section, choose whether to make My Sites public. This deter- mines whether users’ social information—such as whom they follow and their news- feed—is visible to other users.
18. Click OK to save settings.
EXAM TIP
Exchange Auto Discovery enables the SkyDrive option (making it easier for users to save in their site collections) in Office 2013 and mobile devices. The PowerShell script must be run on an Exchange Server node before autodiscovery is enabled.