It took me a total of three solid days to solve this problem on my
project/sharepoint server. I tried all the solutions found on Google and here
in the technet articles and nothing fixed it for me. I nearly called MS to
get the solution (if they even had it?) but had a breakthrough five minutes
before giving up.
Heres what I had to do:
First look in the Site Provisioning Settings in Project Web Access and see
if you have the "Project Workspace" template listed in the Site Template drop
down menu. If you DO have the Project Workspace template listed then your
problem is not the same as mine and most likely wont be solved by the
solution I offer below (for those with the Project Workspace template listed
in the site template field, keep reading into this technet forum. Your
solution is probably listed). My problem was the Site Template field was
blank. This caused me to get the dreaded "Error creating site. Site does not
seem to exist" error message when trying to manually create the Project
Sharepoint Sites. I was also getting an error message when I clicked the save
button under the Connect to Sharepoint Server screen in PWA that spoke of
missing site templates and check to make sure WSS is extended.blah blah
blah.. The reason my Site Template field under site provisioning settings was
blank is kind of a long story that started out with Windows Server SP1
crashing my server, a very long server restore process involving MS tech
help. etc.etc.. What ended up happening as a result of the entire ordeal was
that I lost my top level site which, come to find out, holds the Project
Workspace template for auto site creation on the Project Workspaces. And by
top level site I mean "
HTTP://servername:port/" (im not talking about the
Sharepoint Central Administration page here) . If you recall the
"
Http://servername:port/" site gets created with the initial install of
Windows Sharepoint Services and mine was missing. In order to recreate this
top level site I set up a test SQL server and a test Sharepoint server. Once
Id installed sharepoint and it created the "content" database with the Top
level site in it (again this gets created automatically during the install of
WSS) I then installed all the WSS Service packs (WSS SP1 and WSS SP2) to the
test sharepoint server. So at this point I had a sharepoint content SQL
database that held only the top level site (aka (root) site). I used SQL
enterprise manager to backup this database and then restored this database to
my production database server. I then went to the Sharepoint Central
Administration URL-->click "configure virtual server settings" --> click on
your sharepoint Virtual server --> under virtual server management click
"Manage Content Databases" -->click "Add a content database" --> click
Specify database server settings radio button --> Add your DB server name-->
and then I typed in the name of the database that I had just restored to my
production server (I named mine SharepointContentDB) --> add the DB Account
Name and DB Account password --> choose an appropriate # of sites before
warning event is generated (I chose 400 for the warning event and 500 for the
max # of sites) -->finally click ok to add the content database. The next
parts really important keep reading... Once youve added the content database
successfully go back into the admin section of PWA (project web access). GO
to the Manage Windows Sharepoint Services page (where you specify the
Sharepoint Central Admin URL) verify everything is correct with the admin URL
and the "Create a Site under this Sharepoint URL" sections and then click the
"Save Changes" Button. EVEN if everything is correct and youve clicked that
button a hundred times before click it again right now. Then go to the "Site
Provisioning Settings" page. (your site template field should have the
Project Workspace template back in it now
And again even if everything is
correct in all the fields such as site template language, site template, Site
owner, and Site owner email address, Click the Save Changes button. Also make
sure "Automatically create a team website..." is also checked. Thats a
preference that you may or may not want, its up to you wether Project server
creates the sites automatically or you create them manually. The good news is
at this point my server was working again. I can now create sites manually or
have it done automatically. Whew.. lotta work, but it does work.
FYI: I have Windows Server SP1 installed, Windows Sharepoint Services SP2,
and Project Server SP1 ( I tried installing Project server sp2 to fix the
problem but it didnt work. Ive since heard there were problems with
ProjectServer SP2 so I didnt reinstall that)
Another thing to note. I now have two sharepoint content databases. They
should both be backed up on a regular schedule. I figured out a way to
automatically backup all the sharepoint sites and move them to the new
SharepointContentDB but thats for another topic.
Good luck with fixing your broken servers. Im only writing this as it seemed
alot of other people had the same issue.
e"REMOVEALLTHISGARBAGEandTheQuotes"(e-mail address removed)
