During SharePoint development you just need a whole bunch of sites. Creating them just for test purpose using the central administrations seems to be to much hassle. Instead I created a little batch-file to take care of spinning up a new test-site.

Basically you just have to edit the variables at the beginning of the script. Just specify the port, the site name, title and description. The name is used to create the web-application, application pool, the database and the stuff.

When creating the new site-collection for the web-application I did not provide a template; this way I can choose a template at the first call to the newly create site.

@echo off
setlocal
pushd .
    set SPLocation=%CommonProgramW6432%\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12
    set SPAdminTool=%SPLocation%\BIN\stsadm.exe
    set sitePort=6001
    set siteName=SampleSite
    set siteDescription=Demo a SharePoint Web-Application
    set siteTitle=Web-App Demo
echo Creating WebApplication '%siteName%' at port '%sitePort%'
"%SPAdminTool%" -o extendvs -url http://localhost:%sitePort% -owneremail me@acme.local -ownerlogin acme\me -ownername "Acme Big Boss" -databasename WSS_Content_%siteName%_%sitePort% -description "%siteDescription%" -apcreatenew -apidname "WSS_AppPool_%siteName%_%sitePort%" -apidtype NetworkService -donotcreatesite
echo Creating WebSite '%siteTitle%'
"%SPAdminTool%" -o createsite -url http://localhost:%sitePort%/ -owneremail me@acme.local -ownerlogin acme\me -ownername "Acme Big Boss" -lcid 1031 -description "%siteDescription%" -title "%siteTitle%"
popd
endlocal