While setting up a test environment I was attempting to set up many different types of sites for testing various things when I ran into a strange bug in SharePoint.
I was creating a subsite under a blank site template and saw the option for “News Site” so I selected it and got an error saying that the Publishing Feature was not enabled at the site collection level.
Fine. So, I went and activated it and then attempted to create the site again and I got the error:
The Web site address “/mpsite/news” is already in use
Ok, so the site must have been created anyway so I try to visit the URL and get:
The webpage cannot be found
Fine. So, obviously it errored in the middle of the site creation so I’ll just delete it via STSADM. Wrong:
There is no top-level Web site named “http://server/mpsite/news/“.
So, the site is listed in the sites and workspaces list, but doesn’t really exist and can’t actually be deleted.
How do I get rid of it from the Sites and Workspaces listing?
Have you tried http://server/mpsite/news/_layouts/deleteweb.aspx ?
Or maybe the “Content and structure” (http://server/mpsite/_layouts/sitemanager.aspx) link from site actions?