There are situations when we want to create empty site collection, like when your content deployment job is failing due to conflicting content. In these cases STSADM.EXE comes handy.
STSADM.EXE is the only means to create a completely empty site collection.
Syntax
STSADM.EXE -o createsite -url <url-to-site-collection> -ownerlogin domain\user -owneremail <email-address>
Example
STSADM.EXE -o createsite -url http://servername:9009/sites/EmptySiteCollectionName -ownerlogin mydomain\praveen -owneremail abc@xyz.com
Remember, using the “Blank Site” template does NOT creates an completely empty site collection. The site collection created by “Blank Site” template create some content for default website.
You can see the difference if you create a site collection using both methods and then inspect the content of the created sites using SharePoint designer.
Thanks for this information. It solved a problem I’ve been trying to sort out for a couple of days!
This is helpful for freelance contractor like me. It makes my job easier with a “Blank Template”.