SharePoint Content Deployment Step by Step

Step 1: Create a source site collection

First you will need a site to serve as the source for the content deployment job. So let’s create the source site collection first.

1. On the SharePoint Central Administration Web site, in the Application Management section, click Create site collections.

Step 2: Create a new Web application 

As I have explained in my previous post that you cannot copy your source site into a destination site, which resides in the same content database as source, you must first either create a new Web application to hold the destination site or create a new content database in the current web application. To create a new web application see the steps below.

1. On the Central Administration Web site, in the Application Management section, click Manage web applications.
2. On the Web Applications Management page, click New.
3. In the IIS Web Site section, in the Port box, type 8888.
4. In the Application Pool section, in the Application pool name box, type Destination Site.
5. Accept all other default values, and click OK. The Application Created window appears.
6. In the Application Created window, click OK.

Step 3: Create a destination site collection

The next step is to create an empty site collection to hold the deployed site. Remember, you must not specify a template for the site collection. If a template is used to create the site collection, the content deployment job will fail. You can create the destination site collection by using the Select template later option when you create an empty site in the Central Administration Web site. Or, you can create the destination site collection by using the Power-Shell cmdlet to create an empty site without specifying a template.

Step 4: Enable incoming content deployment jobs

By default all incoming deployment jobs are rejected by the destination server. Before you can create a content deployment path, you must enable incoming jobs on the destination server. In this walk through, the source and destination servers are the same.

1. On the Central Administration Web site, click General Application Settings.
2. On the General Application Settings page, in the Content Deployment section, click Configure content deployment.
3. On the Content Deployment Settings page, select Accept incoming content deployment jobs.
4. Click OK.

Step 5: Create content deployment path

The next step is to create the content deployment path which will enable you to select the source site collection and the destination site collection.
To Create one follow the below steps:

1. On the Central Administration Web site, in the General Application Settings section, click Configure content deployment paths and jobs.
2. On the Manage Content Deployment Paths and Jobs page, click New Path.
3. On the Create Content Deployment Path page, enter the url’s for Source and destination site collection and also the Authentication Information.
Note: you might also need to provide Central Administration Web Application url for the Destination server. In our case since we are copying the content to the same server, but different web application, we can provide the central administration path that we locally use on our server.

Step 6: Create a content deployment job

Now that you have created a content deployment path along which to deploy content, you can create a job to do the actual deployment. The job will contain the schedule along with other settings.
1. On the Manage Content Deployment Paths and Jobs page, click New Job.
2. On the Create Content Deployment Job page, specify the Name and Description of the deployment job and the Path.

Step 7: Deploy the source site

Next, you will deploy the source site so that the source and destination sites will be in sync.
1. On the Manage Content Deployment Paths and Jobs page, on the Deployment Job menu, click Run Now.
2. Refresh the page until the job Status is Completed.
3. Browse to "http:///sites/target", where is the name of your server, to view the destination site. Notice that the title of the site is the same as the source site, and even though you initially applied the empty site template, there is now content in the site.

Regards,
Keyur Pandya