Custom Site Collection Creation

Site collections are the fundamental building blocks of SharePoint applications. They provide security boundaries and the smallest built-in unit for backup and disaster recovery. Most of the time, the central administration interface is fine for creating site collections. Problems arise when you need to frequently create site collections or allow users to create site collections. More than likely you're going to need a custom solution.

Recently, a client requested just such a custom solution for creating site collections. Not wanting to start from scratch, I found a very good solution from Gary Lapointe here.  The solution consists of two main components an application page, for user input, and a web service to create the site collection. It's really very well done and customizable depending on your needs.