Mastering Windows® SharePoint® Services 3.0

9.1. Central Administration Organization

As you know, SharePoint creates an Administrative web application during installation. All SharePoint administration that applies to the farm as a whole, or web applications and site collections in particular, are configured in this application.

This administrative web application is called Central Administration. When this web application is created, it is assigned a unique port number for security reasons; this helps obscure the site from casual browsers. Central Administration also contains one top-level site in its only site collection.

To access Central Administration, simply open a browser (preferably Internet Explorer 6 or higher), enter the SharePoint server address that is hosting the Central ...