Creating your first web application on SharePoint 2013

So, you have successfully installed SharePoint Prerequisites, and SharePoint 2013. Now, it's time to create your first web application.

First, create an AD user to be used with the new Application Pool. I named mine 'SP_PortalUser'. Make sure to check 'password never expires'.

Now open your SharePoint 2013 Central Administration page. We placed it on port 50000, so we'll open Internet Explorer and navigate to http://portaltest:50000 (portaltest is my servers hostname). Alternatively, start it by running the link in the start page.

Enter your administrative username and password, and you will be presented with the Central Administration page. Follow these steps in order to register the newly created user:

Click on 'Security'.
Click on 'Configure managed accounts'.
Click on 'Register Managed Account'.
Enter the username and password and click 'OK'. make sure that you enter username in the form DOMAIN\username - EXAMPLE\SP_PortalUser in my case.

Follow these steps in order to create your first web application:

Click on 'Application Management'.
Click on 'Manage web applications' link. You will see your Central Administration site here.
Click the 'New' button on the toolbar. After a few seconds (and after the annoying 'Working on it…' message), you will be presented with a new window (DIV) where you can input all the data relevant to the new site.
Select 'Create a new IIS web site'.
Enter portaltest.example.com (assuming that your Active Directory domain name is example.com) in the 'Host header' field.
Enter the name of the page. Something friendly. It's for identification purposes. I have named mine 'portaltest.example.com 80'.
Since this is our intranet site, we will disable anonymous access and will not require SSL (that is up to your requirements). So set 'Allow Anonymous' and 'Use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)' both to 'No'.
Tick 'Enable Windows Authentication', and 'Integrated Windows authentication'. Select NTLM in the combo box.
Select the 'Default Sign in Page'.
In the 'Application Pool' section, select 'Configurable' and select the user you have created and registered earlier.
Leave the rest of the options at the default values (which is not necessary a good thing for the production environment.)
You will be met with the 'This shouldn't take long' message, and the process will be done in about one minute. Click 'OK' and the page should refresh and you will see one additional site.

Now you have create first site collection for the newly created web application. Follow these steps in order to create a site collection:

Click on 'Application Management'.
Click on 'Create site collection'.
Mae sure that the correct web application is selected.
Enter the title for the site collection.
Select '/' as the 'Web Site Address' URL.
Select template. I suggest that you leave '2013' experience. I have selected the 'Team Site' for my environment.
Enter the username for the 'Primary Site Collection Administrator' in form of DOMAIN\username. Click on the icon on the right side of the field to check if the value is correct.
Click 'OK. After another 'This shouldn't take long' message, click 'OK'

If you decide to test the site (while working on the server where you installed Sharepoint), you might be presented with a 'HTTP 401.1 – Unauthorized: Logon Failed' message. This is an IIS loop-back check security feature. You can resolve this by editing the registry.

You should now be able to open the portal by navigating to http://portaltest.example.com in Internet Explorer. The log in can be done seamlessly if you put the URL to the 'Trusted sites' list, and if you enable 'Automatic log on with the current user name and password' in internet options.

Many users will want to skip entering the FQDN of the site. To be able to access the site by entering just 'portaltest', open IIS management console and find the newly created site. Add another host header named 'portaltest' on port 80 and configure alternate access mappings.

You can now access the site by entering:

That's it for now.