Managed Path, Wildcard and Explicit Inclusion
A managed path is a location within a web application in which you can have site collections. When a web application is created, there are two managed paths that were created with it. Two managed paths are: explicit inclusion managed path and wildcard inclusion managed path. An explicit inclusion managed path defines an exact path to which a site collection can be directly attached. The first managed path is called the “/” path, or root. The “/” path is an explicit inclusion managed path. You can always have multiple sites in the site collection, but you can only have one site collection in the explicit managed path. A wildcard inclusion managed path defines a path that cannot have a site collection attached at its root but can have multiple site collections assigned beneath it. The second managed path is called “sites,” or a wildcard inclusion path. There is a wildcard inclusion managed path that is added by default to a web application. “Sites” is a ...