How to prevent a SharePoint site collection from being deleted?

Question

I am currently using Sharepoint 2010 admin web service and want to be sure that a specific site collection cannot be deleted. Does anyone know of a way to make this happen such that if I have a call like

adminService.DeleteSite(SiteCollection_TO_NEVER_DELETE);

Would never be removed?

Thanks for any suggestions

Answer 1

If I understand you correctly, it can be done by using a SharePoint Feature.

You can create and deploy a SharePoint Feature which has a web event receiver. In this event receiver you can override the SiteDeleting method and cancel the request to delete a site collection by changing the value of the property Cancel of the parameter to true . This would return an error for anyone trying to delete the site collection. You can also add an error message.

For example:

    /// <summary>
    /// A site collection is being deleted
    /// </summary>
    public override void SiteDeleting(SPWebEventProperties properties)
    {
        base.SiteDeleting(properties);
        if(/*some condition*/)
        { 
            properties.Cancel = true;
            properties.ErrorMessage = "This site collection should never be deleted.";
        }
     }

You can check for a specific name or a specific URL.

Of course, it would still be possible to deactivate the feature and still delete the site. But at least it would prevent it from being deleted accidentally.