I'm building a new farm and would like to know the best practice for creating the SSP and SSP Admin site. By default the web application wants to use port 80 on the Application server and I question if this is a smart move as opposed to a different port. True, the only other application installed is Central Administrator.I would also like to make sure that the Web Application for Mysites are created on the WFE server as apposed to the Application serverThanksMarcus

There are two issues with creating any SharePoint Web Application on custom port numbers. First, it makes it very difficult to access the sites from outside the firewall without either using a VPN or making your firewall into a piece of Swiss cheese. Second, it makes it difficult for users to navigate to the location unless they are clicking on a link. If your SSP will never be accessed from outside your firewall and will always be accessed by link or programmatically then you can create it on a different port. I normally keep everything on ports 80 or 443.The Web Application for Mysites will automatically be created on every SharePoint server that is acting as a WFE (ie. running the Windows SharePoint Services service). The only Web App that is only created on one server is Central Admin. You can control which WFE is serving up the MySites by stoping the web application in IIS on any servers that you don't want responding and verifying that DNS and load balancing are pointing to the right server. Paul Stork SharePoint Server MVP

PaulIf you put everything on port 80 or 443, do you make it a point to use Host Headers as part of the Web app creation process or after? If you haven't made the usual DNS entries do you just modify your local host file? I see quite a bit of posting that reference "lost of access to ssp/admin" so any advise you can share would be highly appreciated.ThanksMarcus