SharePoint Lessons Learned

If you are creating a new site in a site collection, and inadvertently create a publishing site while the publishing feature is not enabled at the site collection level, I've noticed some strange functionality.

An Error message will be displayed that states:
"The Office SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure feature must be activated at the site collection level before the Publishing feature can be activated."

The site that you have attempted to create will still be viewable from the View All Site Content link (then look under Sites and Workspaces) but will generate a 404 error if you attempt to browse to the root (either by clicking the link under view all site content, or manually browsing to the site name you've chosen). This is because the site was created, but was not given a default.aspx page. I've found that the only way to delete this broken site, is to browse manually to the site's settings page (which does exist).

This can be navigated to like such:

http(s)://portal_url/site_collection_name/broken_site_name/_layouts/settings.aspx

UPDATE:

Apparently, stsadm does not create this broken site.