Question : Error: "The site <sitename> could not be found in the Web application SPWebApplication Name=MOSS Parent=SPWebService"

Greetings.

I created a blank site collection, by using the following command:
>stsadm -o createsite -url "http://server/sitecollection" -owneremail "[email protected]" -ownerlogin domain\account -sitetemplate STS#1 -title "Site Collection"

Operation completed successfully!

And then I try to create a sub site, by using the following command:
stsadm -o createweb -url "http://server/sitecollection/site"  -sitetemplate SPSNHOME -title "Site" -unique

And I receive the following error:

The site http://server/sitecollection/site could not be found in the Web application SPWebApplication Name=MOSS Parent=SPWebService.

What might be causing this?
I want the Site to be a publishing news site, so I enabled the Publishing features via command line...yet every time I try to create this site under the site collection, I get this error.

In my Server Manager "Application" even log, i see this:

Event log message was: 'Failed to initialize some site properties for Web at Url: 'http://server/sitecollection''. Exception was: 'Microsoft.SharePoint.SPException: List does not exist

The page you selected contains a list that does not exist.  It may have been deleted by another user. ---> System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0x81020026): List does not exist

What "list"?  I created the Blank site collection, and it is indeed Blank...If i go to the page, i get a "page not found" error, which is what is supposed to happen, I assume?

Answer : Error: "The site <sitename> could not be found in the Web application SPWebApplication Name=MOSS Parent=SPWebService"

Your blank site as specified by STS#1 should be a blank page (i.e. SharePoint page with no content). If you are getting a "page not found" error, then something went wrong when you created the site collection, even though it told you that it was successful. This would also lead to the subsequent errors when creating the subsite.

I notice that you did not specify a secondarylogin. This is a required field unless you are using Active Directory account creation mode. If you are using this, then ownerlogin and secondarylogin should not be specified. (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262594(office.12).aspx)

If possible, I suggest that you delete the site collection and start over using Central Administration to create a new site collection. If you continue to get errors, there may be something wrong with the STS#1 site definition. You might try creating a different one just to make sure that something else isn't wrong.

Hope this helps.