R – SharePoint Site Directory

I'd expect that the reason you're not getting anything back is because /sites/ isn't really a site collection on SharePoint, which you'd notice if you try and access /sites/ as a path on the SharePoint server.

You'll probably have to just return all the sites from the root web and then just filter on the path name whether or not it contains /sites/. I believe that is how Central Administration displays the list of sites within the web application list.

My first tip would be to never, ever, ever use SharePoint Designer for anything other then editing page layouts, master pages, etc. It is useless piece of crpa and normally makes things worse (try checking files in and out using SPD and you'll eventually get into a mess with it).

As for your subsite - try going to the site manager page for the site:

http://yoursite/_layouts/sitemanager.aspx

Replace the 'http' part with whatever your site collection's url is, but add the /_layouts/... bit after it. You should then see an explorer type view of all the sites. On the left, navigate to the subiste you have renamed, just to see that it still exists. If it's there, hover the mouse over the name of the site and you should see a dropdown menu appear. One of the options on that menu is 'Site Setting'. Click on that to see if it will take you to the site settings for the site.

If that fails, then look at using stsadm to try and rename the website.