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Yes, starting at 10.1 you need to create your Site in order to publish services. At 10.0 and earlier, this wasn't required because the architecture was much different. Before you publish your Site though, remember to register your data stores (e.g., SDE connection files or Folders containing FGDBs) with ArcGIS for Server so that your services publish correctly without the system automatically copying your data to the GIS server. I'm glad you got things working. In the forums, don't forget to vote up helpful answers and mark correct answers!