www.johntimney.com

Renaming Site Collections is not a difficult task at all as stsadm has a command called renamesites:

stsadm.exe -o renamesite -oldurl http://sharepointsite.com/sites/john -newurl "http://sharepointsite.com/sites/john55"

.....but without installing the hotfix http://support.microsoft.com/kb/939535 to enable it your stuck with the tried and tested approach of backing up a site collection, deleting the site collection and then restoring the backed up collection to a new site.  A simple enough task in itself but clearly carries some risk.  The mitigating factor of course is that should it all go pear shaped, at least you have a backup.

Anyway, here are a couple of simple batch files to help you rename a site using either approach:

The first uses traditonal backup and delete technique.

@ECHO BEFORE YOU RUN THIS BATCH BE ABSOLUTELY SURE THAT THE NEW NAME CHOICE FOR THE SITE COLLECTION DOES NOT ALREADY EXIST
PAUSE
SET PATH=%PATH%;"C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN\"
stsadm.exe -o backup -url http://sharepointsite.com/sites/changed -overwrite -filename c:\siterename\backup.dat
@ECHO Completed BACKUP
stsadm.exe -o deletesite -url http://sharepointsite.com/sites/changemetest
@ECHO Completed DELETION
stsadm.exe" -o restore -url http://sharepointsite.com/sites/changed -filename c:\siterename\backup.dat
@ECHO Completed RESTORE with new name
Pause

The second uses renameweb

@ECHO BEFORE YOU RUN THIS BATCH BE ABSOLUTELY SURE THAT THE NEW NAME CHOICE FOR THE SITE COLLECTION DOES NOT ALREADY EXIST
@ECHO Requires HOTFIX 939592
PAUSE
SET PATH=%PATH%;"C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\BIN\"
stsadm.exe -o renamesite -oldurl "http://sharepointsite.com/sites/john" -newurl "http://sharepointsite.com/sites/john55"
@ECHO Completed rename
Pause

If you do rename a site collection any existing alerts that were setup in that collection are unlikely to continue working as the alert was for a different URL than the one you have moved your collection or site into.