Best practices for SharePoint Site Templates
The ability to create site templates in SharePoint is one of the core strengths SharePoint.
- The site template retains look and feel (colors), all pages, web parts and navigation
- The template will not retain security settings (groups or permissions) and the site logo
- Include Content in the template if necessary (the template cannot exceed 50MB total, content cannot be confidential)
HOW TO CREATE SITE TEMPLATE
- Gear icon > Site Settings
2. Under Site Actions, choose Save site as a template
3. Fill out the File Name, Template Name and the description. Check the Include Content checkbox to save content (certain template documents) as part of the template.
BEST PRACTICES ON SHAREPOINT SITE TEMPLATES
- Publishing features on a site collection
If publishing features on a site collection are enabled, you cannot create new versions of the template. Also, Save site as a template option is gone.
- Assign proper names to the Site Templates
Name your site template and file, add a description to the description box. After that, you can easily tell what the template is all about.
- Remove old templates via Solutions Gallery
All the templates you create in the whole site collection end up in the Site Collection Solutions Gallery. Solutions gallery allows you to disable and even delete templates you no longer use. To access the Solutions Gallery:
- Go to the root of your site collection
- Click on Gear Icon > Site Settings
- Click on Solutions under Web Designer Galleries
4. Here is a list of all the different template created by you or other users in this site collection.
5. Here are the templates you no longer use. Now you can de-activate and delete them.
6. Click Deactivate again.
7. The template no longer has Activated status next to it.
8. Click the checkbox next to template and click on Delete.
9. Click OK on a warning pop -up message. The template is deleted.
Deleting a template will not impact sites already created from it.