TechTips - How to Save a SharePoint 2007 Website as a Template

When you build a SharePoint 2007 site from scratch the beginning product is very basic in nature and you have to do a lot of work to make it look, feel, and act the way you want it to. Well this work can take quite some time and if you are constantly building new SharePoint 2007 websites you don't want to duplicate the effort every time. Well there is a way to save a SharePoint 2007 website as a template so you can have most of the work you have already done, finished before you even start. In this guide I will explain how to save a SharePoint 2007 website as a template for later use.

Taking a basic beginning SharePoint 2007 website from being a boring, ugly, hard to navigate website and making it into a custom site that you are proud of can take some time and a lot of effort. So what I suggest to many of my users who build a lot of different (yet similar) websites on SharePoint 2007, is that they get a base site that has most of the common attributes they want in it built, and then store it as a site template so they can start from this point on every site. They have most of the hard work out of the way; they have created a basic site, added their own look and feel and made the site useful. So now they can start every new site from this point and add on to it, instead of totally starting from scratch each time.

It really saves a lot of time and effort and time and effort usually equal MONEY! So let's walk though how to save a SharePoint 2007 website as a site template, just follow these steps:

1. Open your website

2. Click on Login (if you aren't logged in already by default)

3. Click on Site Actions (will only appear if you have admin rights to this SharePoint 2007 website)

4. Click Site Settings

5. Click Save Site as Template (Under Look and Feel Section)

6. Enter Template name (File Name, will have .stp extension)

7. Enter Name and Description of site (helps later if you have like 50 templates and don't know which you want to use)

8. Check box next to Include Content (only do this if you sites are going to have the same content, documents, pictures, ect...)

9. Click OK

SharePoint will process the request and it could take some time depending on the size of your website, once it completes you will get a message saying operation complete and to visit the site template gallery to manage existing templates. If you want to edit the template you can go to the link they provide for the template gallery or you can simply wait until later to use the template.

That is all there is to creating a template for later use out of a SharePoint 2007 website you have already gotten to a ready state. Now you can simply create websites using this template and a lot of the hard work is going to be done, you just have to edit the site to fit the new material that will go on the site. Save you time and probably money!

I hope this guide helps you to create a website template for SharePoint 2007.