SharePoint Community Development by Christopher

Site Template Tips - size matters

Sorry for resorting to the cheesy title but think it is worth it to get your attention. I spent quite awhile trying to figure this out so let me save you some time.

So you have a large customized site that you want to reuse as a template to create new sites and you find there are some barriers to this.

First barrier:

The maximum size that a list or site can be saved as a template is suppose to be 10M but I have received the limit message on sites as small as 6M. Anyways the fix for this is to increase the maximum. http://blogs.provoke.co.nz/Ari/archive/2007/05/24/increasing-the-maximum-size-of-list-templates.aspx  will show you how. Simple issue this command:

stsadm -o setproperty -propertyname max-template-document-size -propertyvalue 50000000

Then you can export your site template and save it to a local drive on your sharepoint box.

Second barrier:

In order to use your newly exported site template to create a root site collection you will need to add it to the available Site Collection templates: See  http://mindsharpblogs.com/kathy/archive/2007/04/10/1685.aspx

it is another simple stsadm command:

stsadm –o  addtemplate –filename c:\exercise.stp –title exercise

Cheers.