At first glance, something appears to be wrong. "Why cant you simply save the site as a template", I asked. Perhaps Microsoft (in all it's infinite wisdom) decided to remove the "save a site as a template" feature by default with publishing sites. That's okay, you can simply navigate to “
_layouts/savetmpl.aspx” application page and save the site template, right? Wrong! This workaround does not work as expected in SharePoint 2013.
The url “_layouts/savetmpl.aspx” failed on the publishing site because by default in SharePoint 2013, “
SaveSiteAsTemplateEnabled” is set as “false”. Fortunately it's a very quick fix, simply change this switch to true in 3 simple steps!
- Open the site in SharePoint Designer
- Click Site Options from the ribbon
- Modify the "SaveSiteAsTemplateEnabled" and change it from "False" to "True"
The option still wont be displayed in Site Settings, but you can now you can navigate to “
http://sitename/_layouts/15/savetmpl.aspx” and you will see the Save Site as Template Page as expected.
That's All Folks!
