One of the common tasks that administrators will need to perform across various site collections upon initial deployment is to set which site templates (and page layouts) are available for creating subsites and pages. You can do this via the Site Collection Site Settings page (Site Settings -> Page Layout and Site Template Settings). If you need to script it like I did then you’ll need to get a PublishingWeb object (via the static PublishingWeb.GetPublishingWeb() method which takes an SPWeb object as an argument) and then call the SetAvailableCrossLanguageWebTemplates() method and the SetAvailableWebTemplates() depending on whether you are setting a cross language (language neutral) template or a language specific template.
Enumerating the list of templates is just as easy – you simply call the GetAvailableWebTemplates() method or the GetAvailableCrossLanguageWebTemplates() method. One of the challenges I had was in determining exactly how Microsoft handles the setting of templates as it’s not entirely as obvious as I indicate above due to the fact that a template name can be associated as a cross language template or a language specific template and it’s not always clear how it’s currently set. I did a lot of digging through Microsoft’s code and I believe that I’ve got it all figured out.
The commands below allow you to enumerate the list of current available and installed templates (helpful for getting the real template names so that you can then call the add and remove commands) as well as add and remove available templates.
gl-enuminstalledsitetemplates
The code to enumerate the list of installed templates is extremely simple. We create a new SPSite object passing in the URL of the Site Collection and then we use an SPWeb object to get the list of installed languages which we will iterate through. Then, for each installed language we get the list of web templates and custom web templates by calling the SPSite objects GetWebTemplates() and GetCustomWebTemplates() methods, passing in the locale ID (LCID) we retrieved from the SPWeb.RegionalSettings.InstaleldLanguages.SPLanguage object:
1string url = keyValues["url"];
2
3using (SPSite site = new SPSite(url))
4{
5 using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())
6 {
7
8 foreach (SPLanguage lang in web.RegionalSettings.InstalledLanguages)
9 {
10 foreach (SPWebTemplate template in site.GetWebTemplates((uint)lang.LCID))
11 {
12 output += template.Name + " = " + template.Title + " (" + lang.LCID + ")\r\n";
13 }
14 foreach (SPWebTemplate template in site.GetCustomWebTemplates((uint)lang.LCID))
15 {
16 output += template.Name + " = " + template.Title + " (Custom)(" + lang.LCID + ")\r\n";
17 }
18 }
19 }
20}
The syntax of the resultant command can be seen below:
C:\>stsadm -help gl-enuminstalledsitetemplates
stsadm -o gl-enuminstalledsitetemplates
Returns the list of site templates installed for the given site collection.
Parameters:
-url <site collection url>
Here’s an example of how to enumerate the list of installed templates for a site collection:
stsadm –o gl-enuminstalledsitetemplates –url "http://intranet/"
The results of executing this command can be seen below (your results may be different):
GLOBAL#0 = Global template (1033)
STS#0 = Team Site (1033)
STS#1 = Blank Site (1033)
STS#2 = Document Workspace (1033)
MPS#0 = Basic Meeting Workspace (1033)
MPS#1 = Blank Meeting Workspace (1033)
MPS#2 = Decision Meeting Workspace (1033)
MPS#3 = Social Meeting Workspace (1033)
MPS#4 = Multipage Meeting Workspace (1033)
CENTRALADMIN#0 = Central Admin Site (1033)
WIKI#0 = Wiki Site (1033)
BLOG#0 = Blog (1033)
BDR#0 = Document Center (1033)
OFFILE#0 = Records Center (1033)
OFFILE#1 = Records Center (1033)
OSRV#0 = Shared Services Administration Site (1033)
SPS#0 = SharePoint Portal Server Site (1033)
SPSPERS#0 = SharePoint Portal Server Personal Space (1033)
SPSMSITE#0 = Personalization Site (1033)
SPSTOC#0 = Contents area Template (1033)
SPSTOPIC#0 = Topic area template (1033)
SPSNEWS#0 = News Site (1033)
CMSPUBLISHING#0 = Publishing Site (1033)
BLANKINTERNET#0 = Publishing Site (1033)
BLANKINTERNET#1 = Press Releases Site (1033)
BLANKINTERNET#2 = Publishing Site with Workflow (1033)
SPSNHOME#0 = News Site (1033)
SPSSITES#0 = Site Directory (1033)
SPSCOMMU#0 = Community area template (1033)
SPSREPORTCENTER#0 = Report Center (1033)
SPSPORTAL#0 = Collaboration Portal (1033)
SRCHCEN#0 = Search Center with Tabs (1033)
PROFILES#0 = Profiles (1033)
BLANKINTERNETCONTAINER#0 = Publishing Portal (1033)
SPSMSITEHOST#0 = My Site Host (1033)
SRCHCENTERLITE#0 = Search Center (1033)
SRCHCENTERLITE#1 = Search Center (1033)
SPSBWEB#0 = SharePoint Portal Server BucketWeb Template (1033)
gl-enumavailablesitetemplates
The code to enumerate the list of available templates is almost identical to that needed to enumerate installed templates. The only real difference is that instead of getting the collection from the SPSite object you’ll be getting it from a PublishingWeb object (not that there is no way to get a list of cross languange installed templates – this one of those things that threw me off – when you install the template it appears to be language specific but you can then make it available as a cross language template):
1string url = keyValues["url"];
2using (SPSite site = new SPSite(url))
3{
4 using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())
5 {
6 PublishingWeb pubweb = PublishingWeb.GetPublishingWeb(web);
7
8 //System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Launch();
9 foreach (SPWebTemplate template in pubweb.GetAvailableCrossLanguageWebTemplates())
10 {
11 output += template.Name + " = " + template.Title + " (All)\r\n";
12 }
13 foreach (SPLanguage lang in web.RegionalSettings.InstalledLanguages)
14 {
15 foreach (SPWebTemplate template in pubweb.GetAvailableWebTemplates((uint)lang.LCID))
16 {
17 output += template.Name + " = " + template.Title + " (" + lang.LCID + ")\r\n";
18 }
19 }
20 }
21}
The syntax of the resultant command can be seen below:
C:\>stsadm -help gl-enumavailablesitetemplates
stsadm -o gl-enumavailablesitetemplates
Returns the list of site templates available for the given site collection.
Parameters:
-url <site collection url>
Here’s an example of how to enumerate the list of available templates for a site collection:
stsadm –o gl-enumavailablesitetemplates –url "http://intranet/"
The results of executing this command can be seen below (your results may be different):
WIKI#0 = Wiki Site (All)
BLANKINTERNET#2 = Publishing Site with Workflow (All)
SPSREPORTCENTER#0 = Report Center (All)
SPSNHOME#0 = News Site (All)
CMSPUBLISHING#0 = Publishing Site (All)
BDR#0 = Document Center (All)
SPSSITES#0 = Site Directory (All)
STS#1 = Blank Site (All)
STS#0 = Team Site (All)
SRCHCEN#0 = Search Center with Tabs (All)
WIKI#0 = Wiki Site (1033)
BLANKINTERNET#2 = Publishing Site with Workflow (1033)
SPSREPORTCENTER#0 = Report Center (1033)
SPSNHOME#0 = News Site (1033)
CMSPUBLISHING#0 = Publishing Site (1033)
BDR#0 = Document Center (1033)
SPSSITES#0 = Site Directory (1033)
STS#1 = Blank Site (1033)
STS#0 = Team Site (1033)
SRCHCEN#0 = Search Center with Tabs (1033)
Note that the reason why some sites appear to be listed twice but only show up once in the web tool is because behind the scenes Microsoft is removing the duplicate (it knows that WIKI#0 is listed as a cross language template and it’s locale is 1033 so don’t show the locale specific entry if we’re already showing as a language neutral template. I chose to not do this filtering so you could see everything that’s going on – it wouldn’t take much effort to change the code so that it list each item on one line and merely flags the fact that it’s listed as cross language and what the specific locale is.
gl-addavailablesitetemplate
To add to the list of available templates we simply get a collection of currently available templates and then add to that collection. We then call SetAvailableCrossLanguageWebTemplates() or SetAvailableWebTemplates() passing in the modified collection. The method you call depends on whether the template is a language neutral template or not. The syntax of the resultant command can be seen below:
C:\>stsadm -help gl-addavailablesitetemplate
stsadm -o gl-addavailablesitetemplate
Adds a site template to the list of available templates for the given site collection.
Parameters:
-url <site collection url>
-template <template name>
[-lcid <locale id>]
[-resetallsubsites]
Here’s an example of how to add a template to the list of available templates for a site collection:
stsadm –o gl-addavailablesitetemplate –url "http://intranet/" -template "WIKI#0" -lcid 1033 -resetallsubsites
gl-removeavailablesitetemplate
Removing a template is similar to adding a template but instead of adding to the SPWebTemplateCollection object you’re going to remove from it. The syntax of the resultant command can be seen below:
C:\>stsadm -help gl-removeavailablesitetemplate
stsadm -o gl-removeavailablesitetemplate
Removes a site template from the list of available templates for the given site collection.
Parameters:
-url <site collection url>
-template <template name>
[-lcid <locale id>]
[-resetallsubsites]
Here’s an example of how to remove a template from the list of available templates for a site collection:
stsadm –o gl-removeavailablesitetemplate –url "http://intranet/" -template "WIKI#0" -lcid 1033 -resetallsubsites