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Members of the Administrator site group and write access to site template gallery can customize a site and save the customized site as a site template, so that other users in the site collection can create similar sites later. When a user creates a new subsite, he or she can choose from the combined list of site templates available on the server or on the site collection. Administrators of a site collection can also import a site template created by another user or software vendor and add the new template to the available site templates in the site collection.
Caution Template files include personal information such as server URLs and user account names. Only share template files with trusted users and groups.
A site template is a file that includes all of the design information about the site, such as:
Site templates do not include the following items:
You must have the Add Item right for the site template gallery in order to create a site template. By default, members of the Web Designer and Administrator site groups for a top-level Web site have this right for the site template gallery. Site templates are stored as files with the .stp extension.
Users can create subsites based on templates available on the server or on the site collection. When the user creates a subsite, he or she chooses a template from templates available on the Template Selection page. This page shows all templates available on the server and site collection, filtered by the language that was selected on the Create Subsite page. Although the new subsite is based on the template, you can customize it, just like any other site.
There is a centralized store of site templates called the central template gallery. This gallery is managed for your entire server or server farm, and can only be managed by using the command-line tool, Stsadm.exe. You must be a member of the local administrators group for the server computer to manage the central template gallery.