Microsoft Sharepoint Products and Technologies Resource Kit eBook

Chapter 20: Working with Information Components in SharePoint Products and Technologies 565
■ Custom templates are easy to create.
■ Almost anything that can be done in the user interface can be preserved in the
template.
■ Custom templates can be modified without affecting existing sites that have
been created from the templates.
■ Custom templates are easy to deploy.
Custom template disadvantages include the following:
■ Custom templates should first be created in a development environment, and
once they’re tested, placed in production environment. However, because they
can be easily created, the tendency is for this not to occur. List definitions,
because they require file access rights on the front-end Web servers, are more
tightly controlled, and best-practice deployment strategies will usually prevail.
■ They are less efficient in large-scale environments.
■ If the site definition, on which the custom template is based, doesn’t exist on
the front-end server or servers, the custom template will not work.
Managing the List Template Gallery
List templates are managed at the site collection level in a List Template gallery.
Other galleries created at the site level are the Web Part gallery and the Site Template
gallery. You must be a member of the Administrator site group in the top-level website
in a site collection to manage the List Template gallery.
When a user creates a list template, it is automatically added to the List Template
gallery for the site collection. If you want to import a list template from a .stp
file, you can do so from the List Template Gallery page.
To add a template to the List Template gallery, complete the following steps:
1. On the top-level website, click Site Settings.
2. On a portal site, under General Settings, click Manage security and additional
settings. On a Windows SharePoint Services website, under Administration,
click Go to Site Administration.
3. Under Templates and Web Parts on a portal site or under Site Collection
Galleries for a Windows SharePoint Services website, click Manage list template
gallery.
4. On the List Template Gallery page, click Upload Template.
5. In the Name box, type the path to the template, or click Browse.
6. You can upload multiple templates by clicking Upload Multiple Files.
7. Click Save and Close.