Copy Sharepoint Sites/Doc Libraries For Development Purposes

Question

Sorry if I'm getting the terminology wrong, I'm very new to sharepoint. Basically, a site I'm working on uses sharepoint for some versioning stuff in the background. I would like to be able to take the "schema" from production and have developers able to use it locally for their own development and testing.

I don't need all the files contained within. I'm just looking for a way to easily copy the site structure and document library structure to another machine. Is that possible/easily doable?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You can easily save the site as a template by going to Site Actions, Site Settings. I think its under Site Administration there should be an option that says "Save Site As Template". Make sure you do not check the "Include Content" checkbox. This this will give you the current configuration for the site and any lists/libraries including their views.

Answer 2

Simple answer, Sharepoint Content Deployment Wizard (http://spdeploymentwizard.codeplex.com/). Allows you to export sites, & libraries, and be specific about what content you need to export.

This is one of those don't leave home without it type tools.

In addition to the GUI this will also allow you to do scripted content deployment with stsadm.