How to create a customized SharePoint 2013 site template?

Question

We have a SharePoint 2013 on premise environment. We created a new site collection and enabled SharePoint Server Publishing feature. We customized the master page and CSS on this site and created few Lists and Libraries. Now, we want to create a Site template out of this customized site. So that we can use this site template to create other future sites.

NOTE : I don't see the "Save site as a template" option under Site Settings.Some people suggested that we can get that option back by doing SharePoint Designer settings. But, it didn't helped me.

Answer 1

Once you activate the Publishing feature on site you lose the "Save site as a template" option in Site Settings. This is by design. One approach you can take is to define the site you want from a content/list/library perspective without enabling publishing. You can then create your template. Then you can create a feature that will apply the master page, branding, etc. that you can activate on the site after creation.

Answer 2

If you have enabled the publishing feature, the save site as template option is not available. And the save site as template is not supported, even if you disable the publishing featere or try to hack your way around it.

As Erik says make a template and save it before enabling the publishing feature. You could always create a list where people request a new site and use a scheduled powershell script to copy the site and create is somewhere else.

And if you are able to use code, you can look at the PNP provisioning samples: https://github.com/OfficeDev/PnP.

Or look at M2 http://docs.subpointsolutions.com/spmeta2/. I've used it in several projects and it's really something I recommend.