creating custom site templates/site defnitions SP 2013

Question

I'm working on creating a kind of add-on to both sharepoint 2013 and sharepoint 2010 online.

This would be a custom solution added to a sharepoint on premises and online(office 365). I want to be able to add this to any existing SharePoint site collection/sub-sites etc... This template would need to create lists,webparts etc..

Which way to go... site templates or site definitions?

Thanks in Advance

Answer 1

The way to go is Web templates. Site definitions are not allowed in sharepoint online as it is deployed as a farm solution. You can create a web template and deploy it as sandbox solution. A must read blog on this topic are:

Sharepoint web templates

Remote Provisioning in SP 2013

Remote provisioning is the best approach. An excerpt from the blog:

Remote provisioning is model where we actually do the template system outside of the SharePoint by using the new SharePoint app patterns. In this case we would be using provider hosted pattern to provide customizable sub site creation experience for the end users of the SharePoint.

This model is suitable for both on-premises and Office365, which is clearly beneficial from long term maintenance and operation perspective. One solution fits all model is obviously better than thinking on-prem or cloud as an exception to story. One of the clear benefits of the remote provisioning model is that we don’t need to have any feature framework elements or other customizations deployed to SharePoint farm, we rather control the customizations outside of the SharePoint, which gives possibility to update and change the provisioning engine without any impact on SharePoint side from availability perspective. Second key advantage is actually the impact to DR models, since when we push all of our changes to site collections from remote locations, we don’t have any dependency on any solution packages in our content databases. This means that as long as we have the content database, we can setup the farm back online.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

You can't use Site Templates in SharePoint Online. I you want to create new sites with the new functionality you can create a WebTemplate, but this do not add the additional functionality to existing sites.

If you want to add functionality to existing sites you can use for example

• List templates for lists
• Sandboxed solutions for webparts and lists. I know Sandbox are deprecated but you can still use it when needing serverside code
• The new App model

The choices you make depend on what is possible in your SharePoint Online Environment and your On-Premise environment and of course the time and money available for your solution