What components does Web Template contain?

Question

I am working on a sharepoint portal project. I am planning to have some custom web templates. And then create new site instances from these template. I will follow this way; create a basic publishing site from sharepoint UI customize it according to my needs (create content types, page layouts, pages, put my custom developed web parts in welcome pages etc etc.) Then i will save it as template, then download the solution file and import that file into the visual studio. So then i have a deployable web template.

Here is my question. I wonder which kind of items will be included in the web template. For example do my webparts be included in the newly created sites?

Thanks

Answer 1

First of Publishing site don't support being saved as Site Templates. Secondly it would only include the configuration of web parts not the web parts themselves.

Instead you should create all of your modifications as features, and then create a Site Definition based on the Publishing site remove the features you don't want and add your own features.