Are there any problems with enabling Publishing Features on a Team Site?

Question

I have a team site that we created for our department to use. It has a custom master page that we built. I want every subsite to use that same master page. I found that when I enable Publishing Infrastructure on the Site Collection and then turn on Publishing Features on the subsites, we have the ability to point the masterpages for the subsites to the parent and everything works great.

A few questions have come up as a result of this:

• Are there any problems with enabling these Features on a Team Site?
• Will I lose any of Team Site functionality?
• It seems like Publishing Features gives much better control over navigation and master page re-use. Would there be any downside to enabling it on all site collections?

Answer 1

There's one answer to all of your questions.

No, Publishing feature is there to provide you with extra features to site collection, this feature is activated by default for Publishing side.

Portal I am working on has team site collections with publishing feature enabled so that we sub-webs can inherit master page from Site Collection Home Page.

Publishing is the authoring and deploying of branded artifacts, content, custom assemblies, and configuration files across a Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 farm. Publishing in SharePoint Server 2010 consists of two separate features. The SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure feature provides publishing functionality at the site collection level, and the SharePoint Server Publishing feature provides publishing functionality at the site level. The subset of features and functionality of each feature supports the goal of publishing as part of a Web content management solution.

Check out this MSDN article that provides in-depth explanation of Publishing features.

Answer 2

When you enable publishing you gain a lot, but you lose the ability to "save site as template". (To be clear, you lose this ability when you activate the site (web) level feature. If you only activate the site collection level "publishing infrastructure" feature, then you will still be able to "save as template".)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2492356

Answer 3

"In SharePoint 2013, when you activate Server Publishing Infrastructure, you will also lose the Quick Launch and Top Link Bar menu items from the Site Settings menu. This should not happen but it does."

As for the Quick Launch and Top Link Bar menu, you could simply add it via using the Navigation Link.

As for the "Would there be any downside to enabling it on all site collections", the answer is that you cannot save the site as a template, although you could visit it via : http://sp/_layouts/savetmpl.aspx, you cannot use the template to create a new site. That's the downside.

Answer 4

1. You will not get any problems by enabling publishing. I am using it in my organization's enterprise solution and never faced any problems. Publishing makes the navigation easier.

2. You will not loose any functionality of team site and their sub-sites. You can use separate master pages for each sub-site if you want. The only functionality you may loose is dynamic navigation for each sub-site, because all sub-sites may share the same top navigation.

3. There are no downsides. It gives the opportunity to optimize SharePoint branding. You can increase the sites look and feel with custom master pages and css.

Answer 5

In Sharepoint 2013, when you activate Server Publishing Infrastructure, you will also lose the Quick Launch and Top Link Bar menu items from the Site Settings menu. This should not happen but it does.