Missing “Save Site as Template” for Publishing Sites in SharePoint 2013?

Summary : Missing “Save Site as Template” for Publishing Sites in SharePoint 2013?, How to Save Publishing Sites as Template in SharePoint 2013,Workaround to Save Site as Template in Publishing Site Template.

One of the old and well known workarounds for this was to directly navigate to “_layouts/savetmpl.aspx” application page and save the site Template. This workaround however does not work as expected in SharePoint 2013 sites.

In a Typical SharePoint 2013 Publishing Site, if you try to navigate to “_layouts/savetmpl.aspx” you would get the below error –

“The “Save site as template” action is not supported on this site.”

The url “_layouts/savetmpl.aspx” failed on the Publishing site because by default, in at Typical Publishing Site in SharePoint 2013, “SaveSiteAsTemplateEnabled” is set as “false”. Setting this switch as true would re-enable us to use “_layouts/savetmpl.aspx” to save a Typical Publishing Site in SharePoint 2013.

The easiest way to set SaveSiteAsTemplateEnabled as true is by using Site options in SharePoint Designer 2013.
Lets look the Steps –

1. Open you Publishing Site in SharePoint Designer 2013.

2. In SharePoint Designer, under Sites tab select “Site Options” (see screen below)

3. Find “SaveSiteAsTemplateEnabled” in Site Properties (see below).

4. Next change this setting to “true”.

Apply the Setting once done.

5. Now in your Publishing site navigate to “http://sitename/_layouts/15/savetmpl.aspx” and you would see the old Save Site as Template Page as expected.