Suppose you need to create the following three private Sites for the Lunar Resort’s internal use: Engineering, Marketing, and Legal. These should be accessible only to members of these respective departments. You could design each Site separately, but you can save yourself time if you create a Site template instead.
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Go to the Control Panel and click Sites → Site Templates.
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Click the Add icon (
) and enter the name Department for your template.
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Leave the Active and Allow Site administrators to modify pages associated with this Site template… boxes checked.
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Click Save to create your Site template.
The Active box must be checked for your template to be usable. If your template is still a work in progress, uncheck it to ensure that no one uses it until it’s ready. Checking Allow Site administrators to modify pages associated with this Site template… allows Site administrators to modify or remove the pages and apps that the template introduces to their Sites—if you want the templates to be completely static, you should uncheck this.
Now it’s time to edit your Site template. This example, includes four pages.
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Click the Options icon (
) and select Manage.
This brings you to the Pages page for the Site Template. You already have a home page. Create three more pages.
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Create a Full Page Application page named Documents.
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Click Options (
) → Configure and set the Full Page Application to Documents and Media.
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Create a page using the Global Page Template Wiki and name it Wiki.
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Create a widget page named Message Boards.
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Click Go to Site in the menu to the left to go to the pages you just created.
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On the Home page add the Activities, Announcements, and Calendar apps.
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On the Message Boards page add the Message Boards and Tag Cloud apps.
The changes you made to your Site template above are completed in real time, so there’s no Save button.
Figure 1: You can see the name of the Site template you're currently editing.
Next, you’ll use your Site template to create the Engineering, Marketing and Legal Sites.
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Go to the Control Panel and click on Sites → Sites.
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Click the Add icon (
) → Department.
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Enter Engineering for the Site name.
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Check the Create default pages as private (available only to members). If unchecked, they will be public (available to anyone) option since the Engineering Site is intended for internal use only.
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Click Save.
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In the next section, set the Membership Type to Private.
Recall that private Sites don’t appear in the My Sites application so that regular users won’t even know that the Engineering Site exists. Also, the only way users can be added to a private Site is via an invitation from a Site administrator.
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Leave the Active selector enabled so that your Site can be used immediately.
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Check the Create default pages as private (available only to members). If unchecked, they will be public (available to anyone). option since the Engineering Site is intended for internal use only.
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Leave the Enable propagation of changes from the Site template box enabled so that the Engineering Site receives updates if the Department Site template is modified.
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Click Save to create your Engineering Site.
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Repeat these steps to create the Marketing and Legal Sites.
The new Sites have all the pages and apps you created in the Site template. To view the pages of the new Sites, click Sites → Sites in the Control Panel and then click Actions → Go to Private Pages next to one of your new Sites.
Using Site templates streamlines the Site creation process for administrators, making it easy to create Sites quickly. Now each department of the Lunar Resort has its own Calendar, Documents and Media Library, Wiki, and Message Boards on their Sites. Although the pages and apps of each department’s Site are the same, each Site will quickly be filled with department-specific information as users add and share content within the Sites. Also, Site administrators can add new pages, apps, and content to their Sites, further differentiating each department’s Site from the others.