Farm wide: Hiding Site Templates

Problem

You need to customize what site creators see when they choose site templates.

Answer

There are XML manifest files found on the file system of the web front end.

The file you can change is found here:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\TEMPLATE\1033\XML\WEBTEMP.XML

In it, you'll find reference to the site templates.

You'll see a TEMPLATE NAME tag which will identify the site template.

Then look for the HIDDEN attribute.

If you can see it in the template list then HIDDEN is set FALSE. If you want to hide it, change HIDDEN to TRUE.

Example

You want to hide the Wiki template from the Select a Template list:

1. Open WEBTEMP.XML in notepad
   
2. Find the tag TEMPLATE NAME="Wiki"
   
3. Find the nested HIDDEN tag. Change the value to TRUE.
   
   
   
   
   
4. Save the file.
   
5. Recycle the relevant application pool or do an IISRESET.
   
6. Repeat 1 to 5 on each web front end .

NOTE:

1. This is a farm wide hide so it will make the change everywhere. It will also hide the template from the Site Collection creation page as well.