Create Sites Using Custom Site Templates in SharePoint 2010

Introduction

In this article we will see how to create sites using custom site templates programmatically in the SharePoint 2010 Server Object Model.

Steps

The following code shows how we usually create a site using the default SharePoint 2010 templates/definitions.

The "SPWeb" object's "Add" method creates a Web Site object with the specified site-relative URL, title, description, locale ID  and site definition or site template name. "STS#1" represents the blank site template.

We will create a sample UI page to get the inputs as shown below.

Once the site has been created successfully, we can navigate to the site and check whether the blank site was created or not.

But we need to create a site using a custom template. For demo purpose we use any existing site and store it as "Site Template" in the "Solution Gallery" and activate the solution. We will see the solutions in the following navigation path for any root site. All the solution files are saved in .wsp file format.

Path: "Site Actions" --> "Site Settings" --> "Solutions"

Next we need to get the solution/template id dynamically from the solution gallery. We will have the following code to get the template id and write it as a helper function.

Usually many templates are available in the collection. If required we will pass the "Solution Name" as input and get the particular template id.

Finally we need to pass the result template Id to create a new site, instead of default templates. It'll create a new site using our custom template.

Summary

Suppose we have a large site with hundreds of lists and a document library, it's really easy to get the entire site structure as a template and using this method we can use the same custom template to create new sites programmatically.

Notes

• Before we try this logic, we need to ensure that the "SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure" feature is activated at the site collection and site level.
• The Site template will not have any information about the sub-sites and its content.
• Before we save the site as "Site Template", we need to check to determine if any custom features are deployed and activated. Because while we use the same template , it'll expect the same features need to be activated.
• The entire sample code is attached here.

Claims-based Authentication in SharePoint 2013

Introduction

In this article we will see what are all the improvements in claims-based authentication in SharePoint 2013.

Key-Points

• Claims-based authentication is the default for new web applications in SharePoint 2013.
• When you create a web application in Central Administration, you can only specify authentication methods for claims-based authentication.
• Although Windows Classic mode authentication is still available in SharePoint 2013 and can be configured through Windows PowerShell, we recommend that you use claims-based authentication. Windows Classic mode authentication is deprecated in SharePoint 2013.

In SharePoint 2010, while creating a new web application we will see the following options related to authentication and security.



But in SharePoint 2013 we will see only claims-based authentication:



We will do the easier migration from classic mode to Windows-based claims mode with the new Convert-SPWebApplication Windows PowerShell cmdlet.

Some of the key changes related to security in SharePoint 2013 are:

• Login tokens are now cached in the new Distributed Cache Service.
• By storing the login tokens in the Distributed Cache Service in SharePoint 2013, the configuration of affinity in your load balancing solution is no longer required. There are also scale-out benefits and less memory utilization in the web front-ends because of a dedicated cache service.
• SharePoint 2013 has a dedicated local server-to-server security token service (STS) that provides server-to-server security tokens that contain user identity claims to enable cross-server authenticated access.
• SharePoint 2013 uses OAuth 2.0 to authorize requests by apps in the SharePoint Store and App Catalog to access SharePoint resources on behalf of a user.

Summary

Understanding these changes will really help us to design and develop applications based on SharePoint 2013.