Duplicate SharePoint MOSS site without content

Question

Hi

What is the best way to copy an existing SharePoint MOSS site and then recreate a copy of it on the same server?

I want to ideally include web parts but not actual content like documents etc.

I've looked at using the SPDeploymentWizard and saving the site as a template but the SPDeploymentWizard takes all the content and saving it as a template I get an error that the site is too big to save.

Any suggestions appreciated

Answer 1

You can backup and restore to a different server using stsadm.exe.

EDIT

Apparently there's an actual export feature for content http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb507233.aspx

Answer 2

You can create a site template by clicking the "Save Site as Template" option in the Site Settings page. SharePoint does not have the ability to create templates based on Publishing definitions but there is a work around listed here:

link text

Answer 3

The default size of templates is around 10 MB. you can increase that using stsadm -o setproperty -pn max-template-document-size

Also if you are doing templates, that does not do sub-sites.

Answer 4

Webpages with weparts or not are considered content in SharePoint. So to move the site you will have to create a new moss site with an associate content database.

You will then be able to backup your original site and restore it over the new one.

Then you will have to delete the content you did not want to have in the new site.

To avoid this problem in the future, create a SharePoint Solution containing site template using STSDev2008. This will take time, but it will allow you to create a site with all the required content pages etc ready to go and will reduce the time to create these sites.