Bigger SharePoint Templates

Everyone these days wants more from their SharePoint. In fact it seems everyone wants more full stop. This week was sad for me not just because I suffered the effects of flu (hopefully not Swine Flu), but also after twelve great years Gareth Barry left Aston Villa. I first started watching him when he marked Ian Wright out of the game in his first full Villa match when he was just 17. But Gareth now, like our SharePoint users and a certain Oliver Twist, wants MORE. He wants more money and so has followed the money trail to the mega-rich of Manchester City. Where money does seem to be no object. Perhaps we shouldn't begrudge him an extra £30,000 a week at least all the tax he is paying will help replace the money the MPs have claimed in expenses. So why are SharePoint users asking for more? The one limit that seems to frustrate them the most is the limit on the size that Site Templates can be. Many of us use Site Templates to move individual sites between servers or duplicate sites. When it works it is great. All you have to do is go in Site Settings on the site you want to make a template and click the option 'Save Site As Template'. Checking the box 'Include Content' means you can include all the documents as well. Unfortunately, sometimes the depressing message 'The site is too large to save as a template. The size of a template cannot exceed 10485760 bytes' appears and you are left to shake your head. So how do Officetalk advise getting around this size limitation? The answer this time isn't to just move to Manchester City where there are no limits, but to use the most powerful tool in SharePoint the STSADM command. If you have never used the STSADM command before you will be surprised at what an immense tool it is. It is a command line application that can perform all of the SharePoint commands that the Central Admin can perform (without many of the limitations) and lots more. I will try not to put my Techie hat on, but it can backup, restore, move databases, add webparts, change the password of the System account, change Site owners and probably solve the problem to Life, the Universe and Everything. Ok maybe it isn't quite that clever but it certainly has got me out of a number of SharePoint problems. Click here to download a poster of the functions of the STSADM Command Before I get too distracted with the joys of STSADM let me remember the reason for this posting and that is how to increase the size allowed Site Templates. In MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0 the almighty STSADM command can take this limit from 10MB to an impressive 500MB plus. So how do you do this? First, I always recommend on your SharePoint server copying the STSADM.EXE file to a place where you can find it because by default it is really hidden away in the real cellar of the Programme Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\.... Just search for 'stsadm' on the Server then copy it to the root of your C drive if you can. Then all you have to do is open the Command Prompt on the SharePoint Server (just type in CMD at the Run command). Now on the Command Prompt go to C:\ and then type the following (or copy and paste it from here I don't mind); stsadm.exe -o setproperty -pn max-template-document-size -pv 520000000 Press return and hopefully after about ten seconds (but be patient)it will come back and say successful. So now I think I had better make some suggestions to Martin O'Neill about who he can buy to replace Gareth Barry. I wonder if Victoria Beckham fancies shopping in the Bull Ring next season !!