SharePoint Template, Theme and Site Definition
If you have been reading stuff about sharepoint, you must have read/listened these three terms invariably. Yeah template, theme and site definition. All these three are different, lets talk about each one of these:
Themes
Difficulty level for this entity is lower. This is a collection of stylesheets and images to help creating a skin for the site. It’s all about the look and feel of your site. There are several style sheets already available in “TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033\STYLES” folder. But it is not recommended to modify these directly as it will effect other sites as well. Themes are available under “TEMPLATE\Themes” folder.
Templates
Difficulty level for this entity is moderate. This is a collection of pages, lists, libraries and contents of a site. You may save a site as template that can later be used on any site collection. When we save a site as a template by going to Site Settings > Save Site as Template, the saved template are not unghosted (template extension is .stp). The ones who are saved using Front Page are known to be unghosted(template extension is .fwp).
Site Definition
Site definition is the most complex entity of the above three. Site definition difference with template is that it uses single set of files to create a site. So for instance, you create 10 sites from a template and you wanted to make a change, you will need to make that change in all these 10 sites. On the contrary, if you create 10 sites from a site definition, making any change in one site definition will be reflected in all 10 sites. Site definition is available in folder “TEMPLATE\1033″.
Recent Discussions