Limiting The Custom Web Templates

Overview

You are using SharePoint 2013 On-Premises. You want to be able to filter the Site Templates that users see when the user tries to create a sub site. As Site administrator you can do this by navigating to Site Setting> Page layouts and site templates.

In this blog I will explain how you can implement the same capabilities via the code.

Limiting Custom Web Templates using CSOM

Removing all OOTB Filter Tabs using JQuery 

• Site creation page is a regular application layout page NewSbWeb.aspx located in _layouts/15 folder on file system of web server. So you can modify this page by hiding template picker control which is InputFormTemplatePickerControl
• Need to hide the OOTB Filter Tabs so that end user won’t be selecting any tabs
• Remove the existing OOTB Filter Tab options

var hiddenFieldElement = $("input[id*='InputFormTemplatePickerControl']");

hiddenFieldElement.next().children().remove();

var select = hiddenFieldElement.next().next();

var opts = select.find('option');

opts.each(function(){

$(this).remove();

});

Get All Available Templates of the site collection and add only Custom Web Templates

• Get All Available Templates of the site collection using  GetAllAvailableTemplates Method

//getting all available web templates from root web

templateCollection = web.getAvailableWebTemplates(1033, false);

• Filter only the Custom Web Templates required
• Add only the custom Web Templates needed to InputFormTemplatePickerControl which displays the Template

var templatePicker = $("input[id*='InputFormTemplatePickerControl']").next().next();

while(siteTemplatesEnum.moveNext())

{

var siteTemplate = siteTemplatesEnum.get_current();

if (siteTemplate.get_name().toUpperCase().indexOf("CUSTOM") != -1)

{

Templates +=  siteTemplate.get_name() + "----"  + siteTemplate.get_id() +   ',';

sitename = siteTemplate.get_name().substring(siteTemplate.get_name().indexOf("#")+1);

templatePicker.append("<option value='" + siteTemplate.get_name() + "'>" + sitename + "</option>");

}

}

templatePicker.prop("selectedIndex",0); //selecting the first option

//This is to hide the WebTemplate Label which shows the description of the OOTB web templates

var webtemplatelabel = $("input[id*='InputFormTemplatePickerControl']").next().next().next();

webtemplatelabel.hide();

}