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Customize a default site template

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SharePoint offers several site templates that are already available. These are the default site templates and they can be modified by using PowerShell or the REST APIs to control the entire site provisioning experience. For example, you can ensure that your company theme is applied to every site that gets created, or you can make sure a logging mechanism always runs regardless of which site template is chosen.

Apply a site script to a default site template

To customize a default site template, apply a new template script using PowerShell Add-SPOSiteDesign cmdlet or the CreateSiteDesign REST API. Specify the IsDefault switch to apply the site template as the default template.

Parameter Value Site template type
WebTemplate 64 Team site template
WebTemplate 1 Team site (with group creation disabled)
WebTemplate 68 Communication site template
WebTemplate 69 Channel site template

The following example shows how to use the IsDefault switch to apply the Contoso company theme to the default site templates. The site script referenced by ID contains the JSON script to apply the correct theme.

C:\> Add-SPOSiteDesign `
  -Title "Contoso company theme" `
  -WebTemplate "68" `
  -SiteScripts "89516c6d-9f4d-4a57-ae79-36b0c95a817b" `
  -Description "Applies standard company theme to site" `
  -IsDefault

RestRequest("/_api/Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.WebTemplateExtensions.SiteScriptUtility.CreateSiteDesign", {info:{Title:"Contoso company theme", Description:"Applies standard company theme to site", SiteScriptIds:["89516c6d-9f4d-4a57-ae79-36b0c95a817b"],  WebTemplate:"68", IsDefault: true}});

Which default site templates are updated?

The default site template for a communication site is the Topic template. The default for a team site is the Team collaboration template. When you apply a new default site template, it updates the Microsoft-provided default templates.

Restore the default site templates

To restore a site template to the defaults, remove the site template script that you applied. In the previous example, if the site template created had the ID db752673-18fd-44db-865a-aa3e0b28698e, you would remove it as shown in the following example.

C:\> Remove-SPOSiteDesign db752673-18fd-44db-865a-aa3e0b28698e

RestRequest("/_api/Microsoft.SharePoint.Utilities.WebTemplateExtensions.SiteScriptUtility.DeleteSiteDesign", {id:"db752673-18fd-44db-865a-aa3e0b28698e"});

Note

If you're not sure which site template is the default, run the Get-SPOSiteDesign cmdlet. It will list all site templates, and indicates which ones are defaults.

See also