Variations in SharePoint 2010 - Bring Custom Publishing Site Definitions into Variations Dropdown

I was trying to set up variations in a SharePoint 2010 environment and my target was to use one of my custom publishing site templates to use for provisioning the source variation site.

Since SharePoint says all the publishing site templates will be listed down in the Source Variation selection, I started with SharePoint default “BlankInternet” site template to create a custom site definition and make sure all the publishing features were enabled by the custom site definition. But the custom site definition was not listed down in the source variations dropdown. The solution I found was, we have to set the FilterCategories="PublishingSiteTemplate" property for the template in webtemp_ xml file as below.

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\XML\subwebs.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<portal xmlns="PortalTemplate.xsd">

 <web name="BlankInternet Site"

   siteDefinition="BLANKINTERNET#0"

   displayName="BlankInternet Site"

   description="It has no subwebs" >

 </web>

</portal>

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\1033\XML\webtempSUBWEBS.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<!-- _lcid="1033" _version="12.0.4518" _dal="1" -->

<!-- _LocalBinding -->

<Templates xmlns:ows="Microsoft SharePoint"> ;

 <Template Name="SUBWEBS" ID="84529">

  <Configuration

   ID="0"

   Title="Publishing Site with no sub webs"

   Hidden="FALSE"

   ImageUrl="/_layouts/images/officialfile.jpg"

   Description="This template creates a BLANKINTERNET site"

   ProvisionAssembly="Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c"

   ProvisionClass="Microsoft.SharePoint.Publishing.PortalProvisioningProvider"

   ProvisionData="xml\\subwebs.xml"

   DisplayCategory="Custom"

   FilterCategories="PublishingSiteTemplate"

   VisibilityFeatureDependency="97A2485F-EF4B-401f-9167-FA4FE177C6F6">

  </Configuration>

 </Template>

</Templates>

Once done, “Publishing Site with no sub webs” template can be seen in the source variations dropdown list.