How to add a Site Collection Template to Central Administration

I create site templates all the time, based on look, feel and lists that I’ve defined. But today, I wanted to move a SharePoint site (that didn’t have much content, note that Site Templates are recommended to be under 10MB to add as ‘new sites’) and have that site and content as the ‘root’ or ‘/’ of www.vsharepoint.com, and without having to migrate all the lists and content.

So, the challenge was to figure out how to use STSADM to the template to the Central Administration area’s ‘Custom’ Site Template list, so I can pick it and base the root site collection on it.  As usual, STSADM was wonderfully cooperative and easy to use. 

What I Had to Work With

I had my .stp file ready, from the SharePoint Site Collection I was retiring (cheap SharePoint host, they turned out to be very unhelpful and unreliable – old rule applies, you get what you pay for…)

What I Did

1. Copied the .stp file to my new SharePoint Server
2. Fired up a Command Prompt
3. And Ran the following…

stsadm -o addtemplate -filename vsharepointsitebackup.stp -title "vSharePoint.com Site Template" -description "This template is temporary and is being used for creating the root site of www.vsharepoint.com"

That was it. And the result was being able to do the following…