About publishing-enabled site templates

A SharePoint Online publishing site enables authors to create and modify web content and then publish that content on an intranet or public-facing Internet site. What makes a publishing site unique is the collection of features that support the content publishing process. These include check-in and check-out, scheduling and workflow, image and page libraries, web parts, content types, and so on.

A SharePoint publishing site is built from a publishing site template. The template is a file that dictates the overall look and feel of a site and can include the following:

• Web parts

• Page layouts

• Themes

• Image, page, and document libraries

• Customizations to the Quick Launch or global navigation

• Site content (list and document library contents)

Several different templates are available at both the site and site collection levels, and you choose the template you want to use when creating the site.

The following table describes each publishing site template.

Template	Purpose
Enterprise Wiki	A site for publishing knowledge that you capture and want to share across the enterprise. It provides an easy content-editing experience in a single location for co-authoring content, discussions, and project management.
Publishing Portal	A starter site hierarchy for an Internet-facing site or intranet portal. It can be customized easily with distinctive branding and includes a home page, sample press releases subsite, Search Center, and login page. Typically, this site has many more readers than contributors and is used to publish webpages with approval workflows. This template is available only at the site collection level.
Publishing Site	A blank site for expanding your website and quickly publishing webpages. Contributors can work on draft versions of pages and publish them to make them visible to readers. The site includes document and image libraries for storing web publishing assets and is available only at the site level.
Publishing Site with Workflow	A site for publishing webpages on a schedule by using approval workflows. It includes document and image libraries for storing web publishing assets. By default, only sites with this template can be created under this site. This template is available only at the site level when the Publishing Portal site template is used to create the top-level site.

Notes: 

• By default, you can select only the Publishing Site, Publishing Site with Workflow, or Enterprise Wiki site template when creating a subsite of a publishing site. You can, however, enable additional site templates by clicking Page layouts and site templates under Look and Feel on the on the Site Settings page.

• You can create a site collection using the Enterprise Wiki site template only if you are a term store administrator. It is not necessary to be a term store administrator to create a subsite that uses the Enterprise Wiki site template.

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