Use Visual Studio 2010 To Create SandBoxed Site with Content

Question

I have a site that was built with the UI: It has a lot of custom .aspx pages with webparts and there are custom site columns, content types, and even a document library with several support files.

My goal is to create a Visual Studio solution that will produce the same site when it is deployed; keeping in mind that it should be kept as a sandboxed solution, if possible. There are no farm or web application items that need to be deployed. It is not a mandatory requirement to keep it sandboxed, but it would be nice!

I know that I can save the site as a template and import to VS, but that just makes a very large solution that has a lot of extra stuff, and seems even less clean if it is sandboxed. It also just carries the template that was saved and I wanted a cleaner solution.

I know that it is possible to create a web template feature, which is okay, but I'm not sure the best approach to take after that, or if that is the best approach. I am thinking that I may have to do this as a series of features that run in some order.

I thought it was much easier in VS 2008 with the VseWSS tools! I'm certain that it would seem easier to do it as a full site definition, and I can already feel the cringing that happens when I say that. Any thoughts are welcome!!

Answer 1

Indeed, Web Template sounds great. If Sandboxed, is NOT really a demand, I would go probably for multiple solutions (e.g. Fields cannot be deployed in Sandbox), and Files can only be deployed via Modules. Otherwise, you could opt for a simple Custom Web Template+ provisioning handler to attach content Types upon creation, create custom lists, etc.

Are you targeting publishing sites too, or only Collaboration?