In Publishing Site, Save as Template link is disabled under Look and Feel.
If you want to save a site template within publishing site collection you do the following:
add “/_layouts/savetmpl.aspx” behind your URL.
So you will have something like this: http://servernameStick out tongueortnumber/_layouts/savetmpl.aspx and there you will be able to save a template.
If you get error after site being created. Don’t be panic as the default page was not created without Page Layout.
The following steps show how you can edit the page.
1. Go to Manage Content and Site Structure
2. Click on the site you are having trouble with
3. Click Pages (in the tree view)
4. Ensure that at the far right, there is an associated page Layout. If your reading here, you probably have a blank layout.
5. Modify the page by hovering over the page name to get the drop down action menu
6. Click View Properties
7. Click Edit to check out the page and then change the page type. We changed ours to “Welcome Page”
Now that your page is set to welcome, we can associate a page layout.
8. Hover over the name to get the drop down action and click “Edit Page Settings”
You should now be able to assign any available page layout to your site!
9. Select “Welcome page with Web Part zones”
