Create site collection on-prem without template

[nanddeepn]

Hello,
I am using this code to provision SiteCollection in on-premise.

Using CSOM, I want to create a site collection with "Select template later" option so that I can upload the custom web templates there and create a site based on it.

I get below error, when I pass null as template value:

Specified value is not supported for the SiteCreationProperties.Template parameter.

Could you please guide?

[frodale]

Hola,

did you manage to solve this?, i'm having the same problem

Regards...

[VesaJuvonen]

There is actually currently no known way to do this, since you cannot leave the template entry empty. We do not recommend usage of web templates for site provisioning no longer, rather approach this in away that you will always start with oob site and then apply needed configurations, like branding and content types on top of it using CSOM.

This is also something what we show cross PnP guidance. We do understand that this is significant change if you were planning to use web template for the site creation.

If you urgently need to have this capability for your on-premises, you can always fall back to the custom WCF end point model. If that case you'd expose the needed API using FTC, but since FTC is only used for exposing additional APIs and would not create dependency to the content, this will not cause long term impacts. See following blog post for reference - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vesku/archive/2014/01/02/provisioning-site-collections-using-sp-app-in-on-premises.aspx.

[tripathiaman]

Hi Vesa,

Regarding you above comment. Is this still true for SP 2016 or is there any way to create site collection with site template using csom.

Regards,
Aman