Site template is great when migrating site, you can just save an existing site as a template and then upload it to any sites you want. Most of time, it works just as well as it should be. But occasionally, it could drive you crazy. Imaging someday, when you try to create a site from a existing site template, you receive the following error message --

"The template you have chosen is invalid or cannot be found."

Sometimes, I hate the way how SharePoint deals with errors. First of all, the above error message doesn't make any sense, even you go to the SharePoint log files under C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\LOGS hive, you can hardly figure out what exactly the problem is.

11/06/2008 15:37:42.22...Failed to mark site-scoped features active in site 'http://testsite:88/ts'.
11/06/2008 15:37:42.24...Failed to apply template "Workspace Template.stp" to web at URL "http://testsite:88/ts".
11/06/2008 15:37:42.24...Failed to apply template "Workspace Template.stp" to web at URL "http://testsite:88/ts", error The template you have chosen is invalid or cannot be found. 0x81071e44
11/06/2008 15:37:42.24...The template you have chosen is invalid or cannot be found.

But after looking at the log, I start relizing that the issue might be related to feature activation (Seems SharePoint logs do give us a little help:)). So I looked into the manifest.xml file in the stp file (Stp file is in fact CAB file, you can simply rename and give it a CAB extension and open it using any unzip tools), and go to <SiteFeatures> or <WebFeatures> element, you can find there are a list of features under this element. Then what you need to do is compare those features with SharePoint OOB features, and remove those custom features from the list. After modifing the manifest.xml file, you can create a new cab file and rename it back with CAB extension, then you are on your way!

You're probably wondering how to get a list of SharePoint OOB features, well, there is a guy who already provided it to us. For your convenience, I paste it here again.

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2ac1da39-c101-475c-8601-122bc36e3d67 SPSearchFeature WebApplication   43f41342-1a37-4372-8ca0-b44d881e4434 BizAppsCTypes Site Microsoft.Office.Excel.Server 5a979115-6b71-45a5-9881-cdc872051a69 BizAppsFields Site Microsoft.Office.Excel.Server 4248e21f-a816-4c88-8cab-79d82201da7b BizAppsSiteTemplates Site Microsoft.Office.Excel.Server 3cb475e7-4e87-45eb-a1f3-db96ad7cf313 ExcelServerSite Site Microsoft.Office.Excel.Server c88c4ff1-dbf5-4649-ad9f-c6c426ebcbf5 IPFSSiteFeatures Site Microsoft.Office.Excel.Server 8581a8a7-cf16-4770-ac54-260265ddb0b2 PremiumSite Site Microsoft.Office.Excel.Server b21b090c-c796-4b0f-ac0f-7ef1659c20ae BaseSite Site   00bfea71-1c5e-4a24-b310-ba51c3eb7a57 BasicWebParts Site   695b6570-a48b-4a8e-8ea5-26ea7fc1d162 CTypes Site   c85e5759-f323-4efb-b548-443d2216efb5 ExpirationWorkflow Site   ca7bd552-10b1-4563-85b9-5ed1d39c962a Fields Site   fde5d850-671e-4143-950a-87b473922dc7 IssueTrackingWorkflow Site   14aafd3a-fcb9-4bb7-9ad7-d8e36b663bbd LocalSiteDirectoryControl 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RedirectPageContentTypeBinding Web   e8734bb6-be8e-48a1-b036-5a40ff0b8a81 RelatedLinksScopeSettingsLink Web   c5d947d6-b0a2-4e07-9929-8e54f5a9fff9 ReportCenterSampleData Web   a311bf68-c990-4da3-89b3-88989a3d7721 SitesList Web   0be49fe9-9bc9-409d-abf9-702753bd878d SlideLibrary Web   00bfea71-eb8a-40b1-80c7-506be7590102 SurveysList Web   00bfea71-a83e-497e-9ba0-7a5c597d0107 TasksList Web   00bfea71-4ea5-48d4-a4ad-7ea5c011abe5 TeamCollab Web   29d85c25-170c-4df9-a641-12db0b9d4130 TransMgmtLib Web   2fa4db13-4109-4a1d-b47c-c7991d4cc934 UpgradeOnlyFile Web   00bfea71-c796-4402-9f2f-0eb9a6e71b18 WebPageLibrary Web   8c6a6980-c3d9-440e-944c-77f93bc65a7e WikiWelcome Web   00bfea71-4ea5-48d4-a4ad-305cf7030140 WorkflowHistoryList Web   00bfea71-2d77-4a75-9fca-76516689e21a workflowProcessList Web   00bfea71-1e1d-4562-b56a-f05371bb0115 XmlFormLibrary Web

Feature Id	Display Name	Scope	Solution

Someone's maybe wondering, "Why you not just deactive the feature from the site and then save it as a template", to be honest, that site template is took from a running production environment, I don't have enough permission to do that and our customers don't willing to take the risk to deactive those features from a production environment. It's not that useful for most of cases, but when one day you were in the same situation as I was, then you would give me a hug:).