Site Templates vs. Solutions

The problem:

We migrated our farm from MOSS 2007 to SharePoint 2010. Yesterday, he called us telling us that in his new environment, his new site templates are now saved in _catalogs/solutions/Forms, rather than _catalogs/wt/Forms where he expects them to see. He manages to access the _catalogs/wt/Forms path, but finds this gallery empty.

The solution:

Remember that in SharePoint 2010, there are no STP site templates! They are now replaced with solutions (which have WSP extensions) that live in _catalogs/solutions/Forms . Two gotchas there, though:

1) On migrated sites, the _catalogs/wt/Forms path is still valid. But, it now just points to a list, not a site template gallery. The STP files that lived there in MOSS 2007 are not migrated to SharePoint 2010, though, because, I repeat, there are no STP site templates in SharePoint 2010.

2) Even though there are no STP site templates in SharePoint 2010, there are STP list templates. This can cause some confusion. So, remember, STP files are only used as list templates in SharePoint 2010, not as site templates!