[Development Guides Home](/guides)

# Guide to Site Publisher Templates

Warning:
We **removed** cPanel's *Site Publisher* interface and its templates in cPanel & WHM version 134. For more information, read our cPanel Deprecation Plan documentation.

## Introduction

You can create your own custom templates for cPanel's [*Site Publisher*](https://docs.cpanel.net/cpanel/domains/site-publisher/) feature.

Important:
**Don't** specify protocols in your templates. If, for example, the template uses hard-coded HTTP but a visitor uses HTTPS to access it, the browser will return an error.

## Create a template

To create an Site Publisher template, perform the following steps:

1. [Create your template's meta.json file](/guides/guide-to-site-publisher-templates/guide-to-site-publisher-templates-the-meta-json-file/).
2. [Create your template files](/guides/guide-to-site-publisher-templates/guide-to-site-publisher-templates-template-files/).
3. Create a preview image for your template. You **must** save this image as the `preview.png` file.
4. Store the template in the appropriate directory on your cPanel & WHM server:
  * Store templates that the root user owns within a template-specific directory in the `/var/cpanel/customizations/site_templates/` directory.
  * Store templates that a reseller owns within a template-specific directory in the `/home/username/var/cpanel/reseller/site_templates/` directory, where username represents the reseller's username.


Note:
* We **strongly** recommend that you do **not** store additional templates in the cPanel-provided-template directory.
* cPanel-provided templates exist in the `/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/share/site_templates/` directory.


## Site Publisher websites

When users publish websites via cPanel's [*Site Publisher*](https://docs.cpanel.net/cpanel/domains/site-publisher/) interface (*cPanel >> Home >> Domains >> Site Publisher*), the system generates the website files and stores them in the target domain's home directory.

Note:
When users publish a Site Publisher website, the system logs template information and the target directory to the `/usr/local/cpanel/logs/error_log` file.

Each Site Publisher website uses the following assets:

* [The configuration file](/guides/guide-to-site-publisher-templates/guide-to-site-publisher-templates-the-configuration-file/).
* Template-specific license files, if the template includes a license.
* Template-specific generated website files, which may include HTML files, images, fonts, JavaScript files, CGI files, and related subdirectories for these assets.


The system does **not** publish the template's `README` files or Template Toolkit files.