Hide Any Site template in Create Site section- SharePoint 2010

We may need to block creation of sites based on certain templates. For example my organisation does not like the employees to create blog site of their own in their personal mysite. 

There is a quick and dirty way to modify the webtemp.xml file to hide the template we dont want to show up. Its never a good approach to modify the default SharePoint config files. Also webtemp.xml file modification will affect farm level settings.

In SharePoint 2010 we can hide the templates of desired nature from the Create site page so no one can create site based on the particular template. This can by achieved by creating a new feature with a event handler code.

1. Create a new Empty SharePoint project.

2. Add a new feature element.Scope it to Web

3. Add a new event receiver to that feature element.

4. Paste  the below code(this code will hide the blog template at the site level)

public override void FeatureActivated(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties)

{

SPWeb web = properties.Feature.Parent as SPWeb;

SPWebTemplateCollection existingWebTemps = web.GetAvailableWebTemplates(1033); ;

Collection<SPWebTemplate> newWebTemps = new Collection<SPWebTemplate>();

for (int i = 0; i < existingWebTemps.Count; i++)

{

if (!existingWebTemps[i].Title.ToLower().Contains("blog"))

{

newWebTemps.Add(existingWebTemps[i]);

}

}

web.SetAvailableWebTemplates(newWebTemps, 1033);

web.Update();

}

5.Deploy the solution and activate the feature. You will no longer see the blog template visible to the user in the Create site page.

6. To revert back and to show all the templates use the below code at Feature deactivating event.

 web.AllowAllWebTemplates() ;