Is there a difference between creating a new site using the “Publishing Site Template” and creating a new “Team Site where you go into Manage Site Features and turn on SharePoint Server Publishing”? Or are they basically the same thing?
Hi Beth, the short answer is: basically they are the same. The publishing feature in SharePoint is really a combination of the SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure feature which is used to provide publishing functionality at the Site Collection level AND the SharePoint Server Publishing feature which provides publishing functionality at the Site level. When you use the publishing template it is preconfigured to use all the publishing features. Non-publishing templates behave differently and require that you enable publishing at two levels.
When you use a non-publishing template, such as a Team Site template, and then enable the SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure feature at the site collection level and then the SharePoint Server Publishing feature for the root site of the site collection, all the publishing features will be enabled. In this scenario the Team Site will not only have all the publishing features that you enabled but also all the standard features that were included in the non-publishing (Team Site) template.
By the way, you cannot pick and choose individual publishing features. Either they are all on, or all off. Obviously, if you enable publishing you don’t have to use any features that you don’t want. There is a laundry list of things that are added when you turn on publishing. Depending on what you want to achieve, you will decide which option might be better for you.
I hope, this similar discussion should be a nice startup to understand the differences between creating a site using “Publishing Site Template” and creatig a “Team Site with SharePoint Server Publishing Turned on : https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/93a11c5c-d3e9-4972-abd6-7b0f699987ba/difference-between-creating-a-site-using-publishing-site-template-and-creatig-a-team-site-with?forum=sharepointdevelopment
