Microsoft® SharePoint® Designer 2010 Unleashed

Creating New Site Templates: WSP Files

Unlike saving sites in SharePoint 2007, where the site was saved as an STP file and the difference, or delta, between the original site template and changes made to the site prior to saving it as a template were saved to the SharePoint content database, SharePoint 2010 sites are saved as SharePoint Solutions files, or files with a WSP extension. The WSP file is still saved to the SharePoint content database, though the dependency on the original site template is removed. In SharePoint 2007, when you saved a site as a template that site would remain dependent on the original site template installed on the Web front-end server and the delta stored in the content database. WSP files are whole templates and ...