gitlab-org--gitlab-foss/doc/user/group/custom_project_templates.md

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Custom group-level project templates (PREMIUM)

Introduced in GitLab Premium 11.6.

Custom project templates are useful for organizations that need to create many similar types of projects and want to start from the same jumping-off point.

Setting up Group-level Project Templates

To use a custom project template for a new project you need to:

1. Create a 'templates' subgroup.
2. Add repositories (projects) to the that new subgroup, as your templates.
3. Edit your group's settings to look to your 'templates' subgroup for templates:

   1. In the left-hand menu, click {settings} Settings > General.

      NOTE: Note: If you don't have access to the group's settings, you may not have sufficient privileges (for example, you may need developer or higher permissions).

   2. Scroll to Custom project templates and click Expand. If no Custom project templates section displays, make sure you've created a subgroup, and added a project (repository) to it.

   3. Select the 'templates' subgroup.

Example structure

Here is a sample group/project structure for a hypothetical "Acme Co" for project templates:

# GitLab instance and group
gitlab.com/acmeco/
    # Subgroups
    internal
    tools
    # Subgroup for handling project templates
    websites
        templates
            # Project templates
            client-site-django
            client-site-gatsby
            client-site-hTML

        # Other projects
        client-site-a
        client-site-b
        client-site-c
        ...

Adjust Settings

Users can configure a GitLab group that serves as template source under a group's Settings > General > Custom project templates.

NOTE: Note: GitLab administrators can set project templates for an entire GitLab instance.

Within this section, you can configure the group where all the custom project templates are sourced. Every project directly under the group namespace will be available to the user if they have access to them. For example, every public project in the group will be available to every logged in user.

However, private projects will be available only if the user is a member of the project.

NOTE: Note: Only direct subgroups can be set as the template source. Projects of nested subgroups of a selected template source cannot be used.

Repository and database information that are copied over to each new project are identical to the data exported with GitLab's Project Import/Export.