Being new to the environment I'm currently in, I wanted to move some of the Sites into a development VM. I used stsadm -o export to backup the files and then wanted to run stsadm -o import to restore them into my VM environment. I came across this error:

[3/12/2008 7:25:11 AM]: Start Time: 3/12/2008 7:25:11 AM.
[3/12/2008 7:25:11 AM]: Progress: Initializing Import.
[3/12/2008 7:25:12 AM]: FatalError: Could not find WebTemplate CPMININGCOMMUNITY#10006 with LCID 1033.
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.ImportRequirementsManager.VerifyWebTemplate(SPRequirementObject reqObj)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.ImportRequirementsManager.Validate(SPRequirementObject reqObj)
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.ImportRequirementsManager.DeserializeAndValidate()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.SPImport.VerifyRequirements()
   at Microsoft.SharePoint.Deployment.SPImport.Run()
[3/12/2008 7:25:13 AM]: Progress: Import Completed.
[3/12/2008 7:25:13 AM]: Finish Time: 3/12/2008 7:25:13 AM.
[3/12/2008 7:25:13 AM]: Completed with 0 warnings.
[3/12/2008 7:25:13 AM]: Completed with 1 errors.

The reason I wrote this post was to document the approach I took to resolving this issue because it may help others. The use of the word WebTemplate is confusing as basically this means that the Site Template is not available. I believe this is because in the API they use the word Web for Site...just to keep us all on our toes! Anyway, I found the Site Template.

Second Warning

Warning: The Office SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure feature must be activated at the site collection level before the Publishing feature can be activated.

In MOSS, there are two features that must be activated to support publishing. One is at the site collection level, the other is at the site level. The site collection feature must be activated before you activate the site feature.

Debugging in SharePoint logs

On finding a bunch of Solutions with Features to deploy I found that when I hit Site Actions | Settings from the root I got a "File not found." Error. I have my logs set up really high and could not find any line entries relating to this! There must be some guidelines on what to filter the logs by depending on what you are debugging somewhere! SharePoint Logging Spy helped out when I found:

Exception Type: System.Web.HttpException  Exception Message: The file '/_layouts/application.master' does not exist.

One tip is if you see the word "Error" in the header of the SharePoint branded error page...search your logs for 'Exception Type' within the message column.

So I copied the application.master from a base SharePoint install and it fixed the error.