How to clone Manila sites?

[Rick Barter]

In a school situation it would be convenient to be able to create a 
template site  (perhaps for a student blog) and duplicate that site for 
a group of students where all that needs to be changed on the 
individual sites is the site name/owner.

Perhaps the preferences would be set up so all the students and 
teachers are already in the member group and so the privileges are set 
for those members .....  Maybe a group of several teachers who are 
"managing editors" and the student assigned to that blog as a content 
editor with privileges to post to their home page.

In my attempts to streamline this process of creating multiple student 
sites, I have tried having all sites use same membership group, but the 
privileges are not retained when this is done ie. Set up a site using 
with several managing editors or content editors that uses 
"studentblogMembers" and those magaging/content editors  become simple 
members with subsequent sites using the same membership group.

Also I have tried setting up a site and then clone that "theme" to be 
used in other sites, but the that new theme does not seem to retain all 
the preferences that were set in the original, so all sites need to be 
manually tweaked to become a facsimile of the first.

Maybe I'm missing some simple way of cloning a Manila site ..... if so, 
any advice would be appreciated.

thanks,

rick

Rick Barter
Technology Educator/Coordinator
Conners Emerson School
Bar Harbor, ME 04609
<http://www.emerson.u98.k12.me.us>