Save As Template for Publishing Site SharePoint 2010
If the publishing feature is enabled on a site in SP 2010, the Save As Template option becomes no longer available. This is because it’s not actually a Microsoft best practice to save Publishing Sites as Templates as there are a number of inherent issues with the process.
If you want to live on the wild side and get ‘er done anyways – get that publishing site saved as a template by appending the following to your base site URL:
/_layouts/SaveTmpl.aspx
..so https://go.site.com/sites/subsite/ becomes https://go.site.com/sites/subsite/_layouts/SaveTmpl.aspx, and you are officially on the side of the rebels.