When you create a new site collection, Central Administration creates a top level site and offers you the standard set of templates for that top level site.

If you want to add a custom template to the list of templates offered by Central Administration, simply:

• Create a custom template (.stp)
• From the command prompt, use STSADM -O ADDTEMPLATE:
  stsadm.exe -o addtemplate -filename filename -title "friendly name" -description "description"

Type stsadm -help addtemplate for details.

Then restart IIS by typing iisreset.

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Dan Holme
Office & SharePoint Pro Community Leader
MVP (Windows Server - Directory Services)

I have created a custom template and deployed it on the central admin.It is being shown under the custom tab and I am able to create sites using it also. but when I sent the same template to be deployed on the production environment, it got deployed from the command prompt. Operation successful and iisreset done. But when trying to create a new site using the template, it is throwing an error saying ::  "The template you have chosen is invalid or cannot be found".

what could be the possible problem?