A follow up ... since you, Dennis, don't suffer from 'clas' (command line avoidance syndrome') ... what you are doing can be done more quickly via command line!
restoring a template backup course might be faster/to do with command line
script in code/admin/cli/ called restore_backup.php.
Help on that script:
Restore backup into provided category.
Options:
-f, --file=STRING Path to the backup file.
-c, --categoryid=INT ID of the category to restore too.
-s, --showdebugging Show developer level debugging information
-h, --help Print out this help.
Example:
$sudo -u www-data /usr/bin/php admin/cli/restore_backup.php --file=/path/to/backup/file.mbz --categoryid=1
Your category could be a new one called 'staging'.
The path to backup file could be ./nameofbackup.mbz
From command line, after the first one finishes, up arrow, enter and the second is
restored. up arrow, enter and the third is restored. How simple is that?
Faster? Web service not involved so am gonna guess ... some!
You would still have. to go into each for minor changes but the move to cohort etc
probably best done via GUI anyway.
My 2 cents.
'SoS', Ken