I'm no UNIX Guru, but I've had to set up a handful of slices for various web projects. I've used the articles on there to set up users, a basic firewall, nginx or apache, and other bits and pieces of a basic web server.
I foresee more slice administration in my future. Is there a more efficient way to set up users, permissions, and software on a clean slice than configuration by hand?
It sounds like you can create a new slice from the backup of an existing one. This might not work for you if the slices would be different sizes, different distros, etc. Their forums mention this: Clone a slice?