Adding a custom Global Link !

Hey all,
This one is definitely a very useful little trick to know. In this walk-through we'll add a custom link to the global links section of a Master Page.




There are many ways to do this task, we'll be leveraging the MyLinks control in this scenario.

Let's give it a go!

1.) From the 12 Hive navigate to 12/Templates/Control Templates.

2.) Open the MyLinks.ascx Control Template.

You'll notice that this control template is very straight forward, containing mainly a table and a single control (the actual My Links Control). We'll add link to Google in the global site section.

3.) Modify MyLinks.ascx to look as such:

< %@ Control className="MyLinksUserControl" Language="C#" Inherits="Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls.MyLinksUserControl,Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" % >
< %@ Register Tagprefix="OSRVWC" Namespace="Microsoft.Office.Server.WebControls" Assembly="Microsoft.Office.Server, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" % > < %@ Register Tagprefix="SPSWC" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.WebControls" Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" % > < %@ Register Tagprefix="SharePoint" Namespace="Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls" Assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=12.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" % >
< table >< tr >
< td class="ms-globallinks" >< SPSWC:MyLinksMenuControl id="MyLinksMenu" runat="server" / >< /td >
< td class="ms-globallinks" >< asp:Literal id="hlMySiteSpacer" runat="server" / >< /td >
< td class="ms-globallinks" >< a href="http://www.Google.com" > google < /a >< /td >
< /tr >< /table >

That's it! Reset IIS and you'll notice a brand new link in the global links section of your masterpage.

You're probably thinking, "Why not hard-code the link into the masterpage?"

That's a good question. In theory everything in WSS 3.0 / MOSS 2007 is based on standard ASP.NET 2.0, so you can very well just hard-code a link into the masterpage or even create your own custom control and add a reference to it by leveraging a delegate control ( http://www.theartofsharepoint.com/2007/05/creating-custom-control-feature.html ). As developers we only need to remember that SharePoint is built from ASP.NET and with that understanding nothing is too much of a leap.

Hope this helps!
~:)