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Customize a Sitefinity 4.x Control or Widget

by Rich Winslow | Nov 16, 2011

If you want to use a Sitefinity control or Widget, but you don't like the format or style, you can get a copy of the Sitefinity internal widget template, modify it, and then reference the modified version (ex. the Search Box).

If you want to know what classes Sitefinity uses on its controls, see the Sitefinity 4.3 documentation

If you want to get an existing control template and modify it, then you need to download and install the Sitefinity SDK, then look for the templates in the following compressed RAR file:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Telerik\Sitefinity 4.3\SDK\Content\Resources\WidgetTemplates.rar

Look in the Designers folder to find the set of control templates (ex. Designers\Search\SearchBoxDesigner.ascx)

In the following example, I have VERY CRUDELY changed how the SearchBox is formatted:

Here is the customized Search Box control:

<%@ Control Language="C#" %>
<%@ Register Assembly="Telerik.Sitefinity" Namespace="Telerik.Sitefinity.Web.UI" TagPrefix="sfweb" %>
<%@ Register Assembly="Telerik.Sitefinity" Namespace="Telerik.Sitefinity.Services.Search.Web.UI.Public"

TagPrefix="sfSearch" %>

<div style="background-color:#570301;padding:2px;">
SEARCH: <asp:TextBox ID="queryText" runat="server" CssClass="sf_searchText"></asp:TextBox> <input type ="button" id="searchButton" runat="server" style="color:white;background-color:#a1834d;padding-left:2px;padding-right:3px;" value="GO" alt="Search"/>
</div>

After you have created your own version of the template, do the following

Log into the Sitefinity backend
From the Administation tab, click on Settings
To the right of the title 'Basic Settings', click on Advanced
Towards the bottom of the advanced list, click on Toolboxes, then toolboxes in the submenu, then PageControls then Sections
Choose the Search section, then Tools, then the 'Search' tool
Make the following changes:
1. Keep 'Enabled' checked
2. Replace the value in 'Control CLR Type or Virtual Path' to the location of your user control. For example: ~/CustomTemplates/Search/SearchBox.ascx
3. Set an appropriate 'Title' and 'Description' as seen in the back-end list of widgets
4. Clear the 'Global resource class ID' field
5. Clear the 'CssClass' field unless you have a global class to reference
6. Set the 'Layout Template' field to the same path to your user control. For example: ~/CustomTemplates/Search/SearchBox.ascx
7. Leave the 'Module Name' blank
8. Leave the 'visibility mode' as 'None'
9. Click 'Save changes'

This is globally change all Search Boxes to the same template for consistency. If you want to vary the format from one instance of the search box then you can change it when you drag and drop the control on a template or page. If the particular control doesn't allow that, then clone the control.

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