Creating a Custom Component in Umbraco 7

Step 1. Create a partial view macro.

Create a partial view macro by right clicking the Views/Partials/MacroPartials folder and clicking Add View.

Alternatively you can use Umbraco, but you will have to review the Visual Studio project afterwards and ensure the new view is included in the project and in your source control system correctly.

In the example below, I create a partial view from the Site Map snippet using Developer->Partial View Macro Files->Create:

Create example Partial View Macro using Umbraco

To do this, in Umbraco, click on Macros, find the macro just created and click on the name to the left of the Ellipsis (…). Your aim is to tick the Editor settings “Use in rich text editor and the grid” and optionally “Render in rich text editor and the grid” as shown below:

Setting the Editor Settings for the Partial View Macro

N.B. Don’t forget to press Save when you are done.

If you ticked both options when you set up the macro, the macro is displayed in the content editor as well as being available from the Choose a macro drop downlist:

Displaying the Macro in the Umbraco Content Editor

Thats it!

N.B. There is no reason why you can’t put in a Html.Partial command and refer to other partial views and controllers etc. I tend to do this quite a bit in order to keep the code separate and to have a small partial view macro file that is just used to make other views available in the Umbraco rich text editor.