delegate control in sharepoint 2010

SharePoint allows to customize OOTB functionality without the need for modifying the pages that come with SharePoint with mechanism called “delegate controls”.

A delegate control defines a region in an aspx page that allows the content to be replaced with our custom content.  This custom content is created via a SharePoint feature, and when deployed and activated, replaces the standard content at runtime.

For eg.

<SharePoint:DelegateControl runat="server" ControlId="PageHeader">

</SharePoint:DelegateControl>

ControlId attribute - the Feature we create will use this to substitute the real user/server control

                1)      Create control template under 14 hive

                2)      Create module to add control template

a.  <Control Id="PageHeader" Sequence="90" ControlSrc="~/_ControlTemplates/COBPageHeader.ascx" />

</Elements>

3)      Add module to feature

4)      Deploy

5)      Now custom control result should be reflected instead of standard output of PageHeader

6)      Happy Ending J