Add Custom Links to the SharePoint 2010 UI as a Feature with or without using Visual Studio (Via DANIELS)

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In this article, I demonstrate the process of adding a custom link and group to the UI in SharePoint as a Site Feature without using Visual Studio, as well as using Visual Studio.

In some cases you may not have Visual Studio installed on a Server running SharePoint, or may just want to quickly add a custom link in the interface such as on the Site Settings page, or the Actions or Settings menu for a Document Library or List. In other cases you may have a project in Visual Studio containing new functionality to be deployed to a SharePoint environment, that needs to be accessed through adding custom links to the UI. It makes sense to deploy the custom links as part of the solution feature, so I also explain how to achieve this from a Visual Studio Project.

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