Add custom menu item in Site Actions sharepoint 2010

The best Practice to add a Custom menu Item in SharePoint 2010′ s Site Actions menu is by creating a Feature and installing that as a wsp in the SharePoint 2010 environment.

In this post you will how to create a feature and solution package for adding a Custom action item in Site Action menu.

Steps are :

1. Create a new Project in VS 2010 and under SharePoint (left) select Empty Project.

2. Now enter the url of your SharePoint site for debugging and select deploy as a farm solution.

3. Now, once you have the project open, right click on the Feature folder and Add a new feature.

4. SharePoint automatically adds a feature and names it as Feature1. You can however change the feature name to something like CustomActionFetaure.

5. With this you will have a feature designer opened in front of you set the Title description and scope of the feature.

6. Now right click on the Project and add a new Item. In the Add New Item dialog, select Empty Element to create a blank element file.

7. Add the below Code to the element.xml file

http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/”>
SharePoint.StandardMenu”
Sequence=”1000″
Title=”Open custom page”
Description=”Open my custom page”
ImageUrl=”_layouts/1033/images/myimage.png”>
CustomPage.aspx”/>

8. Build the Project. Open the feature.xml file and verify that if contains the reference to the element.xml file.

9. Now Deploy the wsp and activate the feature in your site.