Kentico Web Part Zone(s) generated by Transformations
<p>I am using a Repeater web part in Kentico to pick out pages from the content tree, to generate nicely repeatable snippets of structured HTML, based on an ASCX transformation.  (No surprises here - its been working great!).</p>

<p>However, a new requirement landed whereby alongside the existing HTML structure mentioned above, each repeated item must also have an area where we can add any amount of additional content; based on other web parts.</p>

<p>I have previously written a few "layout" type web parts; implementing <code>CMSAbstractLayoutWebPart</code>, as described <a href="https://docs.kentico.com/k10/custom-development/developing-web-parts/advanced-web-part-development-scenarios/developing-layout-web-parts" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a>, which has allowed me to generate a repeating amount of web part zones, so I feel like I'm half way there.  The issue with that though is that as it stands, I don't seem to be able to make use of the great power and flexibility of the transformations on the page type (which I really think I need to do, and seems like it should be possible..).</p>

<p>I thought I may be able to specify the WebPartZone control in the transformation markup directly, like in the following:</p>

<pre><code>&lt;%@ Register Src="~/CMSInlineControls/WebPartZone.ascx" TagName="CMSWebPartZone" TagPrefix="cms" %&gt;
&lt;cms:CMSWebPartZone ZoneID="ZoneIDHere" runat="server" /&gt;
&lt;div&gt;
  &lt;h3&gt;&lt;%# Eval("Heading") %&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;
  &lt;p&gt;&lt;%# Eval("Summary") %&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
</code></pre>

<p>But the design view doesn't seem to pick up the web part zone; so I'm assuming the page lifecycle may not allow me to do this as I'd hoped.</p>

<p>So what I would like to know is:</p>

<ol>
<li>Is it possible to include WebPartZone control in a transformation such that I can then bring in new web parts in Design view?</li>
<li>If not, what is the recommended way to go about this?  (If a custom web part is the way to go, I'd like to clone the Repeater web part in the first instance, as many of its existing properties will be needed - but presumably this must still inherit from <code>CMSAbstractLayoutWebPart</code>?</li>
</ol>

<p>Thanks!</p>

<h2>Update</h2>

<p>Good point about the editor's experience; I would definitely like to keep this as consistent as possible. The issue for me is that the requirements that drive my data structures are not always fully understood - and are certainly subject to change. Also, they are liable to vary (albeit subtly) across different products.  So I've been trying to keep templates and page types more or less the same across the board, and push out the differences into page properties that drive web part config through macros. So given that the transformation approach won't work, I expect a custom web part is the right fit for me.  </p>

<p>I shall post my findings!</p>