title: Can I choose not to render a certain section in the layout page?
body: <p>I have an ASP.NET MVC layout page that is used by all the views in my application. Each of these views defines a "PanelRight" section, that is rendered in the layout page. However, now I would like to replace that section with some other markup. I thought it'd be as easy as commenting out the <code>RenderSection</code> instruction and adding my new markup, but I keep getting an exception ("The following sections have been defined but have not been rendered for the layout page"). </p>
  
  <p>I understand what the exception means; I only want to know how to get rid of it. Id est, can I NOT render a certain section that is defined in the views? Because I'd much rather not go through all of them and removing the section. </p>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT</strong></p>
  
  <p>I'll try to be more clear. </p>
  
  <p>Suppose this is my layout page:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;html&gt;
      &lt;head&gt; &lt;!-- HEAD STUFF --&gt; &lt;/head&gt;
      &lt;body&gt;
          @RenderSection("RightPanel", false)
          @RenderBody()
      &lt;/body&gt;
  &lt;/html&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and this is one of my <em>many</em> views:</p>
  
  <pre><code>@section RightPanel {
      &lt;div&gt;This is the markup of the section&lt;/div&gt;
  }
  
  &lt;div&gt;This is the body of my view&lt;/div&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Now I decide that, rather than having a RightPanel section that can be customized by each view, I want to have a fixed content instead. So I "remove" the section and replace it with the markup I want to use - straight into the layout (actually it will be in another partial, but <em>not in a section</em>, that's the point). </p>
  
  <p>Of course, I don't want to go through all of my <em>many</em> views to delete the <code>@section RightPanel { }</code>. I just want the layout page to <em>ignore</em> the section. To make a comparison, it's like I defined a class with a <code>DoFancyStuff()</code> method, and then in the client code I never call that method. Not a problem there, so I see no reason why it would be here. </p>
  
  <p>To recap: the view defines a section, the layout doesn't intend to render it. This results in an error. Is there a way to do this?</p>