Extending a component is a fairly straightforward process involving three steps:
- Disable the default vanilla component
- Copy the component’s code from the Vanilla Components v1 repo to your repo
- Edit as you like
We cover this in detail in a section of our docs meant for clients who’re upgrading from a previous version of Vanilla that involved cloning the entire repo, but the information is still applicable even if you’ve been using the packaged version since day one. Except the part that says your custom components won’t use themes. They will, as long as you copy the component code from the Vanilla Components v1 repo.
Note: this does mean that you will no longer have access to any updates that are made to the original component. If you want to support both the original component and a modified version, you can do that. You just need to name the modified version something different than the original version (and skip the exclude step!).