I am extremely impressed thanks for sharing all information. It is a great post for the people to get the proper information.

@hartog actually in 1.5 the code has just been moved to a different method. Have a look in public function getFileLayoutUpdatesXml in the same file, line 418

hmm just a note here but maybe it would be a good idea to dig into the source for this site and add "htmlspecialchars()"
to the php for the comment post. would make it a WHOLE lot easier on your commenters.

from:

catalog_product_view>

reference name="content">
reference name="product.info">
action method="unsetChild">addto
remove name="addto"/>

/reference>
/reference>

Why are you doing both unsetChild-addto AND remove addto ? Was the unsetChild not enough ?

from:

addto

I love the way you explain it. Thank you!

http://www.webdosh.net/2011/12/magento-adding-and-removing.html

Hi,
I love your article and I kept everything clean with this. I know you worte this ages ago, but maybe someone can give me a hand with one problem. I cannot add a new reference between content and footer without changing page.xml. Do you know a way to do this?
It works when I change page.xml and add into the default layout and:

middlespace

Then I can use:

But I don’t want to change page.xml, can you help me out? Or maybe someone else?

if you want to create your own magento blocks and insert it in a layout look at : http://www.about-magento.com/magento-create-block-44

Thanks for pointing out this helpful technique. With the following code in local.xml, I was able to simply incorporate an alternate body style.

dark

Hi ehansen,

Thanks for great article lots of things are cleared to me by this article.

Great article, one issue that I've come across is when you need to reorder the JavaScript includes in .

How do you normally approach this?

@ Zahid - you should not be using a "static" block to fetch database content. You should create a new reference or create another block to pull it in.

@seif That is indeed possible, if you copy the page refrence code to the xml you can change everything.

For example the category page is 'catalog_category_default'. You can find it if you look in your page source, it's attaced to you body class (don't forget to change the - with _ in the xml).

Thanks for this article it is very helpfull, i was looking for this kind of tutorial.

Question tough: For example if i want to remove the ''My Cart" link out of the top.link, what is the best way to do this? Because in the checkout.xml this is inserted using a so i can't remove this using of because it isn't a block (am i right or am i totally thinking wrong)?

Also how can i change the quantity of the upsell blocks on the product detail page using the local.xml

Thanks!

Custom Layout Update,it can work, thanks for your share.

skin_csscss/style.css

@Jonathan_Hodges: Thanks, that worked like a charm. Didn't think of doing it that way. I found an article that in navigation.phtml loops through all cms pages and adds the cms-pages to the navigation. I think that fogged my "clear thinking". Happily, I posted my problem here and now I've got it working. Thanks again.

I am wondering if the following is possible:

I want to add a static block to the bottom of the content (between content and footer) for all pages, except for the checkout pages and the "My Account" pages. All other pages, being all CMS, Catalog, Products.

It seems to me that there should be a possibility to set this in the local.xml layout file. Can you help me with that?

Hi I'm completely new to magento. I just want to know where do i go to edit code. Is it through the Magento dashboard? Thanks i appreciate any help for this newbie.

I think managing all custom updates via local.xml is a bad idea.

If your upgrading Magento you should still merge any changes to layout or template files. This method does not solve that issue, it only makes it more difficult to track down which files need to be merged. For instance, if an update include some new blocks in you really wouldn't be able to find out unless you went through all the diffs between magento and then your custom theme.

Your custom layout changes should be all in your custom_package/default (assuming version 1.4+ which falls back to base/default).

If you're running on a version of magento that falls back on base/default then it's possible to only update the necessary files in your custom package and theme directories. When you upgrade, you compare the changes between the old and new magento versions, check if any of those files exist in your custom theme and only merge those files.

I've stared a script to help speed up this process, https://github.com/rgranadino/Mage-Upgrade-Helper
As a bonus it can also scan app/code/local for php classes which extend core magento classes and inform you if they should be reviewed. Currently only runs on *nix systems due to the use of the diff command.

Thank you for this tutorial, it´s really good. I was wondering if it´s possible to add simple text via local.xml, like a phone number, or an adress into the top.links section, I just can´t figure it out. Cheers!

I'm trying to add a new / custom reference to my store. I've set it up so that I've got custom_content reference in my xml under the <catalog_product_view> and it set to getChildHtml('custom_content') in the view.phtml file. I've also added the custom page in my page.xml file, so it registers.

However, a LOT of basic stuff is yanked out immediately (like the Add to Cart button). When I add it back in local.xml I get a javascript error Cannot call method 'submit' of undefined.

If I copy the ENTIRE content reference from catalog.xml I still get the same error. What am I missing?!

Thanks!

By the way, in case you haven't seen it, check out Alan Storms "Layout Unremove" extension. Lets you "undo" remove tags using your local.xml file. You can just add:

http://alanstorm.com/magento_layout_unremove_in_local_xml

@Mike plant
I'm sure you have found the solution to your issue already, but can you not use the local.xml file for your theme to remove the specific block?
e.g.
<reference name="root">
<remove name="product_list_toolbar"/>
<reference>

@ehanson or whoever wrote this
This has been very useful to me! Thank you for this post and your contribution to the Magento community! The file really needs more documentation as well as a central repository for information like this. But then I suppose Magento as a whole could use better documentation.

Ok here we go!

<reference name="header">
<action method="setTemplate"><template>page/html/homeheader.phtml</template></action>
<action method="unsetChild"><name>logo</name></action>
<remove name="logo"/>
</reference>