Comments on: The Better Way to Modify Magento Layouts

By: David Oliver

David Oliver — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 09:29:16 +0000

@Umar: yes.

By: Umar

Umar — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 09:00:40 +0000

Hey ehansen, nice article, but can this also for meganto 1.4 ( I am really a newbie on meganto )

By: ehansen

ehansen — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 21:11:54 +0000

@Joel – Since your question regarding Magento resources, I’ve come across this excellent resource for learning Magento development: http://www.magentocommerce.com/knowledge-base

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 08:41:06 +0000

< reference name=”root” >

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 08:36:53 +0000

Sorry the code is:

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 08:35:38 +0000

local.xml is a great ideal.

It seems to me there is a difference between placing xml block in local.xml file and Magento CMS page layout design field.

For example: when I placed code:

in Magento layout design field of the Homepage, it removes the “Log In” link from the header.

However, when I put the same code to local.xml file, it didn’t remove the “log in” link from the header.

Does anyone know why?

By: ehansen

ehansen — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 14:21:29 +0000

@Martijn – I don’t know of an available cheatsheet. If I come across one, I’ll let you know.

If you look at the public methods in the Mage_Core_Block_Abstract and Mage_Core_Block_Template classes, you’ll see most of the methods that are available to all blocks. Also, keep in mind that all Blocks extend Varien_Object which means you can set and get data using the setVariable() and getVariable() methods. Method calls like setTemplate don’t exist in the aforementioned classes – the template just gets set using the magic method in Varien_Object.

By: Martijn

Martijn — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 20:58:09 +0000

@ehansen Great tutorial, thanks! I’ve been reading the updated PDF I found on http://www.magentocommerce.com/wiki/4_-_Themes_and_Template_Customization/0_-_theming_in_magento/designing-for-magento . Combined with your tutorial, creating your own Magento themes makes more sense now.

So basically, starting with 1.4, all you need, most of the time, is local.xml combined with skin parts like CSS, images and JS? I was wondering though. The XML references and all the basic functions: like removeItem, addCss etc: is there a cheatsheet for this? I’d love to have an overview of all the XML possibilities regarding managing Magento themes.

Thanks in advance!

By: Babs

Babs — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 12:40:57 +0000

And here’s the xml to accompany the above post:

Sorry

By: Babs

Babs — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 12:38:54 +0000

Hi! Thanks for this useful post. I have been successfully updating layouts using this method, but I have a problem with a global update I wanted to perform, and I was wondering if you knew why this doesn’t work:

If I paste the same update (without the layout and default tags of course) into a cms page, the block gets rendered as desired. However, it doesn’t if I place it in any of the layout overrides in my theme’s local.xml file. I’m a little baffled by this

By: ehansen

ehansen — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 15:27:59 +0000

@Steve – If our clients want to be able to edit all the stylesheets for a site, we generally provide them FTP access to our stage site so they can edit the CSS files directly. Other clients don’t want to edit existing stylesheets but want to be able to add small amounts of CSS ad-hoc. For those clients, we setup a “Global CSS” Static Content Block that we then output into style tags in the header of every page.

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 07:00:06 +0000

@ehansen – If we can use Admin UI to edit CSS, that would be geat.
At this moment, I am try to find a way to use Admin UI to edit local.xml file. More like an Admin UI Layout design page for local.xml file.

By: ehansen

ehansen — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 23:42:42 +0000

@Bryce (aka SEM Truth) – When we build our Magento themes, anything that the client would want to update is either editable: via a Static Content Block or via the Translate Inline feature. Ultimately, how manageable a site is determined by how well the theme is built.

By: SEM Truth

SEM Truth — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 18:04:07 +0000

It appears that Steve is looking to have an admin ui that would allow for certain changes should someone want to jump into the setup of their site and update the header without having to use FTP or editing parts of the xm files etc.

I agree that being able to edit the .css files through the admin would be an advantageous addition to the setup. Especially for web developers that want their clients to make certain changes without having to take the time to make updates that do not equate to enough hours or warrant a charge for such a small change.

By: ehansen

ehansen — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 14:09:42 +0000

@Steve – You can pretty much do anything via a custom module with Magento. What exactly are you wanting to accomplish?

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 05:24:56 +0000

Doing one page at a time is a lot of pain if you have thousands of pages.
It would be nice if we can do it once and it will update, say the header, on all the pages.
I don’t know why Magento don’t have layout design pages for the header, footer, left column, and right column on the Admin panel.

If Magento does not support them natively, can we do it via a module?
I see following article:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/949779/setting-a-global-variable-in-magento-the-gui-way
I haven’t try it yet.

What are the easiest way to put the header, footer, left column, right column layout xmls on the Admin Panel?

By: ehansen

ehansen — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 16:20:17 +0000

@Steve – No, there’s no way to edit the local.xml file from a native Magento installation. Layout xml can be added to specific product/category/cms pages if you want to edit the layout for specific items.

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 18:03:51 +0000

Great idea.

Is there anyway that we can edit such XML files via Magento’s Admin Panel?
I am trying Magento 1.4.1

By: Ross

Ross — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 12:03:33 +0000

Thanks for the helpful tip. I think this is a great way for managing adjustments to theme layouts.

By: Gilles

Gilles — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 10:31:59 +0000

@David: in short, you saved my life.
For testing purpose, i’m playing with a clean new installation from SVN (~1.4.1.1). I didn’t change anything in header.phtml. But i didn’t change anything in, say, footer.phtml.
I didn’t figure out that echo $this->getChildHtml() doesn’t exist in header.phtml.