use custom template file for magento homepage and product page

Question

I want to use a customized template file for magento homepage. I used the following code in the layout/local.xml file of my theme as described in this tutorial

<new_layout translate="label">
    <label>New Layout</label>
    <reference name="root">
        <action method="setTemplate"><template>page/home.phtml</template></action>
        <!-- Mark root page block that template is applied -->
        <action method="setIsHandle"><applied>1</applied></action>
    </reference>
</new_layout>

But the template path hint shows page/3columns.phtml. Anybody please specify the exact way to set a one template to the homepage and another to the products page.Also want to remove the Cart and compare boxes only from the sidebar of the homepage and show it in other pages.I am using magento 1.4.1

Answer 1

Your problem is in the way that you are specifying the page you want to change. The homepage is a CMS page, so you should edit the layout by editing the specific CMS page. From there you can change to a different page type and add or remove blocks at will.

If you want to change the layout of the catalog view page, you'll want to edit the tag <catalog_product_view>, which you can reference in catalog.xml. So change your code to something like this:

<catalog_product_view>
    <reference name="root">
        <action method="setTemplate"><template>page/home.phtml</template></action>
        <!-- Mark root page block that template is applied -->
        <action method="setIsHandle"><applied>1</applied></action>
    </reference>
</catalog_product_view>