How to remove complete header and footer from checkout/cart and afterwards all pages in magento

Question

I have to remove complete header and footer from checkout/cart page to all onwards pages in magento 1.7. All I know that I need to add <remove name="header"/> in the "checkout.xml" file but whenever I'm trying to add that same line, Either nothing reflecting on front-end or a blank page appear on front-end.

Answer 1

I'll paste here an example how to remove header from front page (this is the content of my layout update (local.xml) file):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<layout version="0.1.0">
  <cms_index_index>
    <remove name="header" />
  </cms_index_index>
</layout>

You can change context to whatever you want, for example should you replace cms_index_index with default, the update will apply to ALL pages.

Answer 2

Where did you add the code, perhaps you added on wrong XML node, add that inside <reference name="root"/> and clear the cache to see the result. If you do not want side columns as well then this might also help your cause.

    <reference name="root">
        <action method="setTemplate"><template>page/empty.phtml</template></action>
    </reference>