So your template file holds <html /> <head /> <body />
tags in it. It will be a bad design, because magento loads all these things through page.xml
layout file. If you want to see those codes.
For simplicity, I assumes you have a 2 column -left
layout for your page. Then the template that holds definitionof this layout has a design like this
#File:app/design/frontend/base/default/template/page/1column.phtml
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="<?php echo $this->getLang() ?>" lang="<?php echo $this->getLang() ?>">
<head>
<?php echo $this->getChildHtml('head') ?>
</head>
<body<?php echo $this->getBodyClass()?' class="'.$this->getBodyClass().'"':'' ?>>
<?php echo $this->getChildHtml('after_body_start') ?>
<div class="wrapper">
<?php echo $this->getChildHtml('global_notices') ?>
<div class="page">
<?php echo $this->getChildHtml('header') ?>
<div class="main-container col2-left-layout">
<div class="main">
<?php echo $this->getChildHtml('breadcrumbs') ?>
<div class="col-main">
<?php echo $this->getChildHtml('global_messages') ?>
<?php echo $this->getChildHtml('content') ?>
</div>
<div class="col-left sidebar"><?php echo $this->getChildHtml('left') ?></div>
</div>
</div>
<?php echo $this->getChildHtml('footer') ?>
<?php echo $this->getChildHtml('global_cookie_notice') ?>
<?php echo $this->getChildHtml('before_body_end') ?>
</div>
</div>
<?php echo $this->getAbsoluteFooter() ?>
</body>
</html>
As you can see all those tags that your are added through your block is already loading by Magento. "So don't make Magento angry by placing that code in your template file. If magento becomes angry, she will respond badly :)".
More info : Your block is added to the above code by this section.
<div class="col-left sidebar"><?php echo $this->getChildHtml('left') ?></div>
This will add all blocks that comes under left
block that are specified through layout files. So in order to be a part of it,(or to test) you just need to use this design code in your template files.
<p>$this->__('Baby, I am here')</p>
Normally I am using this for testing purposes :)
Conclusion
Without that, I can't see any problem with your code. There is only one chance remain. You may included these template files in wrong position. That would be the most probable reason that resist to show the output
signing off :)
handler
? Inside which layout file ?frontend/mytheme/default/layout/local.xml
. There I have a node<myrouter_mycontroller_myaction>
, because the page is called from that action, and the action calls->renderLayout();
. But in this XML node I also have<remove .../>
nodes, which are working, so that is why I am sure this is the right place to add the block.