Page Layout for Categories using XML

Question

I want to have a specific layout for some of my category pages but instead of always using the XML Layout Update

<reference name="right">
<remove name="left.reports.product.viewed"/>
<remove name="newsletter"/>
</reference>

and so on....

Like this I would prefer to have my normal 3 page column layout and have this for specific categories as a Page Layout. So that instead of copying and pasting the code I could just pick LAYOUT A from the dropdown and this removing of the blocks would be done for me.

I thought I could create a somehting like this but then my page wouldn´t load any css and it would also not remove the blocks as I thought.

Answer 1

For all my pages I did it this way

Catalog.xml (so its on the product pages)

<catalog_product_view translate="label">
        <label>Catalog Product View (Any)</label>
             <reference name="content">
<block type="cms/block" name="sale_banner" as="sale_banner" before="product.info"><action method="setBlockId"><block_id>sale_banner</block_id></action></block>...

In the page.xml

    <default translate="label" module="page">
        <label>All Pages</label>
<block type="cms/block" name="sale_banner" as="sale_banner" before="feature_titles"><action method="setBlockId"><block_id>sale_banner</block_id></action></block>

Where "feature_titles" is a block on every page at the top. And then in the according .phtml file

<div class="col-main">
            <?php echo $this->getChildHtml('sale_banner') ?>

In the main div i call the childhtml and then I create a static block in the Magento backend using the "sale_banner" as Identifier