Magento Custom Page Templates Not Appearing in Dropdown Menu

Question

I'm attempting to create a custom page layout for a Magento site I'm building, but having the most difficult time in the world getting the template to actually appear in the dropdown menu when I create a page. I've tried repeatedly, using different sources, to get this to work, and have no idea where to go from here.

The most annoying part of this is that it works just fine on my local copy of Magento. When I move the exact same code to my remote hosting, however, it no longer shows up in the list.

Here's an example of one of the layouts I've tried to create:

/app/code/local/custom/layouts/etc/config.xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<config>
     <modules>
        <custom_layouts>
            <version>0.1.0</version>
        </custom_layouts>
     </modules>
     <global>
        <page>
            <layouts>
                <home_page_layout module="page" translate="label">
                 <label>Home Page Layout</label>
                 <template>page/home-layout.phtml</template>
                </home_page_layout>
           </layouts>
        </page>
    </global>
</config>

/app/etc/modules/custom_layouts.xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<config>
 <modules>
  <custom_layouts>
   <codePool>local</codePool>
   <active>true</active>
  </custom_layouts>
 </modules>
</config>

/app/design/frontend/THEME/default/template/page/home-layout.phtml:

CODE...

Any idea why this might not be properly appearing? I've double checked to see if the theme is correctly set in Magento too, but that didn't affect anything (obviously).

Answer 1

You need to two things to get the layout

First : You need to add layout_handle for your layout

<global>
    <page>
        <layouts>
            <home_page_layout module="page" translate="label">
             <label>Home Page Layout</label>
             <template>page/home-layout.phtml</template>
             <layout_handle>home_page</layout_handle> <!--You need to add this-->
            </home_page_layout>
       </layouts>
    </page>
</global>

Second : Need to add the handle in your local.xml or your layout file

<home_page translate="label">
    <label>Home page layout</label>
    <reference name="root">
        <action method="setTemplate"><template>page/home-layout.phtml</template></action>
        <!-- Mark root page block that template is applied -->
        <action method="setIsHandle"><applied>1</applied></action>
        <action method="setLayoutCode"><name>home_page_layout</name></action>
    </reference>
</home_page>

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