1.9 RWD Remove Newsletter from Footer

Question

I'm still figuring Magento out just wasted 2 hours searching how to remove the newsletter block from the footer in the RWD theme (I'm using a child theme of this).

Here is my app/design/frontend/rwd/mytheme/layout/local.xml

    <?xml version="1.0"?>
<layout>
<default>
<reference name="head">
    <action method="removeItem"><type>skin_js</type><name>js/slideshow.js</name></action>
    <action method="removeItem"><type>skin_js</type><name>js/lib/jquery.cycle2.min.js</name></action>
    <action method="removeItem"><type>skin_js</type><name>js/lib/jquery.cycle2.swipe.min.js</name></action>
    <action method="removeItem"><type>skin_css</type><name>css/madisonisland.css</name></action>
    <action method="removeItem"><type>skin_css</type><name>css/madisonisland-ie8.css</name></action>
    <action method="addLinkRel"><rel>stylesheet</rel><href>//fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Raleway:300,400,500,700,600</href></action>
    <action method="addlinkRel"><rel>stylesheet</rel><href>css/custom.css</name></href></action>
    <action method="addlinkRel"><rel>stylesheet</rel><href>css/what-we-buy.css</href></action>
</reference>

<reference name="footer">
    <remove name="footer.newsletter" />
    <remove name="footer_links" />
    <remove name="footer_links2" />
</reference>


</default>
</layout> 

but nothing changes. I think everything in the 'head' section is applying since I do not see any of that when I ->view source. I even tried removing

    <!-- Mage_Newsletter -->
    <reference name="footer">
        <block type="newsletter/subscribe" name="footer.newsletter" as="newsletter" before="footer_store_language" template="newsletter/subscribe.phtml"/>
    </reference>

from newsletter.xml but even that doesn't work. I have flushed the cache multiple times as well. None of the other blocks remove from footer either.

So the question is, what am I not understanding and how do I remove the newsletter box from the footer in 1.9 RWD theme?

Edit: Added my local.xml info. Also, removing code directly from newseltter.xml (or page.xml for other footer blocks) does seem to work when cache is disabled. I know this is not the correct way though.

Answer 1

Create a file app/design/frontend/rwd/default/layout/local.xml

and add the following contents:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<layout>
<default>
        <reference name="footer">
                <remove name="footer.newsletter" />
        </reference>
</default>
</layout>

It may be that you were doing it in a XML file before the newsletter template had actually been loaded, or if you were doing it in a local.xml file you had the wrapper tags missing, but I've just verified on a clean install of 1.9 and it's working as it should.

Answer 2

I stumbled upon this answer to a user with related issue

https://magento.stackexchange.com/a/5535/21254

And it was an error in my xml! There was an extra tag that shouldn't have been there.

Answer 3

Not sure what version of Magento this was for but after I followed app/design/frontend/rwd/default/layout/local.xml on my 1.9.3.1 there was no local.xml but a bunch of other *.xml one named newslettter.xml. So after renaming that file the newsletter link was removed.