The modern theme made available by the good folks at Varian for their free e-commerce product Magento is a great template and a good starting point for anyone looking to customise magento for their own look and feel.  However, the default layout has the Related products block in the left hand menu which unless you have very long product descriptions can leave the page unbalanced.

These instructions will move the block to to the centre under the product descriptions.

You can see this at work here on a <a href=”http://www.cl-floraldesigns.co.uk”>wedding flowers</a> site.
In catalog.xml find

<reference name=“right”>
<block type=“catalog/product_list_related” name=“catalog.product.related” before=“-” template=“catalog/product/list/related.phtml”/>
</reference>

Remove or comment out

<block type=“catalog/product_list_related” name=“catalog.product.related” before=“-” template=“catalog/product/list/related.phtml”/>

Change the following to include the above…

<block type=“core/template_facade” name=“product.info.container2″ as=“container2″>
<action method=“setDataByKey”><key>alias_in_layout</key><value>container2
</value>
</action>
<action method=“setDataByKeyFromRegistry”><key>options_container</key>
<key_in_registry>product</key_in_registry></action>
<action method=“append”><block>product.info.options.wrapper</block></action>
<action method=“append”><block>product.info.options.wrapper.bottom</block>
</action>
</block>
<action method=“unsetCallChild”><child>container1</child><call>ifEquals</call>
<if>0</if><key>alias_in_layout</key><key>options_container</key></action>
<action method=“unsetCallChild”><child>container2</child><call>ifEquals</call>
<if>0</if><key>alias_in_layout</key><key>options_container</key></action>
</block>
<block type=“catalog/product_list_related” name=“catalog.product.related” after=“-” template=“catalog/product/list/related.phtml”/>
</reference>

Note the use of after=“-” instead of before=“-”

You may need to restyle it depending on your layout.


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