MAGENTO - Blank page on category

Question

I'm working on my first magento theme, and I'm meeting difficulties.

My category pages ( http://namespace.com/category-name/ ) are blank. If I switch on the default theme in the backoffice, I got a correct display, but when I activate my package / theme, i got just the blank page.

When the template path hint are activated, I can see the blank page is trying to load my default layout, but the body remains empty.

Maybe it's a layout file I forgot, I tried to use catalog.xml in the layout folder of my theme to configure display, but without results.

Answer 1

I had the same problem. I checked the system.log in var/log.

Not valid template file:frontend/base/default/template/page/1columns.phtml

It couldn't find the template, in my layout local.xml file I had declared the wrong template

 <action method="setTemplate"><template>page/1columns.phtml</template></action>

There was a miss spelling (1columns), it should have been:

 <action method="setTemplate"><template>page/1column.phtml</template></action>

Also from Admin -> Catalog -> Category -> Custom Design I should have set Use Use Parent Category Settings to Yes

Answer 2

You should Look for magento compiler , the way you have solved the problem is the temporary Solution by selecting other template for category. Go to the Admin ->System ->Compilation -> and You can see if the magento compiler is enabled or not.. if it is enabled you should disable it and that Will do for you. T

Answer 3

I solved it by going into admin > catalog > manage categories > mycategory > Custom Design and selecting my layout manually in the dropdown for each categories. It's not the most flexible solution, but it's way better than a blank page, so i mark it as an answer. Feel free to answer since i'm pretty sure there is a better solution.