magento blocks position

Question

I want to replace a module with another in magento how can I do this (means I want to put Community Poll module to the left ) is there anything like joomla?

Answer 1

As already mentioned, the layout is defined in the XML files. The best way to go about it is to search the layout folder in App/Design/Frontend/Default/whateverthemeyouareusing for the names of the blocks you want to re-arrange. You'll find there might be more than one call for a block. They will have a position stated in the reference name, either left or right, and can also be before or after another module. Changing these values will move the blocks around.

For example:

< reference name="left">
        < block type="catalog/navigation" name="catalog.leftnav" after="currency" template="catalog/navigation/left.phtml"/>
< /reference>

Answer 2

The layout is defined in XML files.

Read this to understand the basic philosophy and this for a crash course in changing the layout.

Answer 3

Have a look in app/layout/default/default/layout - you should be able to swap a value out in the XML there to cause a different block to be displayed.

I'll try and remember to look in more detail when I've got a dev copy of magento to hand and will update the answer.