Customize RWD Theme Correctly – Magento 1.9 Guide

So firstly I am making a few assumptions.

1. That you want to remove the normal navigation from the top and move it completely to the left hand-side,
2. That you are going to style it yourself :)

Firstly want you want to do is create a local.xml in your theme so you can change the xml of pages easily.

Then you want to unset the current main navigation.

<reference name="top.menu">
    <action method="unsetChild">
        <name>catalog.topnav</name>
    </action>
</reference>

Now what you want to do is move this into the left column.

<reference name="left">
    <action method="insert">
        <block>catalog.topnav</block>
    </action>
</reference>

Now in the end your complete local.xml file will look as follows.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<layout version="0.1.0">
    <default>
        <reference name="top.menu">
            <action method="unsetChild">
                <name>catalog.topnav</name>
            </action>
        </reference>
        <reference name="left">
            <action method="insert">
                <block>catalog.topnav</block>
            </action>
        </reference>
    </default>
</layout>

Now one very important thing to think about here is that not all pages have a left column. For instance in a default set-up the homepage and other cms pages do not have this as well as all product pages.

This is what you should put inside your local.xml file.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<layout version="0.1.0">
    <catalog_product_view>
        <reference name="product.info.sharing">
            <action method="setTemplate">
                <template>catalog/product/view/test.phtml</template>
            </action>
        </reference>
    </catalog_product_view>
</layout>

Mistakes that you have done

• You used two layout update handles: default and catalog-product-view. That is wrong. You only need one layout update handle. The right one that you should use here is catalog_product_view

• So catalog-product-view is unknown for magento. The proper name is catalog_product_view

• Since sharing block is already defined via catalog.xml, now you need to refer that block and then change the template by adding action setTemplate. That is what the above script does.

Hope you get the idea