Magento – Custom page layout not working

If you just want to avoid layered navigation for a category, then you can go with one of following options:

1. Make your category a default category. You can do this by setting isAnchor to No from admin side by selecting the categories that you need. Now your category will not use layered navigation and thus you will get required behaviour.

2. Put this code inside Custom Layout Update section inside your category page (by editing via admin)

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

3. Or use this below code if you want to go with layout update method only.

File : app\design\frontend\{package}\{theme}\layout\local.xml

    <?xml version="1.0"?>
    <layout>
        <CATEGORY_{ID}>
            <reference name="left">
                <action method="unsetChild"><name>catalog.leftnav</name></action>
                <block type="catalog/navigation" name="catalog.leftnav" after="currency" template="catalog/navigation/left.phtml"/>
            </reference>
        </CATEGORY_{ID}>
    </layout>

where {ID} should replace with category-id of your specific category. For an example, if category id is 15, then layout update handle will be CATEGORY_15

Hope that makes sense.

EDIT - 1

This is the final solution which came to my mind.You need to include page layout handle as one of the layout update handle for category page.

For this, observe to the event controller_action_layout_load_before and put this inside your observer

<?php
class ISN_Layouts_Model_Observer
{
    public function beforeLoadLayout(Varien_Event_Observer $observer)
    {
        $layout = $observer->getEvent()->getLayout();
        if (Mage::registry('current_category')) {
            $category = Mage::registry('current_category');
            $settings = Mage::getSingleton('catalog/design')
                ->getDesignSettings($category);
            $pl = $settings->getPageLayout();
            if ($pl) {
                $layout->helper('page/layout')->applyHandle($pl);
            }
        }
        return $this;
    }
}

You are done. Now clear your cache and you will see the changes that you have specified within your page layout handle, ie noanchor

EDIT - 2

Here is your full extension. Please checkout and feel free to use it.

EDIT - 3

For category pages, you can use the following condition check

if ($observer->getEvent()->getAction()->getFullActionName() == 'catalog_category_view') {
     //go on
}

See the changes in Observer.php in github.

^{Note : Out of 3 options, use only one option at a time. Dont forget to clear your cache after changes made.}

Suppose package:Learning and module: Custom

Module.xml looks like

<config xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="../../../../../lib/internal/Magento/Framework/Module/etc/module.xsd">
    <module name="Learning_Custom" setup_version="2.0.0">
        <sequence>
            <module name="Magento_Catalog"/>
        </sequence>
    </module>
</config>

And then create a layout xml following path -> app/code/Learning/Custom/view/frontend/layout/catalog_product_prices.xml

<layout xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="../../../../../../../lib/internal/Magento/Framework/View/Layout/etc/layout_generic.xsd">
    <referenceBlock name="render.product.prices">
        <arguments>
            <argument name="default" xsi:type="array">
                <item name="prices" xsi:type="array">
                    <item name="tier_price" xsi:type="array">
                        <item name="render_template" xsi:type="string">Learning_Custom::product/price/tier_prices.phtml
                    </item>
                </item>
            </argument>
        </arguments>
    </referenceBlock>
</layout>

Create template inside your module or copy base template file inside your module path should be -> app/code/Learning/Custom/view/frontend/templates/product/price/tier_prices.phtml