Product Magento-1.8 Layout Magento-1 Product List – Display More Items Per Row in Products/Category Pages

I've used the Display Products Grouped By Subcategories extension on category list pages before with success.

Another solution before we found this extension was to get the collection in the block and use a special attribute to order the collection. The code was as follows (only works under PHP 5.3)

class Class_Name
{
    [...]
    protected function _getProductCollection()
    {
        [...]

        $collection = $this->_productCollection;

        $collection->addAttributeToSelect('category_sort_value');


        // Do some fancy sorting
        $collectionReflection = new ReflectionObject($collection);
        $itemsPropertyReflection = $collectionReflection->getProperty('_items');
        $itemsPropertyReflection->setAccessible(true); // Make it accessible

        $collectionItems = $itemsPropertyReflection->getValue($collection);

        usort($collectionItems, array("Class_Name", "cmp"));

        $itemsPropertyReflection->setValue($collectionReflection, $collectionItems);

        $itemsPropertyReflection->setAccessible(false); // Return restriction back
        // End them fancyness

        $this->_productCollection = $collection;

        return $this->_productCollection;
    }

    public function cmp($a, $b) 
    {
        $a_sort = (int)$a->getData('category_sort_value');
        $b_sort = (int)$b->getData('category_sort_value');

        if ($a_sort == $b_sort) return 0;
        return ($a_sort < $b_sort) ? -1 : 1;
    }
}

You can use this class example to extend the Block class for the product list in search and sort the results like that. I hope this will help you in the right direction.

You can make the change by editing the following file:

app/design/frontend/theme/default/template/catalog/product/list.phtml.

The list.phtml file contains the code which manages the display for both list & grid view.

You should see something along these lines, separating the two views:

<?php // List mode ?>
...
<?php // Grid Mode ?>

Simply make the design changes using HTML and you'll be all sorted.