Question

First off, I went into the category/product/list.phtml and copied all the code to c/p/grid.phtml. I then took out all the code to show something in list view and left the grid view code in place.

I thought I could then write a custom layout per category for the categories that I want to be grid view and set my default settings to list view. This is where I get stuck, I tried the following and get an error.

<catalog_category_default> 
<block type="catalog/category_view" name="category.products" template="catalog/category/view.phtml"> 
<block type="catalog/product_grid" name="product_grid" template="catalog/product/grid.phtml"> 
</block> 
</block> 
</reference> 
</catalog_category_default>

I just get XML data is invalid error.

Help please =)

Answer 1

I found a different work around.

I created a new theme and copied the default list.phtml file into it. So the only file I had looked like this:
app/design/frontend/default/%new template name%/template/catalog/product/list.phtml

On line 42 I took out the option to check too see if grid was available to just a true setting:

changed this

<?php if($this->getMode()!='grid'): ?>

to this

 <?php if(true): ?>

Now under my categories that i want as a list instead of a grid, i can just force magento to use my new theme to force the grid view.