Question

Is there a way to define a custom template for the “no results” view of the Magento search?

The thing is that I want to use a 1 col layout if there’s no result in a search, and 2 col if there is a match.

Cheers!

Answer 1

i had the same issue: I hated that it was not easy to customise ’empty’ pages i.e. empty search results, category pages and basket page. So I made an extension a while back for this: https://github.com/drewhunter/EmptyHandles . Essentially, it gives you 3 extra layout handles:

1. catalogsearch_result_index_empty
2. catalog_category_view_empty
3. checkout_cart_index_empty

So in your specific case, you would use the following xml to change the template on an empty search results page after installing the module:

   <catalogsearch_result_index_empty>
        <action method="setTemplate">
            <template>page/1column.phtml</template>
        </action>
    </catalogsearch_result_index_empty>