Magento: How to change category page layout

You Can accomplish this task in three ways.

1- Using Back end

• Login to admin side
• Catelog -> manage Categories -> Choose your category
• Then on the tab section select Custom Design.
• Change the Page Layout as what ever you want.

2-Using “page.xml”

• Open page/xml located in ( app/design/frontend/your_package/your_theme/layout/page.xml)
• find the following line at the begning of this page.

<block type="page/html" name="root" output="toHtml" template="page/3columns.phtml">

change this to according to your desire layout: like:

<block type="page/html" name="root" output="toHtml" template="page/2columns-left.phtml">

3-Using “local.xml” (Note: This will not work if category option Is Anchor is yes)

Locate your local.xml in your theme layout folder (or create it if it doesn’t exist) and set the template per page. For example for the default category pages:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<layout version="0.1.0">
   <catalog_category_default translate="label">
     <reference name="root">
         <action method="setTemplate"><template>page/2columns-left.phtml</template></action>
     </reference>
   </catalog_category_default>
</layout>