title: Set default Magento page layout to 3 columns
body: <p>Is there a way to set all pages (catalog,product,cart,checkout,search) as having a 3-column layout in local.xml, instead of specifying layout for each block?</p>
  <p>I tried the following code</p>
  <pre><code>&lt;?xml version=&quot;1.0&quot;?&gt;
  &lt;layout version=&quot;0.1.0&quot;&gt;
          &lt;default&gt;
                  &lt;reference name=&quot;root&quot;&gt;
                          &lt;action method=&quot;setTemplate&quot;&gt;&lt;template&gt;3columns.phtml&lt;/template&gt;&lt;/action&gt;
                  &lt;/reference&gt;
          &lt;/default&gt;
  &lt;/layout&gt;
  </code></pre>
  <p>It's not working; the log shows</p>
  <blockquote>
  <p>2011-08-12T07:20:10+00:00 CRIT (2): Not valid template
  file:frontend\base\default\template\3columns.phtml</p>
  </blockquote>