title: Magento layout basics
body: <p>Im going through a version of No-frills Magento Layout (perhaps 4-5 months old) and am basically stuck right in the beginning.</p>
  
  <p>In Indexcontroller, in the index action, I create a new block object.</p>
  
  <pre><code>public function indexAction()
  {
      //$this-&gt;loadLayout();
      $block = new Mage_Core_Block_Template();
      $block-&gt;setTemplate('helloworld.phtml');
      //print_r($block-&gt;getTemplateFile());
      echo $block-&gt;toHtml();
      //$this-&gt;renderLayout();
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I should then create a template file, namely helloworld.phtml and place it in the appropriate directory. I'm used to using a layout file to do this, but I am going through the book and am simply not able to render the file.</p>
  
  <p>I have placed the phtml file in the following locations :</p>
  
  <pre><code>.../app/design/frontend/default/default/template
  .../app/design/frontend/base/default/template
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>which is also the output of</p>
  
  <pre><code>print_r($block-&gt;getTemplateFile());
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Im obviously missing something here. any chance someone can point it out?</p>
  
  <p>cheers</p>