title: Magento 1.9 - modifying layout
body: <p>What is the best way of modifying a layout for Magento 1.9?  I've been updating layouts using the admin backend but now need to do this programatically.  Several articles have mentioned using layout.xml but for some reason, my system isn't picking up the layout updates.</p>
  
  <p>Specifically, this is what I'm trying to modify:</p>
  
  <p><strong>Original layout</strong></p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;block type="catalog/product_view_options" name="product.info.options" as="product_options" template="catalog/product/view/options.phtml"&gt;
          &lt;action method="addOptionRenderer"&gt;
             &lt;type&gt;text&lt;/type&gt;
             &lt;block&gt;catalog/product_view_options_type_text&lt;/block&gt;
             &lt;template&gt;catalog/product/view/options/type/text.phtml&lt;/template&gt;
          &lt;/action&gt;
          ...
   &lt;/block&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><strong>Modified layout</strong></p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;block type="catalog/product_view_options" name="product.info.options" as="product_options" template="catalog/product/view/options.phtml"&gt;
          &lt;action method="addOptionRenderer"&gt;
             &lt;type&gt;text&lt;/type&gt;
             &lt;block&gt;catalog/product_view_options_type_text&lt;/block&gt;
             &lt;template&gt;catalog/product/view/options/type/newfile.phtml&lt;/template&gt;
          &lt;/action&gt;
          ...
   &lt;/block&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>My modified layout is located in:app/design/frontend/default/(company name)/(module name)/layout/layout.xml</p>
  
  <p><strong>layout.xml</strong> (just checking to see if it will add the block, "test"):</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;layout&gt;
     &lt;default&gt;
        &lt;block type="core/text_list" name="test"/&gt;
     &lt;/default&gt;   
  &lt;/layout&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><strong>app/code/local/(company name)/(module name)/etc/config.xml</strong>:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;config&gt;    
      &lt;modules&gt;
          ...
      &lt;/modules&gt;
      &lt;frontend&gt;
           &lt;layout&gt;
              &lt;updates&gt;
                  &lt;(module name)&gt;
                      &lt;file&gt;local.xml&lt;/file&gt;
                  &lt;/(module name)&gt;
              &lt;/updates&gt;
          &lt;/layout&gt;
      &lt;/frontend&gt;        
  &lt;/config&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Can somebody point me in the right direction?  Thanks!</p>