Remove ‘Orders and Returns’ from default Magento footer

In Magento 1.6 they’ve added an extra link to the footer called ‘orders and returns’. This link however is added using an ‘addLinkBlock’ call, which doesn’t have a remove equivalent. Normal links added using addLink can be removed using removeLinkByUrl. But as I said, this isn’t possible with addLinkBlock.

First I tried removing the block with a <remove name=”return_link”/> but this generates an error (call to a method on a non object in page/template_links). One solution would be to just copy sales.xml to your own theme and remove the addLinkBlock action. But I find this a nasty solution as it isn’t update compatible.

Another solution, which also will work and doesn’t require you to copy a layout.xml file, is setting the template to an empty template file. This can be done using the following XML in your layout file (you probably want to place it in the <default> handle):

<reference name="return_link">
    <action method="setTemplate"><template></template></action>
</reference>

This makes “toHtml” on the block return nothing (an empty string) and thus doesn’t add anything to the footer_links