Unlimited Possibilities!

From the earliest stages of Catalyst Development we made sure that our new theme offering would provide its users with truly unlimited capabilities and we’re happy to say that we’ve done just that!

Here is a list of some of the many new features you’ll find in Catalyst:

• Unlimited Custom Layouts, Custom Widgets and Custom Hook Boxes
• TONS of both Coding & No-Coding Design Options
• Two Included Child Themes for different levels of design control
• Rock Solid Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• The Most Comprehensive Font Control offered in a WordPress Theme!
• Full Integration with the Google Font Library API
• Powerful Import/Export options (including the ability to Export Full Blown Child Themes)
• A Custom CSS Building Tool that writes Custom Code for you!
• A Pure Framework Filled with Custom Hooks and Filters
• Comprehensive Documentation that’s built right into the Theme Options
• 4 Custom Widgets: Excerpt Widget, Author Bio Widget, Ad Widget and a PHP Text Widget
• Automatic updates (no more manually installing zip files every time a new version comes out)
• Full WordPress 3.0.1 Compatibility
• Built-In Image Uploader
• New “outside of the box” Page Templates offering you more control when you need it
• Clean, Fast, Efficient, HTML5 Validating code that provides a powerful foundation for The Ultimate WordPress Website Building Tool!

A Few Screenshots…

Here’s a sneak peek at the Catalyst Core Options page. Everything from robust SEO to Site Layout controls, this is the nerve-center of your site:

With the Dynamik Child Theme installed you get precise control over every aspect of your site’s appearance:

Amongst Dynamik’s Import / Export options is an unprecedented feature – the ability to export your design as a full-blown Catalyst Child Theme! A Child Theme that cranks out Child Themes…wrap your head around that one:

We wanted to strike a balance between offering something amazing to Coders and Non-Coders alike. The Custom CSS Builder is perfect for both – click a few buttons and it writes the CSS code for you:

With our amazing new Tooltips feature, documentation is always a mouseclick away. Not sure what something does? Click the nearest tooltip and read all about it:

New Pricing Structure

Throughout the development of Catalyst, our top priority was to keep a focus on simplicity. As a result, we’ve streamlined our offerings to two: Catalyst Personal & Catalyst Professional

Both Catalyst Editions include the following:

• Catalyst Theme: The core framework.
• Dynamik Child Theme: This is where you’ll find hundreds of design options, the Image Uploader and powerful Import/Export options.
• Basik Child Theme: If hundreds of design options is overwhelming, you’ll find Basik, with its limited design option set, more approachable.
• 20+ Importable Skins: Easily importable designs to get you started.
• Unlimited Members-Only Forum access.
• Catalyst Updates for Life.

Those who just want the Best WordPress Theme available and rock solid support will be able to purchase Catalyst Personal for only $97.  No restrictions on the number and location of installations.  No more Client Site fees or footer credit restrictions.  You just purchase the theme and then use it however you like!

Catalyst Professional is for the Power-Users out there who want all of the above as well as Catalyst Beta versions as they come out and access to exclusive resources for only $174.

For those of you who have been on the fence waiting to make your purchase, now is the time to get on board!  For the price of Frugal, you can get Frugal Theme plus instant access to Catalyst as soon as it’s released.

What About Current Frugal Users?

As we’ve stated in the past, Catalyst will be free to those who have already purchased the Frugal Theme (or those who purchase Frugal between now and the moment Catalyst is launched).

As far as licenses are concerned, those who own Frugal Personal Basic will then own Catalyst Personal and for those who own any of the other Frugal Licenses (Developer Basic and up) will own Catalyst Professional.

This Is Only The Beginning

This is just a taste of what Catalyst will bring to the WordPress Theme table.  So keep an eye out over the next couple weeks, as we will be announcing the launch of Catalyst very soon!

A Special Thanks

Finally, we wanted to give a shout out to our team member, David Mayfield (you may know him from the forums as justme), who has really been a huge help in allowing us to focus our attention on finishing Catalyst Development.  It’s been through his tireless efforts in the support forums that we’ve had the time and focus to get so much done in such a short amount of time.

Regards,

Eric & Seth

First and foremost we just wanted to say thanks for all your support.  Without this awesome community we wouldn’t be able to do what we do and that means so much to us.

The amount of emails, comments, votes and amazing name ideas was mind blowing and we truly believe that the future of our flagship WordPress product will benefit as a result.  We not only came up with a new name, but were reminded that a theme is only as strong as the people that use and promote it.

The winner is…

Catalyst ~ Congratulations to Marek Zee and thanks for the awesome name suggestion!

It was not only the overall community favorite, but it quickly became ours as well.  Conveying a sense of energy and forward progress, the word Catalyst paints the perfect picture of our brand new, soon to be released, Premium WordPress theme.

To Those Who Encouraged Us To Stick With Frugal…

Believe us, we know where you’re coming from, and this wasn’t an easy choice. Seth probably said it best in his comment on the original contest post:

“This is definitely what one might call a “calculated risk.”

Up until this point, Frugal has remained the perpetual underdog in the Premium Theme market; despite the fact that the feedback we’ve received from the community is that our place in the market should be at the top of the dogpile itself.

We’re aiming for tenfold growth of our user base in the coming year, and think the name change will be a much-needed catalyst in an increasingly competitive industry. We’re confident that people who already know about Frugal will be blown away by the drastic improvements we’ve made, and at the same time the countless thousands of people who haven’t heard of us will be more likely to get on board if we can find a name that doesn’t have some of the negative connotations that “Frugal” has (i.e., cheap, simple, generic, store-brand, etc.)”

So What Now?

I’m sure the question on all of your minds is when can I get my hands on Catalyst 1.0?  The simple answer is when it’s ready.  Seth and I are working day in and day out to get it there, but our number one goal is to get it done right, not to just get it done.

What we can say is this – our hope is that long before you’re popping the cork off that bottle of champagne to celebrate New Year’s Eve, your Catalyst-powered sites will be up and running!

Once again, thanks to everyone for your support in this process!

Eric Hamm

The Winner Has Been Chosen.  Click Here To See The Results!

Wow! That’s all we can really say after seeing such an amazing turn out of the Frugal Community for this historic contest. Both Seth and I were blown away when we broke 100 comments in only a few hours, but then to see it surpass the 300 mark and have thousands of awesome WordPress Theme name possibilities almost made our heads explode! Thank you all for sharing your great ideas, and for helping us take the Frugal Theme to the next level.

Before we get to the voting, I’d like to make a point that is more evident to me right now than ever before. A WordPress Theme is only as strong as the community that supports it. From getting the word out, to being active in the forum, to sharing the amazing sites you create. We need you as the Frugal Community to make your voices heard and take part in pushing Frugal past the tipping point in this competitive market. We’ll do our part by continuing to develop the best WordPress Theme around, and it is our hope that you will continue to be the best WordPress Theme Community around!

We’ve narrowed the list down from thousands to 10 finalists, and we believe that Frugal’s new name is in there somewhere. So without further adieu, we present to you the Top 10:

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

This poll will remain open until 11:59pm, EST, on Wednesday the 27th. On Thursday the 28th, we plan to announce a winner from the 3 most popular names.

You can only vote once, so make it count! Please continue the conversation below in the comments!

Why Frugal’s History Matters To You

Frugal was a game changer.

Before The Frugal Theme, I was running a WordPress web design business called Frugal Site Design. I wasn’t trying to move mountains or anything, just trying to build quality WordPress powered websites for my happy clients.

Frugal Site Design was doing well, but I wanted a better theme than what was available.   Everything was either too basic, or complicated enough to leave my clients confused every time they needed to make basic changes.

I needed a simple, squeaky clean & super flexible WordPress theme that I could use for all of my site designs.

The Frugal Theme was born.

I picked the name Frugal because of Frugal Site Design, but also because it perfectly matched the feel and function of this fresh new theme. At the time there could be no better word to stamp on it.
Times have changed and “Frugal” as a name now seems a few cents short of a dollar.

Frugal = Very Hungry Caterpillar

In the beginning I gave Frugal away for free. But after the constant cries from early Frugal adopters eager for a Premium offering, I ramped up development and launched “Frugal Premium.”

Still light on its feet, Frugal Premium added some terrific design and layout options that were ahead of their time. From color pickers to a Static Homepage, there were few other WP Themes out there that gave non-coders the chance to look like developers.

Frugal’s popularity was instant, and development landed at the peak of my priority list. Over the following months I added awesome options by the hundreds, continuing to refine the code that kept pushing Frugal to the front of the line.

Our community was happy and multiplying with amazing speed.

Yet there came a point when Frugal was no longer frugal. The outer shell was still the same, and the source code more efficient than ever. But an abundance of options had altered the user experience.

Sure, some of this was a natural progression, but some of my choices were admittedly a turn down the wrong alley. Too many options (and an increasingly confusing admin panel) left me wondering where Frugal should go.

Frugal was an old car that I’d tinkered with as much as I could, but I wanted to build a red corvette users could race around the track.

A Butterfly Is Born

In early 2010, I knew I would need help if I wanted Frugal to remain the best WordPress theme available. Through nothing short of Divine Intervention I “bumped into” my partner Seth and we’ve been working together cranking out 150 man-hours worth of code each week since.

With Seth on board, the creation of our holding company Cobalt Apps, LLC, and renewed dedication to pounding the digital pavement for better WordPress products, we worked tirelessly to turn our napkin blueprints into high-performance products for the WordPress community.

In the past few months we developed & launched Impact, our revolutionary WordPress Template Builder software, but more importantly, we’ve been working harder than ever behind the scenes to completely rebuild Frugal.

The idea of refining what was already there made sense at first, but it didn’t take long before we started seeing chinks in the armor. Though we’d be trudging uphill, starting at the bottom was the right way to go.

We’ve finished our beautiful Beta Butterfly, and realized our brand must change to reflect this incredible new theme. Frugal no longer fits. Though its features and efficiency make it far more Frugal than Frugal ever was, this WordPress Theme needs a new name to encapsulate all it has to offer.

Old vs New: From The Interface To The Mindset

Before:

After:

The screenshots above are each worth a thousand words, but let me put a finer point on a couple items. With Impact we realized how much flexibility can be offered when the sweet spot is hit. With our new WP Theme, we’ve taken many of Frugal’s features, then presented them to the user in a more intuitive way. We’ve moved some features around and rebuilt some from the ground up, but less has suddenly become so much more.

Frugal started out as a minimalist masterpiece. As time went on it grew into a powerful web design tool, though with certain limitations and a less intuitive feel. Our New Theme, whatever name we all decide to give it, will be the absolute best of both worlds.

We’re not saying that we’re about to launch a non-frugal WordPress theme. We’re saying our brand new baby deserves to have its own name.

Bringing The Community On Board

Over the past few years we’ve seen some pretty amazing changes in this WordPress community. Companies have come and gone, tons of products have been launched (some succeeding while others missed their mark), and many brands have evolved. Yet it is rare, and possibly unprecedented, to see the community participating in the process.

We’re here to shatter the mold. We want to hear your voice, and need your help in giving the future foundation of our company a name.

Before we get into the details, it’s only fair that we give credit to the person who came up with this awesome idea. Having some drinks while sitting around a table in the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas for Blog World Expo 2010 – Seth, myself, Matt Gartland, Leo Babauta and Jonathan Mead chatted about the Future of Frugal. We mentioned the idea of renaming our theme. Within seconds Johnathan spouted off this great idea.

Jonathan Mead, if you don’t already know, is the author of the awesome blog about living life without boundaries, Illuminated Mind. Not only a blogging buddy of mine, but a guy who is living his dream of total freedom.

When he shares his two cents about something as important as this, we make sure to listen.

Contest Details & Prizes

The process is simple…

Drop a comment below and tell us what you think is the best possible name for this freshly emerged Butterfly, before she takes flight.  We’ll leave the initial naming process open through this Sunday, October 24th. On Monday the 25th we’ll announce our 10 favorites and let you decide from there.

Voting will end on Wednesday the 27th when we pick the winner from the three names with the most votes. The winner will be announced the following day, Thursday the 28th.

If you win, you will be credited for naming the best Premium WordPress theme on the market, receive $100 in your PayPal account, plus receive copies of Impact and Frugal 4.0 (that might be what we call it if you don’t come up with something better!).

Let’s Do It!

We can’t express enough how excited we are for this process.  It’s one thing to release a powerful new product that will make waves in the sea of WordPress, but a totally different tier of awesomeness when your amazing community gets to take part.

We hope you feel the thrill of participating in a landmark event in our company’s history as well as the WordPress community.

Jump on board and help us make waves. We can’t wait to hear your awesome name in the comments. Please tell others in your community about the contest so they can take part as well. From Twitter to Facebook to blog posts to email, more minds means it’s better for everyone (the bigger the list the greater the chance of finding that perfect new name).

Seth and I thank you for being the best community we could ever hope for. There’s never been a better time to join the community than right now!

Warm Regards,

Eric Hamm

For most of you, Frugal has been installing and performing without any difficulty every time. Unfortunately, it’s become apparent that the Snapshots feature in Frugal was asking more of some Web Servers than they were willing to do. Those of you who had trouble in the past with permissions issues or other server-related environmental conflicts know that the benefits of the Snapshots feature were outweighed by the hassle of getting your servers to play nice with Frugal.

At the time we created it, Snapshots felt like such a great addition to the Frugal feature set that we worked it into almost all corners of Frugal, from every click of the “Save” button to our installation process to our import/export features. What we’ve learned in the few months since Frugal 3.3 is that, between the Snapshots trouble and some other rare issues, things were adding up. Lots of tiny leaks can sink a ship, and so it was that we decided to pour our efforts for Frugal 3.6 into patching all the little annoyances we could find.

The bright side of all of this is that it marks the first step towards amazing things in store for the future of Frugal! Our goal for Frugal 3.6 was to make Frugal as easy to install and operate as possible, regardless of what Web Hosting Company you choose to host your sites on. In the days and weeks following this release, we will be watching closely for any other details to fine-tune before we move on to the fun stuff.

Here’s a glimpse of what’s ahead for Frugal:

In Frugal version 3.7, we plan to round out Frugal’s feature set and options panels with some great additions. We’ll be taking some of the functionality we’ve built for our other projects and folding it into Frugal’s core. We’ll be completely re-vamping the way Custom Functions, Custom Widgets and Custom CSS are handled, opening the door for greater flexibility for Frugal Developers. Along the same vein, we will also be making adjustments to Frugal’s code to make it much more of a “Pure Framework.” We aim to keep Frugal as user-friendly as ever for newcomers, while making Frugal even more extensible for the hard-core developers out there.

Once we’re confident that Frugal’s raw power & elegant flexibility have matured & stabalized with version 3.7, the biggest project since the dawn of Frugal itself will begin – a jump directly to Frugal 4.0.

In Frugal 4.0, the number one focus will be a complete reconstruction of Frugal’s User Interface. We know that Frugal’s complexity has grown in proportion to its power, and the top piece of feedback we’ve received from the Frugal Community is that User Interface has become downright overwhelming. We hear you! Even as the creators of Frugal, we sometimes find ourselves asking if the option we’re looking for is in Content Design or Feature Design…or was it in Header Design?

The first step will be to wipe clean Frugal’s current interface. We will be starting from scratch with a blank canvas. We will spend as long as it takes, locked in the back room of our Mad Scientists’ Laboratory, deconstructing Frugal’s 600+ Features & Options and reorganizing them in the most intuitive and effective way possible.

Once the new interface is in place, we will answer the second-biggest request from the Frugal Community – Documentation.

Frugal 4.0 will have comprehensive documentation built right into the User Interface. We’re planning Tooltips-Gone-Wild. Imagine rolling your mouse over part of an option or panel and having the relevant documentation pop up in front of you, including instructions, links and images.

New Interface + Integrated Documentation = Amazing Things for Frugal 4.0!

We’d like to take this opportunity to give a heartfelt “Thank You!” to the Frugal Community. It’s your participation and feedback that steer Frugal towards the horizon and beyond.

We welcome any ideas you may have on how to make Frugal the end-all-be-all absolute best Premium WordPress Theme around.

Here’s to Frugal – Past, Present & Future!

Even though the Frugal WordPress Theme is used for all kinds of website projects from business sites to sales pages to any number of purposes, at its core it’s a rock solid blogging platform.  And to reflect this fact (as well as provide an awesome value to those Frugal users who want more Skins to play with) we designed and developed this all new Blogger Skin Pack.

To start it off we created a super clean, professional looking Skin design that would perfectly promote any content that was put on it’s pages.  Then we used this fixed design and created a fluid version to offer the user two different layouts to choose from.  After this we picked out 6 different colors to work with and created a total of 12 unique Skins for this awesome Skin Pack!

Finally, keeping with this Blogging Theme, we created two new Widgets and placed them in a plugin folder for easy installation (on a Frugal powered site or any other WordPress website).

One of the Widgets is an Author Profile Widget.  What this does is provide you with a super easy way to display any author in a Widget area, showing their Gravatar, creating a Bio and even displaying a “Read more” link to take visitors to a more in-depth author page.  The other Widget is a Banner Ad Widget that provides a simple, easy to use tool for displaying 125×125 Banner Ads in your sidebar, spacing them out perfectly.  It also provides an option to display an “Advertise Here” banner, linked to whichever ad page you like (on or off your site) and even an option to choose whether or not it opens in a new window.

The idea behind including these bonus Widgets was to provide even more value to the blogger looking for that perfect Skin to help take their blog to the next level.  And even if you’re not a blogger this Skin pack is perfect for just about any website in need of a clean, professional design.

So be sure to check out the Frugal Blogger Skin Pack Page as well as the Frugal Blogger Skin Demo Page and start mentally placing your blog content in it’s pages to see which color and layout is right for you.

The Frugal Team

We launched Frugal 3.5 while WordPress was still in Beta, with a commitment to launch Frugal 3.5.5 within a week of the official WordPress 3.0 release. Though there was nothing major, the WordPress Team did make some last minute changes to the WordPress 3.0 code. We’ve made adjustments to Frugal accordingly, and are happy to announce that Frugal is now even more totally WordPress 3.0 compatible than ever before with the launch of Frugal version 3.5.5!

If you haven’t already upgraded to the latest versions of WordPress and Frugal, we encourage you to take the plunge now. Both have some incredible new features to play with!

The Frugal Team

One of the Frugal Theme features that makes it so unique is its Skins. Giving the user the ability to Import a completely custom design with a few mouse clicks, the Frugal Skins provide a quick and easy way to give your WordPress/Frugal powered website a face lift in a matter of seconds. Not only that, you can then continue the customization process after the Skin Import, tweaking it to your liking, all from within the robust Frugal Admin Panel.

Isn’t A Frugal Skin the same as a WordPress Child Theme?

Absolutely not. A Frugal Skin IS like a Child Theme in that a custom design can be added to a site without touching the theme’s core code, but that’s pretty much where the similarities stop.

A Child Theme is basically a set of PHP, CSS and Image files that have been created from scratch and then added to a folder to be uploaded into the WordPress ‘themes’ directory for activation. Unlike a regular WordPress Theme, most of the functionality comes from a ‘Parent’ theme. Child Themes generally only change the outside appearance of a site. The nuts and bolts on the back end are all in the Parent.

A Frugal Skin, on the other hand, is still essentially The Frugal Theme. A Skin is a preset configuration of Frugal’s 600+ Custom Options. A Skin is created by adjusting options through the Frugal Admin Panels, adding some custom images, and doing a one-click export from Frugal to a .Zip file. To import a Skin, one only needs to use Frugal’s Skin Importer, select the .Zip file, and click ‘Import’. This pulls in all the option presets and images, completely changing your site’s appearance. For most Premium WordPress Themes, if you were to only update the options you might be very limited in what kind of designs are possible. With Frugal’s 600+ options you have an enormous pool of possibilities to play with.

Frugal Skins vs. Child Themes

What this all means is that a Frugal Skin has many advantages over a traditional Child Theme.

• Keep On Customizing: With a Child Theme, unless you want to fire up your favorite Text Editor and modify PHP and CSS code, you’re pretty much stuck with the design exactly as it comes. With a Frugal Skin, however, you can easily fine-tune (or completely re-customize) after Import without touching any code. In other words, if you see a Skin that’s close to what you imagine for your site, you can use it as a starting point and refine it to perfection.

• A Digital Eraser: Once again, a Child Theme is a folder of coded files. To edit the design you must edit the code. What if you’ve made a bunch of changes and want to go back to an earlier point in your design process? Maybe your design took a wrong turn at some point and you’d like to go back in time to try another path. With a Child Theme you’d have to try and remember what all your code looked like at that particular moment in time so you can re-create it. With a Frugal Skin, on the other hand, you can just use Frugal’s built-in Snapshot feature to undo the changes you’re not pleased with. With a Frugal Skin, you have all of Frugal’s raw power available to you while still being able to easily change the face of your site.

• Easy Backups: Let’s say you’ve done some major tweaking to a Child Theme. Now you want to back it up to retain that exact design and protect you from losing all your hard work. What you’ll need to do is use an FTP program to download the Child Theme folder to your computer. But with a Frugal Skin you just use Frugal’s built-in Export feature. One mouse click and you’ve got a .zip file with all your work preserved.

• A Frugal Skin Factory: A huge advantage of a Frugal Skin is that ANYONE can create one. You don’t have to know PHP, CSS and HTML to create a custom Skin. You just adjust the many Frugal Options, add any custom images, type in your Skin name and click the Skin Export button…Voila! Your very own custom Frugal Skin. Try THAT with a Child Theme! Additionally, we always welcome submissions to the Frugal Skin Store. If you’re just really happy with what you’ve created and want to share it with the world for free, we’ll gladly put your skin in our store’s ‘Free’ section. If your creation meets our standards for Premium Skins, we’ll put your skin in our store and split any sales with you 50/50.

We hope this post makes clear some of the distinctions between Child Themes and Frugal Skins, and shows why we think Skins are a perfect fit for the Power of Frugal.

The Frugal Team is proud to announce the release of Frugal Theme version 3.5!

Frugal celebrated its first birthday just a couple weeks ago, and we’ve pulled out all the stops to bring you the most advanced Premium WordPress Theme around.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s an overview of what we’ve been up to:

• Rearrangable Admin Page Option Boxes: The same flexibility and power you’ve come to expect in the options of your Frugal-based sites has been brought home to the admin interface. Each box of option sets is now draggable & sortable, collapsible & expandable. You can organize your admin pages however you want, with your essential options always visible and at the top of the page. The best part is, Frugal automatically remembers how you leave everything, and it will be there waiting for you no matter what browser or computer you log in from. Here’s a screenshot:

• Frugal Theme Admin Menu has moved ‘Above the Fold’: With 3.5, we’ve decided to carve some space out for ourselves between ‘Comments’ and ‘Appearance’ in the WordPress Admin Sidebar. Not only does this save users on lower-resolution screens from needing to scroll down to see the menu, but it’s a subtle way of demonstrating that, with this release of Frugal 3.5, we’re on our way to the top!

• WordPress 3.0 Compatibility: We’ve done extensive testing to ensure that Frugal is ahead of the game and ready for the upcoming release of WordPress 3.0. As WordPress evolves from a simple blogging platform to a robust Content Management System, Frugal continues to give you maximum control over your site. The most exciting new WP 3.0 feature, in our opinion, is the fully customizable Navigation Bar. Once you upgrade to WP 3.0, all you need to do to enable the new navbar on your Frugal sites is to flip a switch:

• WordPress MU / 3.0 Multi-User Enabled: Another exciting aspect of WP 3.0 is that the WP Crew has folded WP-MU into Core. Frugal has worked with WP-MU for quite some time, but we’re pleased to see that this feature is going mainstream. We’ve done some testing with Frugal and WP 3.0 Multi-User, and have been highly impressed. If you manage a multi-user site, by enabling Frugal and setting the Dynamic Styles to PHP mode you can let each and every sub-site have its own appearance with just one installation of Frugal! This is a perfect use for skins from our skin store. You can get thousands of unique looks with a single theme.

• Refined image inputs: With Frugal 3.5, we’ve removed the need to type in the names of your uploaded images into the options pages by hand, and replaced the old textfields with drop-down menus showing all available images. This should prove to be a big timesaver — no more “Did I call that file bg-header.png or header-bg.jpg?”

It’s impossible to fully express how thrilled we are to see how this has all taken shape. With all the new features of Frugal 3.5, combined with those of Frugal 3.3 ( read more here ) and previous versions, we’re confident that what we’re offering is the absolute best Premium WordPress Theme available! We hope after reading this post and watching the launch video, you’re as enthusiastic as we are!

In order to encourage everyone who comes across this post to help spread the word about Frugal, we’re going to be holding a weekly drawing every Friday in the month of May for a free copy of both the brand new Frugal Elements Skin Pack ($99) and Frugal Personal Edition ($87)!

All you need to do to enter is (re) tweet the following:

#frugaltheme 3.5 for #wordpress is here! http://bit.ly/b7KmyI Retweet for a chance to win the 4 new Elements Skins plus a copy of Frugal!

You can copy/paste the text above into your twitter client, or just click this button:

We’ll choose a tweeter at random every Friday afternoon, and both Publicly Announce and Direct Message the winners on Twitter. Everyone is eligible to enter. If you’re already a Frugal owner and are chosen, you’ll still get the Frugal Elements Skin Pack plus an additional Personal Edition License for your copy of Frugal.

• Along with Frugal 3.5, we’ve just released 4 new skins in the Frugal Skin Store. We picked the theme of “The Four Elements – Earth, Fire, Air, Water” and rolled with it! Check ‘em out. You can purchase each one individually for $29, or all 4 for $99. http://skins.frugaltheme.com

• We’re always looking for more User Skin Submissions! You can either send a Free Skin or you can submit a design as a potential Premium Skin. If we add your skin to the store, we’ll split all sales with you 50/50! Frugal now gives you the tools to export skins with a couple keystrokes and a single click of the mouse. What are you waiting for? If you’ve got a great looking design you’d like to submit to the Skin Store, we’d love to see it! http://skins.frugaltheme.com/frugal-skin-submissions/

• With the new localization feature of the Frugal Theme, we’re hoping to recruit users from around the globe to translate Frugal into their native language. If you’re fluent and would like to localize a your copy of Frugal, we’d like to hear from you. We’re giving away a Premium Frugal Skin to each person that completes a translation into a new language. So far all we have is English, so the door’s wide open for applicants!

That’s about it for this post. Please feel free to leave a comment below or contact us with any questions or feedback. Thanks!

-The Frugal Team

Click here to view the embedded video.

PLEASE NOTE: This plugin is no longer available.

Seth and I are always looking for simple solutions to WordPress problems and one escalating issue with WordPress is the continued memory limit of 32 megabytes and yet growing number and size of WordPress, Themes and Plugins.  Whether you’ve received a low memory error or was just unable to install all the plugins necessary to do what you wanted with your WordPress website, this 32mb limit starts to become a hindrance to progress.

Here are some common scenarios:

• You try to run the WordPress Automatic Upgrade program and it spits out a low memory error.  You end up having to de-activate ALL your plugins to get it to run and then have to re-activate and sometimes even re-setup your plugins when the update has been completed.
• You already have a good amount of essential plugins installed and active and you go to activate one more plugin that you need for you site and then WordPress spits out another low memory error.  So you end up skimming through your plugins to see if there are any you can live without so you can activate this new plugin.  You find there are none and end up having to drop a useful function on your site because there just isn’t enough room for them to all play nicely.
• Every time you load your WordPress Dashboard it’s just slow and sometimes renders memory errors instead of drop-down menus.
• Or, the drop-down menus are completely frozen so you have to click on the menu headings just to go to another page in your WordPress Dashboard.

Those are just a few of the common problems associated with low memory in WordPress.

What Is This Whole PHP/Wordpress Memory Limit Thing?

Different web hosts provide different limitations on different server resources for their users.  One of these limitations is a PHP Memory Limit.  This is the total amount of memory is what you as a user on your server and eat up with your website.  It’s kind of like if your computer has 2 gigabytes of ram then that’s how much memory you have to use with your Operating System, programs, etc..  And with this limit, once you surpass it you will get an error telling you that you cannot pass go and you cannot collect your $200 (or something like that ).

What WordPress does is force this limit when running a WordPress website to 32 megabytes.  This way, if you host is super stingy and only provides its users with 32mb of memory to work with you won’t have a problem.  But these days, most solid web hosts are going to allow at least 64mb if not significantly more.  And when WordPress first set this limit to 32mb the themes, plugins and WordPress itself were much lighter.  I mean, a few years ago the number of people trying to run a full CMS (Content Management System) website using WordPress as the platform was quite small.  But these days everybody and their brothers, daughters, dogs, nephew is cranking out a CMS site or 10.  So 32mb just doesn’t make so much sense anymore.

But Isn’t Small And Light The Way To Go?

When you can go small and light then that’s the way to go, for sure, but these days it’s really not always feasible.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen my share of bloated messes, with 50 large plugins causing all kinds of chaos both in the Dashboard and in the site itself.  We’re big fans of keeping it light whenever possible, but this doesn’t have to mean you need to bow to this 32mb limitation when a few extra megabytes will get you a whole lot more functionality.

Isn’t There Already A Solution To This Problem?

Yes there is.  But it requires you to add custom code to a core WordPress file and this is something many people, like myself, would prefer not to do.  But hey, if that’s your style, more power to you!

How Does The Cobalt WP Boost Plugin Solve This WordPress Memory Limit Problem?

The Cobalt WP Boost Plugin is a free, simple, light WordPress plugin that first shows you some useful information about your WordPress website such as your PHP version, WordPress version and your current PHP and WordPress memory limits.  Then it goes a step further and tells you how much memory your WordPress installation is actually using.  Finally, it provides you with the option to increase your WordPress Memory Limit to either 64mb or 128mb.

Just by changing a drop-down menu to your desired memory limit and clicking the save button you can double or even quadruple this often hindering resource limitation.  Now your WordPress Memory Limit has been increased and so has your possibilities.  No more need to de-activate plugins to run the WordPress Automatic Upgrade program.  No need to drop that super useful plugin so you can activate another super useful plugin.  This isn’t a plugin that forces you to eat up more of your servers resources, but it does raise the bar and let YOU choose how much or little you’re going to use.

Can Everyone Use This Plugin?

In a perfect world my answer would be yes, but unfortunately there are still some web servers who restrict their users to 32mb.  And if you were to try and set the limits above this threshold with the Cobalt WP Boost Plugin you would probably be met with a memory error that might even require you to FTP into your server and delete the plugin to get rid of the error.  So it is very important you know for certain that your web host will allow an increase to either 64mb or 128mb.  If they do then you should find the Cobalt WP Boost Plugin to be a great new tool to add to your WordPress arsenal, but if not, then you either can’t use this plugin or it’s just time to find a better web host.

If I Have The Latest Version Of The Frugal Theme Do I Need This Plugin?

As of Frugal version 3.3 you will find this same functionality built right into the Frugal Theme.  The main difference is that currently we only allow you to increase your WordPress Memory Limit to 64mb with Frugal and 128mb with the Cobalt WP Boost Plugin.  We may change this down the road, but for now we decided to go a bit more conservative with Frugal to reduce the potential of people pushing the limit higher than their web host allows.  But if you are using the Frugal Theme and you need to go higher than 64mb you can certainly use the Cobalt WP Boost Plugin to do so.  Both the Frugal Theme and the Cobalt WP Boost Plugin work fine together and whichever is set to the higher limit, that is the one that goes into effect.

How Do I Get The Cobalt WP Boost Plugin?

It’s super easy!  Just sign up for the Frugal Theme Newsletter by using the form in the sidebar.

See it in action!

Here you can see that with 32mb you can easily start to push the limits and start of feel cramped.

But with a few mouse clicks your breathing easier and able to do what you want with your WordPress Website.