frugal 2.1 Raises The Bar

Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Viddler video.

So I’ve just released frugal 2.1.  The video goes over this in detail, but it’s been an amazing process as I’ve continued to refine frugal.  Trying to keep a proper balance between simplicity, usability and strong features, I’ve been working hard to maintain frugal’s minimalist stature.  After I finished with 2.1 I felt really good about this latest frugal offering.

First, Some Fixes

Just like anything in life, frugal is far from perfect, but this will never keep me from striving for perfection.  Since 2.0 I had found a few bugs that needed some attending to.  For one, IE6 was still giving frugal a few problems.  Mostly padding which sometimes resulted in a sidebar sitting below the content.  This should no longer be an issue.

Next, the Google Analytics section was only working the first time.  What I mean is, you paste your analytics code in the box in the frugal Theme Options section, click save and it would work.  But if you made anymore changes later on and clicked save, the analytics stopped working.  This has also been fixed and now works like it should.

Beyond that, I spent most of my adjustment time touching up some simple spacing issues that were minor and often unnoticeable.

Refining The Code

Though not noticeable to most, the code refinement was very satisfying.  I found ways to integrate features that were previously ‘extra weight’ and drastically reduced the styling code while maintaining the same, if not better functionality.

New Features

As I stated above, I go over these in detail in the video, but in a nutshell, I added more overall flexibility to the frugal design.  New feature sections, a new layout and even the option to NOT use some features, like the right navbar options (this is useful if you need more space on your navbar for pages or you just don’t want anything on the right side of your navbar).

While refining the options I was also able to refine some more of the code and continue the process of making frugal cleaner, lighter and better than ever!

frugal Free Got Some Love Too!

I’m still a big frugal Free fan as well.  Don’t get me wrong, I use frugal Premium for all my sites, but the free version is by no means a slouch of a WordPress Theme.  And because it was built off same core code as the Premium version, I was able to further refine frugal Free to an even lighter website experience.  But that’s not the cool part…

I’ve had a lot of requests to bring the Lite version back to Free.  The problem before was that I had it setup as two separate themes.  This was too much of a pain to maintain so I dropped it and just made it a Premium option.  But after changing the way the Lite version was activated in frugal Premium, I was able to easily integrate it into frugal Free…so I did.  Now, with a click of the mouse you can turn frugal Free into frugal Free Lite!

And finally, to step it up one more notch for frugal Free, I activated the Google Analytics code option in frugal Free’s Theme Options.  Nothing major, but a core feature that I think needed to be added to frugal Free’s feature list.

Support For Your frugal Endeavors

You probably already know about the frugal Forum, but I’ve just added a Tutorials page and will be adding videos as time goes on.  There are only a few right now, but this will grow as I address the needs that make themselves known.

Final Thoughts

Refining frugal, for me, is like taking a beautiful painting and slowly turning it into a masterpiece.  With every adjustment, added feature, and possible refinement, I am getting ever closer to my goal of the perfect WordPress Theme.  I’d love to have you with me on this journey and hope that frugal finds its way into your WordPress website.  Just know that if you’re a fan of frugal, I’m your fan as well.  I’m here to help and look forward to achieving great things online, with frugal framing our content!

Eric