Frugal Skins vs. Child Themes In WordPress: Similar but Different
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.
10 Responses to “Frugal Skins vs. Child Themes In WordPress: Similar but Different”
Comments
Read below or add a comment...
Leave A Comment...
Social Profiles
Hi Eric,
Your post sounds pretty much like a response to my email I sent you the previous day (maybe I had a typo in my email?).
Thank you for a great explanation of the differences between the parent/child theme set up versus your Frugaltheme framework in conjunction with skins.
I spent some time this week trying to understand the child theme concept, but soon realized that it is fairly complex as it requires some coding experience. After what you have written, it sounds like it also has its limitations.
Frugaltheme on the other hand appears to be exactly what I have been looking for – the ability to customize layout and design of a theme with options galore, being so much more powerful compared to a single pre-designed (premium) theme, while at the same time (and that is big) giving me the option to actually create multiple templates (skins).
Please correct me if I am wrong, but a Frugal skin represent more than what would otherwise be known as a single page template, rather it can actually be a full site (multiple page) layout that can comprise individual layouts and designs for each page?
Looking at some of the sample skins on your demo site, I think that is exactly what it is which is really remarkable!
So this also means I can design different complete site designs (culminating in a skin) and actually switch between them similar to activating a new theme in WP, is this correct?
When I want to create my own skin, you are saying that once completed it needs to be exported (!) as a .zip file. Is this because it will be activated as a theme in WP (unlikely), or does ‘export’ in this case mean export to the underlying Frugal framework? (as much as the activation of an out-of-the box frugal skin requires an ‘import’)?
I take it that the Frugaltheme team is commited to continuously updating and improving the product (of course). So how does an upgrade of the theme preserve the customizations (for each skin created)? Is this because the upgrade only affects the theme’s core files and not the saved configurations done one the skins?
This post wasn’t a direct response to your email, but I’m sure it had an influence.
To clarify about what a Skin is, it’s definitely not just a page template, but an entire site design. When you Import a Frugal Skin you are pulling in a complete overhaul of your current Frugal Design Settings to quickly and easily customize your site’s look and layout.
The part about creating your own Skin goes as follows:
You don’t ever actually need to create a Skin to enjoy a custom design. It’s not like you customize your settings and then have to Export them as a Skin and then re-import them to use them. What we are referring to when we mention creating your own Skin is that at any point when you have customized your site using the Frugal options, you can Export those options as a Skin to either be used at a later date or a totally different Frugal Powered website.
Exporting a Skin just means downloading a zip file with the current settings and images assigned to the Skin, ready to be Imported into a Frugal Powered website at anytime to then take on that Skin’s design.
Most upgrades won’t effect a current Skin, but if there are a few additional changes to the options you can always just re-export the Skin so it will take on those changes.
Hope this answers some of your questions.
Eric
Hey Eric,
Thanks for your reply – I now understand. I guess the export of a newly created skin confused me…as you were saying in your original post “…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.” So what you meant was that it only needs to be exported if I do not actually intend to use it as the current newly created theme layout, rather than use it later or on another Frugal powered site. Cool.
OK, just one more thing …let’s say I have created my own site design (skin) from scratch, activated this as my modified Frugal theme (by simply saving it, I guess), then added content over time — and then at some point for whatever reason I decide to actually design a different skin for that very same site, to take on that completely different design (like a site overhaul). Could I then simply export the first skin (save it as a backup on my local drive) and then import the new design, and will all of the CONTENT (static content, pages, posts, comments etc) that was created while the first skin was in use, be preserved and still there to be displayed by the new skin? I mean, that would be similar to activating a new ‘standard’ theme in the WP admin panel (Appearance), right?
So all the files relating to the content – are they stored in the core Frugal theme, or in WP or with the skin files?
Sorry if all of this may sound basic to you, but given that I have only started looking into WP as a website platform and CMS system a mere week ago, I feel I am on the right track
So, based on your scenario, you could do some of this, but not the WordPress content part. Let me explain…
The WordPress content (ie. posts, pages, comments, categories, tags, etc..) is stored in a section of the database that is particular to WordPress. This is content that can be easily Exported and then Imported into another site (or the same site at a different time), but this is not done through Frugal. There is a place in the Wordprss Dashboard that allows you to do this.
What Frugal does when Exporting options (or a Skin) is grab all of the current Frugal Settings/Options and Images that have been uploaded into Frugal, and output them into a zip file. This file can be Imported into a different Frugal site or the same one if that’s what you want to do.
So with the WordPress content aside, yes, you could customize the Frugal options, Export that as a Skin, reset the options and create a totally different design using the Frugal options and then re-import your Skin from earlier, reverting back to that design at any time.
But no, this would not bring in all your posts and pages and other WordPress content because this is totally separate from the Frugal options.
Hope this clarifies things a bit more.
Eric
Hey Eric,
I wanted to thank you and Seth for answering my questions the other day. Looks like you guys rock
Eric–
*LOVE* the new look of your site’s front end!
%%robert
Thanks Robert.
Eric
So are Frugal skins necessary to use Frugal to the fullest? I’m keen to try Frugal, but not if I’m tied down to purchasing an add-on skin for each site.
Also, and sorry for off-topic but I couldn’t find another place to ask, if you purchase the Frugal Personal Basic now, and want to upgrade to Developer Basic later, will you pay the difference between PB and DB from time of PB purchase, or PD and DB with possible price increase since time of purchase?
Skins are only quick and easy ways to fully customize the Frugal Theme, but Frugal by itself is certainly the full blown theme. So you don’t have to purchase anything other than the theme itself to enjoy all the benefits of Frugal.
Upgrading from one version of Frugal to another is a set price (ie. the difference from the current price of Frugal to the current price of whatever version you’re upgrading to).
Eric
Hi Rosie and others….
Just a follow on from Eric’s comments there – as he says, Frugal is a full blown theme. And as a Frugal user for 9 months or so now, I can testify that it is a very friendly and easy to customise theme. It pretty much allows you to do anything within reason to adjust, tweak and manipulate the layout of your WordPress site to suit and get the desired results. There’s a little learning curve to get familiar with all the options for adjusting this and that, but pretty much all the options are selected from drop down menus which makes things really simple.
Even without using skins it takes me less than an hour to get a new site looking good. I even did one for a friend where they liked the default right out of the box so to speak. I just had to upload a header graphic and another image, add a couple of links in the footer area (easy) and away they went!
Check my signature link if you like for an example of a site built with frugal without skins in a couple of hours. It’s that easy. Oh and the frugal support forum is terrific too. Sounds like an advert, but I’m just very impressed with the product and the people!