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!

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

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?

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

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

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

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