Frugal Theme 3.5 – Raw Power, Simple Elegance – Ready for WordPress 3.0 Release!
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.
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.
In closing, we’d like to make a couple small announcements:
- 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
13 Responses to “Frugal Theme 3.5 – Raw Power, Simple Elegance – Ready for WordPress 3.0 Release!”
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Hi,
With the release of WordPress 3.0, do I need to purchase the “Developer Version” in order to create sub-themes for my various URL’s or will the Personal version work?
Cheers! Your Frugal 3.5 looks awesome!
Robin Fenchel
Century 21 Professionals
949.334.7373
Robin4Homes@gmail.com
Hello Robin,
Apologies for not answering your question sooner. We’ve actually been in the process of reorganizing our licensing structure to account for various uses of Frugal.
We now provide a special license for WordPress 3.0 Multisite / WP-MU called ‘Frugal MU’. This allows for installation of Frugal on a single multisite domain.
Please visit the Frugal Store for more details:
http://frugaltheme.com/frugal-store/
Let us know if you have any questions.
Thanks!
THE single best decision I’ve made regarding WordPress was to purchase the amazingly low-cost frugal. It’s impossible to fully say how enjoyable frugal is to use… and how great the frugal team is to work with.
Thanks for the great compliment! We’re so glad you’re enjoying Frugal.
Eric
Dear Eric (and for anyone undecided about purchasing Frugal!),
Frugal is the best, I mean the BEST decision I have made online. Not only is it a superior product and unbelievable value for money. The level of customer service is unparalled in my experience online.
Eric you have demonstrated a clear committment to quality improvement from day one.
Having Frugal has enabled me to have a great website. Sometimes working online, in your own business, can be a very lonely place, a bit scary especially when there is always something new to learn when building a web presence. But I feel that with Eric I have someone on my side, there for me, that is something that money does not buy.
Congratulations Eric for exceeding my wildest expectations. Consistently.
Warm Regards,
Gavin
Eric,
I finally got my new site up and running using frugal, I had some friends put it together for me because web design is not my specialty. But anyways thanks for the good product and take a look at the finished product and tell me what you think?
I currently have Frugal 3.25 for my site. I want to upgrade but don’t want to mess with my current design. Is that going to be a problem? How do I upgrade without messing with my design? Help me. I do not know of such things. I am a simple man who just wants to create content on my minimalist site.
Thank you to anyone who can help.
There is always a possibility for some kind of issue with any WordPress Theme upgrade, but upgrading from 3.25 to 3.5 shouldn’t be too involved.
These Instructions should help. They talk about upgrading from 3.2 to 3.25, but the basic ideas should still apply for 3.25 to 3.5.
And if you run into any issues just post a question in the Forum and we’ll do what we can to assist.
Eric
Hi Eric
I have been evaluating several wordpress theme platforms for a couple of days and I have narrowed down my research to Frugal and Thesis Theme. I see from their video they really hammer away with having rock solid code for seo purposes and fast loading. As an SEO guy, I want a fast loading theme as well because that is one of the factors now with big G.
So here’s my question
Have you specifically accounted for this new factor with G and probably the other search engines in terms of programming/coding this Frugal theme to also be rock solid and load fast as well? Can you elaborate a bit in terms of what you have done versus just a standard answer yes. I just want to understand in terms of a non programmer.
Thank you
Hey Darrell, Frugal has most certainly been developed and then refined over the many months to be both correctly coded for Search Engines as well as fast and efficient. There are many variables that determine speed, but one of them that comes to mind is a low number of database calls.
Wordpress themes run on a PHP/MYSQL foundation and every time a page loads there are at least a few calls to your server’s database to correctly load everything. Frugal is built to keep this back and forth between your server and it’s database to a minimum, resulting in speed and efficiency.
And with the built-in SEO options, Frugal provides it’s users with a solid foundation to present their content to both their visitors and search engines alike.
Eric
I was so frustrated with my inability to have full control of another premium theme until I was introduced to Frugal Theme. I love the total flexibility that it gives. I’ve watched the videos and I’m pretty convinced that I need to buy this theme.
With the other themes, you either keep hiring someone and keep paying lots of money or you are stuck, unable to do anything. That was my case for so long. With one click, I can import a skin, change the header graphics, do so many other stuff. This is very refreshing!
I will be buying Frugal Theme. Just love it.
i like this theme but too hard to custumise…. I have both version basic and full but i am using basic version… thanks
Catalyst Theme, the replacement for Frugal, provides a MUCH more efficient and easy to use interface.
Eric