How I Re-Designed frugalTheme.com In A Matter of Minutes With frugal 3.0

Eric Hamm — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 01:40:46 +0000

frugal (version 3.0) offers its users SO MUCH control over almost every aspect of their site’s look, feel and function that little, to ZERO coding is necessary. To give an example of this I’ve created a video that shows how I re-designed this very website, changing its look from the stock design to its current look, in only a matter of minutes and with absolutely ZERO CODING.

Click here to view the embedded video.

frugal 3.0 Is Here and…WOW, This Thing Is Freaking Awesome!!

Eric Hamm — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 02:11:35 +0000

Let me just cut to the chase and tell you that I’ve taken all that made frugal Premium awesome and all that made frugal Professional awesome and molded them together to make one AMAZING THEME! But it’s not just the two themes combined. It’s SO much more!

So yes, frugal Premium and frugal Professional are no more. Don’t worry, I’m still supporting them, but this theme is now just frugal and I think you’ll be happy to call it your own.

Full Blown SEO Action!

Before I get into listing some of the many features of frugal 3.0 I just wanted to let you know that frugal now has full blown SEO built in. NoIndex, NoFollow options, full meta control, In-Page/In-Post options, full control over your page titles, etc… So you can get rid of that SEO plugin because frugal’s ready to take on your Search Engine Optimization needs.

CMS Page Template

Per request from a few frugal users I’ve created a page template that enjoys its own set of sidebars and gives you full control over their size, amount and position. This CMS page also has its own hooks so you go even further to separate your more traditional website content and your blog stuff (only if you want to of course .

Did I Mention frugal Is Fast?

I’ve spent a lot of time reducing the clutter, adding caching features and making frugal one fast and efficient Premium WordPress Theme. I’ve even included an option to activate a simple Database Query speed test in your site’s footer to show you how fast and efficient your theme and plugins really are.

ALL NEW Theme Options Section

I spent the better part of a week completely re-building the frugal Theme Options section. It’s now much easier to read and navigate. It also consists of 5 separate pages, not just one long one.

No More Page Or Category ID’s On The Static Homepage

If you already use frugal then you know you can feature pages and posts on your ‘Static Homepage’. You used to have to specify a Page or Category ID to feature that content. Now you’ll find easy to use drop-down menus to choose what content to feature. Just a note: You still have to specify a Post ID if you want to feature your post by that means (ie. Not by category).

Custom Widgets And Hook Options

I’ve dedicated an entire page to giving you the ability to add your own custom functions/widgets and then easily hook them into your frugal WordPress Website with a simple drop down menu. You not only have the ability to create a custom widget, you have full control over margins, padding, background color, float location, name, etc..

Speaking Of Details…

I can’t say this enough; frugal 3.0 offers the user FULL CONTROL over their WordPress website. I mean FULL control. You’ll be hard pressed to find a situation where you actually have to touch a snippet of code. I’m not saying it won’t happen, but I’ve gone to great lengths to make sure it’s a rarity.

Basically what I did was use the Beta version of frugal 3.0 to update my main websites (frugalTheme.com and MotivateThyself.com) and whenever I came across a situation where I need to touch the frugal Custom Stylesheet I would just add that as a feature. I kept doing this until I no longer need to even touch that file (which is still a frugal option, though .

Awesome Border Options!!

One of the design features that I’ve added that I think is really cool is full border control. Now you can add borders to areas like your sidebars, content column, full content/sidebar area, feature and home area and so on. And not just add a border, but fine tune your borders. Chose the type, style (eg. solid, dotted, dashed, double) thickness, color and then adjust the MANY margin and padding options to get your layout just PERFECT!

Organization Is Key

All this talk about adding features makes me think about a cluttered mess. So let me assure you that I spent a lot of time organizing the frugal Theme Options pages to be easy to read, maneuver and use. My goal was to enhance your user experience, not fill it with bloat.

Some More Details…

The following is a list of just SOME of the features you’ll enjoy with the frugal 3.0 Premium WordPress Theme:

Full font options for just about every text element. You can chose things like font…type…color…size…link color…link hover color…weight…line-height…etc…
Full border options (as mentioned above).
Full margin and padding options.
A ROBUST Static Homepage.
An ALL NEW CMS Page Template that takes frugal that much farther in the pursuit to be more than ‘just a blog theme’.
Even more ‘Main Layout’ options.
The ability to easily add footer links.
CRAZY amounts of control over the look, feel and function of your navbars!
FULL BLOWN SEO Options!
And a TON MORE!!

Here’s a video to help you SEE for yourself the robust feature-set of frugal: