What Is The frugal WordPress Theme?

Eric Hamm — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 14:39:34 +0000

NOTE: Many New Features Have Been Added Since This Post!

I just wanted to clarify that there have been a good deal of added features since the publishing of this post. Click HERE to find out more.

When I designed the frugal WordPress theme I was determined to make it as clean and simple as possible. From the look of its pages to the back-end code, I wanted to create the most minimalist WordPress theme that still maintained the truly important, up-to-date features available. I didn’t want to sacrifice solid features for simplicity sake, but I also wanted to ensure that the user of the frugal theme was getting the lightest, cleanest WordPress theme to frame their precious content.

As I started putting the finishing touches on the frugal theme I began to realize the amazing flexibility that came with the simple design. As with many things, less is often more. Just like Twitter is so simple and yet unlimited in its possibilities, so too is the frugal WordPress theme.

Finally a fully customizable theme for the non-coder!

By including a free 29 page handbook to help the user more easily customize their frugal theme, I’ve made it a simple process to change around the look of your frugal theme. Almost like paint-by-numbers and just as simple, I’ve setup a system so you can easily pick the customizations you want to implement and then quickly a easily make the changes yourself. Anything from changing the background color to adjusting the size of your sidebar to adding a custom header to creating a slick looking navigation bar, you can easily make your frugal theme look, feel and function the way that best suits your blogging needs.

It’s all about your content!

When it comes down to it, your blog’s content is MUCH more important that the theme itself. Sure, you don’t want your site to look tacky or amateurish or misrepresent the focus of your blog, but at the end of the day, it’s WHAT your saying that creates the draw for your potential subscribers, not what color the background is when they read it (though that can have an effect). So in designing the frugal WordPress theme I kept in mind the idea of providing the absolute best possible framework to put ALL the focus on the words and images you provide your readers…no more, no less. In it’s stock form, the frugal theme is light and clear and perfect for the next great work you are about to share.

Speed, Speed and more Speed!

Clicking around on a slow blog theme can be a real pain in the you-know-what! There’s nothing more annoying than having to wait around to watch EVERY page load, every time you want to click through to another page. This slow load time can even deter potential subscribers from sticking around. Some causes of this slowness would be:

Too many, or poorly made plugins.
A super slow web server.
Too many/too large images on your site.

I can’t help what server you use, but have touched on the other two issues in the design of the frugal WordPress theme. As for the plugins, by including built-in ad widgets, custom avatars and custom favicons (all mentioned below) you will need to install less plugins to your blog and therefore have less clutter slowing your site down.

Speaking of clutter, I made sure that the frugal theme, in its stock form, uses ZERO images. You’d be surprised at how many images a lot of themes use for things like their navigation bars, backgrounds, headers, footers, etc… I have nothing against using images in your themes and know that they often have their place, but I wanted to make sure that you have the CHOICE to either keep is super clean and simple or fully flashy to showcase your design talent.

Some of the subtle features.

The features I added to the frugal WordPress theme are generally subtle extras that can make ALL the difference.

A free ebook guide to help you get the most out of your frugal theme and learn to customize it to your hearts content. I start by covering the basics of website design, then move to a more specific WordPress theme focus and then move right into the ‘how-tos’ of customizing your frugal theme. With the simplicity of paint-by-numbers I show you how to take your frugal WordPress theme and mold it into whatever look, feel and function that your content requires to have the greatest chance of getting noticed.
The ability to easily upload a custom logo. You simply create a logo in a certain specified size (which can be adjusted if so desired), save it as a certain file and upload it to a particular folder in your frugal theme directory and it appears on your header, ready for any adjustments you may want to make to its position.
Custom avatar. In stock form, WordPress allows for a stock avatar image to sit to the left of the name of the commenter of your blog. The ‘Mystery Man’ is often what you’ll see. What I’ve done is added a function that puts the avatar to the far right of the comment, in a larger size (80×80, but this can be adjusted to your liking) and allows for you to upload your own custom avatar to use in place of the ‘Mystery Man’. This way you can add your logo or whatever you’d prefer, so it will show up whenever a commenter doesn’t have their own avatar.
Custom Favicon. Just like the avatar and logo, you just create your favicon file (go HERE for assistance creating this file) and upload it to a specified directory in your frugal theme files and BINGO! you have your very own custom favicon image right next to your URL in your browsers address bar.
Threaded comments. The latest version of WordPress allows for threaded comments (where you can reply to individual comments and not have them appear at the very bottom of the comment list), but this does not work with all themes. I’ve added the code necessary for threaded comments to work as well as made it easy for you to adjust the look and feel of your comment section. (Check the comments of this post for an example.)
Two 468×60 ad/feature widgets. One is located on the right side of the header, while the other is in between your posts main content and the comments section. All you have to do is add a text widget to these locations and then you can easily showcase a Google ad, an affiliate, a featured item/page on your blog or even showcase requests for subscribers and/or Twitter followers, etc…

Custom blockquotes. I’ve added a section that not only created a clean look for your blockquotes in your posts, but made it easy for you to adjust to your liking. (Custom blockquotes can really make a difference in the look and feel of your content.

This is an example of the blockquote design that comes stock with the frugal WordPress theme. You can easily adjust it to look and feel any way you’d like. ~ Eric Hamm

Social buttons. I’ve also included a folder called ‘social’ that represent all the popular social media sites out there. This way you can add ‘fallow me’ type widget that has buttons for your social profiles, and all with buttons that maintain a unified look and feel.

Simple, easy to locate RSS and Email links for your blogs feed. Many people like to put out monstrous feed icons, screaming to their readers, “SUBSCRIBE!!!!”, but the fact is, if your content is worthwhile and useful to your audience, they won’t need the flashing neon lights to find your feed…they’ll make the necessary effort to find it themselves. And yet you don’t want them to have to make an EFFORT either. So I created a simple piece of text to the right side of the navbar that represents your RSS and Email feeds. It’s clean, simple, easy to find, but out of the way enough to not take up any unnecessary room. The bottom line is, how many big time bloggers have to SCREAM to get subscribers? Most of them have simple subscribe buttons/links that are JUST noticeable enough to allow for easy access, but NO MORE.
Images WILL center! One of the most frustrating things about some WordPress themes is their inability to properly position the images you add to your posts. This theme has the right code to ensure that when you say ‘Center’, THAT’S what your image does. Move it to the right and there the image moves. This may sound trivial, but if you’ve ever had to deal with a picture that just won’t go where you want, you’ll know that this is very important!

THIS code validates! One of the issues with some WordPress themes out there is poor coding on the backend. This can cause for unnecessary glitches. One way of figuring out how ‘clean’ or ‘dirty’ a themes code is, is to go to a site like THIS, type in the themes URL and see if it validtes. And the frugal WordPress theme DOES pass this test with flying colors!

Those are some of the extras I’ve included. Nothing fancy and no unnecessary clutter. Just the basic bells and whistles to allow for optimal blogging conditions for your awesome content to come.