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UPDATE – 18 August 2010: Frugal Theme it came upon the Version 3.5.5 and has some awesome new goodies! Read more

Recently, I had a problem with my old three columns theme, which according to my stats many of the heavy use files were linked to it. So I decided to look into another theme more clean and simple, and I opted for the Frugal theme.

Since the early releases of WordPress 3.0, the Frugal Team has been constantly monitoring the WordPress Core Code to ensure that Frugal is fully compatible with all the fantastic new functionality. So, if you’re looking to upgrade the theme of your blog I surely reccomend Frugal too, because I use it on my blog and I can attest that is a great theme.

What Is Frugal WordPress Theme?

Developed by my friend Eric Hamm Frugal is one of the best and complete WordPress magazine theme out there. Compatible with WordPress 2.9+ is a fully customizable theme for those who don’t have PHP or CSS knowledges.

I have been searching for perfect theme for The3dtechnologies. I’m already using two different theme in my two sites, Arthemia in nickdeiana.com, and Thesis theme in cabinrentalsideas.com. Sure, they are two great theme, but I must admit that none of them has worked well with my site the3dtechnologies. Instead, Frugal has all features which I always wanted to have in one theme, speed, simplicity, and a lot of widget available.

Frugal Theme is definitely a writer’s theme for its Georgia font for headings and Arial for body text. As you can see on my blog Text is black, and links are a nice dark blue. Also there’s enough whitespace for all your advertisers.

Here, is a short snippet from the Frugal website:

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.

WordPress Theme For Google Caffeine: Google Caffeine Loves Frugal Theme

When it comes to choose a WordPress theme for the new Google Caffeine algorithm, than Frugal is the right choice.

Getting a theme with a clean code structure is very important today. The new Google algorithm, includes new ranking factors. If you want to get an high position on search results, the page speed should be most faster as possible.

Here, where Frugal comes into play. Frugal wp theme was developed to make your page load very quick. Compared to most of known theme out there, Frugal do not use images into its background, headers, navigation bars, and footers.

Also, you no need to install plugins to your blog like custom avatars and custom favicon, which create clutter and slowing your site. Frugal has these features integrated.

Watch this cool video below to see just how powerful this theme is.

Customize Your Layout And Design Without Touching Your Theme Files

One of the better aspect of Frugal is its minimalistic, clean design. However, first all, I reccomend this theme for those are creating their first blog. The reason is quite simple. Frugal is a theme for non-coder, so you have no need to learn php or css language. You can setting up the background color, font, and so on. Also, You can add a custom header, as well.

In this image below, you can see what you could setting directly from your wp control panel.

and that’s just the main content font options.

Speed Up Your WordPress Theme To Rank Better in Google

If there is one thing that weakens a blog is wait to watch every page load. A slow load time can depend from many factors. Usually, the main reasons a blog is slow are:

• Poorly made plugins.
• Slow web server.
• Too large images on your site.

Well, in this case Frugas will give a great help because is super speedy to load every page due uses ZERO images and a low number of plugin integrated.

Main Frugal Theme Features

Frugal has a lot of features. Some of the highlights includes:

1. Upload a custom logo – Frugal theme lets you to upload your own logo and adjust it. Once created a logo in a certain specified size, you can display it to your header.

2. 29 page guide – Frugal give you an useful user manual. It was wrote to help client to customize their theme.

3. Custom favicon – Favicon is another great features. It let you create, then upload your favicon file into a specified directory in your Frugal theme. Once done, you can display your Favicon image in your URL into your browsers address bar.

4. 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.

5. Custom avatar – Frugal lets you to add your own custom avatar image(80×80, but this can be adjusted to your liking) to sit to the left of the name of the comments of your blog without using additional plugin.

6. Threaded comments – This features allow you to reply to individual comments. It was included with the latest version of WordPress, but this does not work with all themes. So this theme has all necessary for threaded comments.

What’s new in Frugal Theme 3.3?

As I said before, the Frugal version 3.3 is now available and with new features such as:

• One Click Skin Creation: Once you’re done designing a Frugal Skin you just type the name of your Skin and click ‘Export Skin’ to create and download your new Skin file and you’re done.
• One Click Skin Installation: Installing a Skin is even easier. You just locate your Frugal Skin zip folder, click ‘Import Skin’ and you’re done!
• Much refined Import/Export feature: Now there’s a One Click Frugal Options Export button and the Import is just a matter of checking the boxes next to the options pages you want to Import and then upload your Export file.
• Bulk Delete Images: No longer do you have to delete images one at a time.  You can now select all and then delete.
• Increase Your WordPress Memory by flipping a switch. This new option allows you to raise your WordPress memory limit to 64 megabytes if you need a bit more memory to run WordPress, your theme and all your plugins.
• Frugal Snapshots! This one is super cool! Every time you click ‘Save’ in a Frugal Options page Frugal will take a snapshot of your entire options set.  This allows you to restore your settings back to a previous point or even forward if you want to UNDO the restore.
• Full Localization: Frugal now includes an .po and .mo file to make it much easier to translate Frugal into any language (currently no translations have been performed, but the localization is done).

The following video will go into detail, but here’s a brief run through of what 3.3 brings to the table.

Price

One of the better thing about Frugal is that is free to download. You can also choose to pass to the premium version that goes up to $79 for a single user license, while the developer license goes up to $199.

Of course, the premium version have more features then the free version. That justify the non-free price.

Conclusion

To be sure to be indexed by the new Google Caffeine algorithm, your web page structure must be clean as possible, so here where Frugal Theme come into play. This theme is a blessing for people who want that their pages will open, quickly.

DOWNLOAD FRUGAL WORDPRESS THEME

Now, Take a look ‘behind the scenes’ of the frugal Theme.

Admin Pages Settings/Uploads:

Frugal Main Options:

Frugal Feature Options:

DOWNLOAD FRUGAL WORDPRESS THEME