My Experience with Frugal Theme: Lovely

Posted on 20. Sep, 2009 by Isaac Yassar in WordPress

frugal-themeDo you like my WordPress theme?

This WordPress theme I use is frugal theme (with lowercase ‘f’), which has three variants: frugal free, frugal premium, and frugal professional. I use the premium one. Eric Hamm, a nice and helpful professional web designer, crafted all of them.

By the time I write this, I just finished updating and modifying my frugal theme. Mostly small mods, but many. Now I can say that with my limited knowledge of web design / programming, I can get what I want from this theme, satisfactorily.

My history

I fell in love with frugal premium on my first sight a few weeks ago. It was minimalist, simple, clean, but elegant. Just like what I wanted: a simple but functional theme to wrap my content and accompany me building it. After it grows big, I’ll think about having a professional designer pimping it.

I also like frugal’s white background because it’s handsome for white images. If you pay attention closely, all my small images have white background that blends well with my theme.

It’s advanced

Frugal premium is actually quite a sophisticated theme. It has some alternate frameworks (beside the stock I use), e.g. double sidebar (left and right), double right sidebar, wide content, and thin. Each framework has normal and lite versions. That’s ten combinations in total.

It also has a bunch of theme settings and widgets. They were so many that they gave me a headache at the first time I looked it. I was like being hit by a truck, fell down, and then got up fixing things one by one. I wasn’t quite techie after all.

It’s highly customizable

Actually, Eric created frugal as a highly customizable theme. Frugal has super deep color scheme options. It is very easy to customize color scheme of every part if frugal. The CSS and PHP are also neatly written. They are very easy to manage around and edit.

However, I don’t customize it much since I am not a good web designer / programmer. I am not confident of my skill in crafting nice color themes. I am a person who prefers concentrating on building good content. Appearance is number two (but not number three ;-) ).

It has nice support

Eric has set up a nice forum to give support to frugal users. People can easily be members there and join the discussion or ask questions. Those who use frugal premium and frugal professional are premium members. They can access more areas than common members.

I usually go there to get help / guide in working with frugal. My threads are usually about how I suppose to do this and that. Many lovely people helped me there, besides Eric himself. They are usually professional web designers or people knowing much of such stuff.

All users gets support there, not just the premium ones. I’ve seen many frugal free users ask help there and they got what the help needed.

It’s life-time

I can get life-time update of my theme and sometimes new themes. This frugal I use is frugal premium version 2.3, just updated from 2.2. Eric constantly updates it, new updates are released usually in monthly basis. (Update Dec 2, 2009: now Frugal has reached version 3.0)

Last week, Eric offered to give all frugal premium users the brand new frugal professional for free. I did not miss it. Well, I don’t really use it but I love to add good themes into my collection.

Why I write this

I’m writing this review because I am satisfied with what I’ve accomplish so far with frugal premium. It’s hard work for me, plunging myself into a realm of CSS and PHP (that I don’t know much). My gratitude to Eric for designing such a nice theme, keep up the good work!

Ok folks, feel free to visit FRUGALTHEME.COM for more information. You can also get the free version of frugal theme there to enrich your collection.

Tags: review, theme, WordPress

18 Responses to “My Experience with Frugal Theme: Lovely”

  1. earningstep

    21. Aug, 2009

    i heard about this plugin before . can you tell me the different of your se before and after use this theme

    Reply to this comment

    • Isaac Yassar

      21. Aug, 2009

      Which plugin? You mean SEO? This theme has some basic SEO tools but I don’t really use them because I already have a great SEO plugin namely “All-in-One SEO”. It’s the most popular SEO plugin for WP.

      Reply to this comment

      • earningstep

        21. Aug, 2009

        oh bad me , i mean this theme . if you felt have better seo after use this theme ( some guys told me that there is a connection between theme and seo and i wonder this is true or not )

        Reply to this comment

        • Isaac Yassar

          21. Aug, 2009

          Yes, there is a connection between theme and SEO, but limited only to the built-in SEO tools available. But I doubt there is any theme that can beat the famous All-in-One SEO plugin in term of features + functionality ;-)

          This theme is quite basic in its SEO tools and I don’t really use it, so I can’t tell about its SEO significance. Besides, SEO is my number 3 priority, after good content and simple but functional appearance :D

          Reply to this comment

  2. djupi

    21. Aug, 2009

    I like frugal theme too, too bad, I can’t buy premium. But it’s ok, I’ve tried the free one and I love it.. :)

    Reply to this comment

    • Isaac Yassar

      21. Aug, 2009

      Yes, the free ones is a good addition to our collection. Perhaps after your blog becomes more productive, you’ll be able to afford a premium theme.

      Reply to this comment

  3. Jared P Little

    22. Aug, 2009

    I think one of the things about premium themes like Frugal,Affilate and many others is the code behind them has been checked and cleaned so the search engines like it better or don’t have issues with it. The also have plugins that are similar to the all-in-one plugin which help. From what I have read the free ones since they are free and not always build considering this could really have a lot a sloppy no visible code which may hurt you with seo.

    Reply to this comment

    • Isaac Yassar

      23. Aug, 2009

      That’s a good point my friend. When it comes to premium themes, professional designers put their reputation at stake. If they don’t carefully craft their premium themes, their brands can get hurt.

      Reply to this comment

  4. Bob Bessette

    07. Nov, 2009

    Hi,
    Can you install all WordPress plugins with this theme? I am fairly new to WordPress and still learning. I currently have my blog on Squarespace and am looking to move.

    Thanks,
    Bob

    Reply to this comment

  5. David | ilcantone.com

    07. Nov, 2009

    Hey Isaac, you’re back. I’m really glad to see you here again.

    Well, I’m just thinking to switch my theme for another one, but I’m not sure yet.
    I like frugal theme but I also like Thesis, besides, many good self development sites are using Thesis. Isaac, what do you think about my current theme, it’s crisp, isn’t it? :D

    Regrads Isaac.

    Reply to this comment

    • Isaac Yassar

      07. Nov, 2009

      Hi David. Yeah, it’s been a while since my last activity here. But not really, I just move this old post to the newest spot. But I plan to keep people informed of what I do now.

      Actually, I paused blogging to finish my final paper of college (English Literature). Now I’m graduated, and become a freelance translator. And somehow, texts are always waiting to be translated. I’ll write a new post about it when I don’t have any text to translate :D

      Reply to this comment

  6. David | ilcantone.com

    08. Nov, 2009

    jejejje, ok Isaac, first thing first. I will look forward to hear from you :) .

    Reply to this comment

  7. Mel Menzies

    20. Nov, 2009

    Hi Isaac, Love the simplicity and love the concept of content as king. Glad to have you as a friend. Mel.

    Reply to this comment

  8. Mel Menzies

    20. Nov, 2009

    Really like your approach, too – as personified on your About page. The real you comes across well – likeable, approachable, helpful.

    Reply to this comment

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