Review of Frugal Premium WordPress Theme

Frugal is a premium WordPress theme developed by Eric Hamm, who is a brand-new daddy and all-around cool guy. Eric is passionate about blogging and the web, so naturally he’s into the blog design and theme business.

WordPress themes are at a crossroads. On the one hand, you have tons of free themes out there, and most of them are crap. On the other hand, you have premium themes for which you pay. What you get for your money is:

• Cool customization features not found in free themes
• Support
• Upgrades
• Uniqueness (most people use free themes)

Introducing Frugal Premium Theme for WordPress

Frugal is Not Thesis

Let’s address the inevitable Thesis comparison: Frugal is not Thesis. It isn’t supposed to be. Frugal is different than Thesis. If you really need what Thesis gives you, than Frugal is not for you. If you need what Frugal offers, then Thesis is not for you. Apples and oranges, and all that. If you’ve resisted jumping on the Thesis bandwagon this long, you should give Frugal serious consideration: it might be just what you’re looking for, but didn’t know it.

Thoughtful Balance

So I loaded Frugal onto my testing blog and played around with it. One aspect of Frugal I really appreciate is the thoughtful balance between ease-of-use and control. Frugal has a single options panel you can edit once you’ve installed it. The options allow for some real flexibility in your blog. Here’s a quick rundown of Frugal features:

• A 2-column right sidebar layout
• A 2-column balanced sidebar layout
• A “thin” layout
• A wide layout (check out the video below for more on the layouts)
• Image dimensions for adding your own header image are right on the options page–no guessing or hunting for this info
• Blog categories can appear as a secondary navigation bar under the main navigation bar for pages
• A “featured” top section
• Three “top feature” boxes across the top
• Excluding certain pages from your navigation bar without coding by entering their page IDs into a box on the options page
• Adding a RSS subscription link at the right of the navigation bar
• Entering custom RSS feeds and RSS-to-email links (no plugins or html/javascript FeedBurner forms to mess with)
• Adding a “Follow me on Twitter” link with your Twitter ID at the right of the navigation bar (replaces/overrides the RSS subscription)
• Adding a search box at right of the navigation bar (replaces/overrides both the RSS subscription and the Twitter links)
• A box in which to paste your Google, Woopra, or other web analytics code so that it will be placed right before the closing body tag in the HTML.
• A customizable “static” home page

Documentation is Excellent

Most beginners should be able to take advantage of all the above features without freaking out. However, the documentation that comes with Frugal is thorough, with real step-by-step instructions for how to use it. You can always go to the Frugal forums if you have any questions, and there is a PDF you get with Frugal that’s very helpful. On the Frugal site are videos to walk you through it all.

Customization

Part of the appeal of Frugal is its minimalistic, clean design. The default design sports the Georgia font for headings and Arial for body text. Text is black or dark gray, and links are a nice dark blue. The borders are clean and there’s enough whitespace around elements that you don’t feel crowded. Frugal is really all about being a framework to display your content, and the focus is on the content, not the design. This is definitely a writer’s theme.

If you want to customize the appearance of Frugal, such changing the fonts or changing the colors, you edit the CSS file for the theme choose your colors right in the interface, as of Frugal 2.2 (woohoo!). There is only one file to edit and it’s easy to find what you need in it. The CSS is not complex, and the documentation contains a well-written crash course in editing it. If you know what you’re doing with CSS, you can effect major changes in minutes, such as choosing different fonts, link colors, and text & background colors for various elements.

If you’re a little more advanced in your knowledge of CSS, then in particular you’ll want to note how to style widgets and other elements through the use of CSS classes.

Beginner or Designer?

Is Frugal a good theme for beginners? Yes, absolutely. You don’t have to know a bunch of technical stuff to use it beyond needing FTP to upload it to your web server. In this case, however, you’ll need to like the way Frugal looks, because without editing the CSS, there are very few ways to change its appearance.

UPDATE: Frugal 2.2 is now available, and it gives you the ability to easily choose colors for your fonts without coding any CSS! This is a most welcome upgrade, because this puts the power of Frugal securely and easily into the hands of beginners.

Frugal very configurable via a wide array of widgetsAnybody can work with widgets, since they’re a basic feature of WordPress. There is plenty of information online for how to work with widgets if you’re into this aspect of WordPress. Frugal has its own catalog of custom widgets that allow for all manner of unique content on the home page or elsewhere in the blog. This is a great way to easily create custom content for your home page.

Designers can run wild with Frugal’s basic framework: modifying the CSS to change fonts, text sizes, colors, and backgrounds can transform the design into whatever is needed. Because design is separated from content by CSS, and content can be created for special regions through widgets or the Frugal options, this means a designer can create a flexible design for a client and doesn’t have to get roped into being a content creator/editor as well. If you’re a WordPress blog design freelancer, consider having your clients purchase Frugal for you to work with (get 40% of the price back in your own pocket by having your clients sign up through your Frugal affiliate link).

Frugal Free or Frugal Premium?

There is a free version of Frugal, but the features of Frugal Premium are significantly better than the free version. Eric made a great video that gives the lowdown:

As you can see, the video does a great job of showing you what Frugal is and how it works.

Why Frugal May Not be for You

If you want a fancy graphics-intensive theme, Frugal is not the right theme for you. Frugal is for blogs where the content is the most important thing. If you’re not comfortable with FTP and CSS/HTML, you will be limited in what you can do tweaking Frugal. Also, Frugal is great for both beginners and designers, but there aren’t a ton of super-advanced features built into it. For example, there is no real SEO capability.

Some people may not see this as a disadvantage at all, either because they don’t like or care about SEO, or because they like things to be less complicated. If you’re concerned about SEO, then get a few good SEO plugins to compliment Frugal and you’re golden.

My Overall Recommendation

Overall, Frugal is fast, light, clean, and easy to work with. I think that with Frugal, there are far more advantages than disadvantages (so much so, the disadvantages are more a matter of opinion), which means I can recommend it and stand behind that recommendation.