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Posted: 17 Mar 2010 10:57 PM PDT

Finally got a chance to take a good look at the Frugal Theme. For those who have not heard of it, the Frugal Theme is another premium Wordpress Theme that sells for $87 Single User and $167 for developers. Single user will naturally mean you can only use the Theme in one site, Developers means you can use it for unlimited sites. Both these versions comes with full lifetime upgrades and full access to the Frugal Forum and video tutorials.

Frankly, I have not bought the Frugal Theme. I only have the free version which was available before Eric Hamm, the developer, made it premium. A friend who has it was kind enough to let me do a little digging. One word describes my short experience with the real Frugal Theme. Dazzling.

The version I saw is Version 3.2. It is the newest but not the latest. The latest version is 3.25 which comes with further improvements. As quoted from the Frugal.com blog

Frugal 3.25 is also here. I've added some very useful new options like new location options for the Navbar and Feature Boxes, new Static Homepage Layout Options, Category Navbar Right options (ie. RSS | Email, Twitter, Search, etc..), FULL design control for Captions, independent styling for the Wordpress 'Pages' widget, and more!

Superior Customization Options

Like I said, I was simply dazzled by the options available that I simply do not know where to start. Unlike the Thesis Theme which I am quite familiar with by now, the Frugal Theme seems so totally new and alien to me. It was especially so with the new Settings/Upload panel. I needed to study the panel for quite a while before getting a little insight on how to use the features there.

It was very thoughtful of Eric Hamm to include the help feature beside each option. Hovering your mouse over the tiny question mark will bring up a box explaining what that particular feature does. Though not very detailed, the short note will give you a rough idea on what can be done.

Besides that there are 5 other panels where you can, I would say, change the looks on everything you want. From the smallest meta data to the whole content area, you are given the most detailed customization options that you can think of.

Size, colors, columns, backgrounds, font family, font size, everything. Everything can be changed without touching or writing a single line of codes. Though I would never have imagined it possible, I think I can now safely say, the customization level of the Frugal Theme greatly surpasses that of the Thesis Theme. The details would be too much for me to describe here so, watch the video below. Here Eric Hamm is just discussing about the newest features available.

Click Play, then pause the video to let it load fully while you continue reading the rest of the post.

Frugal Theme SEO

Not taking into consideration the way Thesis Theme and Frugal Theme is structured, the Frugal Theme does provide the all the necessary SEO option that all WordPress Blogs will need. If you are using the All In One SEO plugin or anything similar, you can stop using it as the Frugal Theme has all the options built in.

For individual postings there are options to give your post a different search friendly title which is different than the one your visitors sees. You can also write a meta description and set different meta keywords for that particular post.

All these options are almost everything a blogger will need for on page SEO.

Should You Consider The Frugal Theme.

I hate to say it because I am practically a Thesis man but YES. If you hate to learn codes but love to mess with the looks of your Theme, this is the Theme for you. It might take a few days of groping around in the dark and finding your way around due to the enormous amount of customizations that you can do, but it will be lots and lots of fun. You are safe from worries of breaking anything which I am so use of when I screw up the the Custom Functions codes in the Thesis Theme. For the Frugal Theme you can see the magic happen before your eyes with glee.

I said before that I was considering the Frugal Theme for this blog. Now I am almost all convinced. I would certainly like to make something that looks like this for this blog. Cool ain’t it?

I might even make a few skins for sale at the just started Frugal Skin Store. It can be an all new business for me. The Thesis Theme is being over marketed though I still make reasonably good sales here. If things keeps improving for the Frugal Theme, I see no reason why I should not promote it more. It is one hell of a good Theme, especially for those non tech savvy bloggers.

GIVE THE FRUGAL THEME A SHOT

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