After months of tinkering with the Thesis framework, I decided that I wasn’t happy with it. Not that Thesis is a poor framework. Far from it. The problem is, I just haven’t mastered the fine art of coding and decided that I don’t really want to. I’d rather write actual words and create eye-catching designs rather than fiddle with HTML, CSS and PHP. With that thought in mind, I began looking for an alternative to Thesis.
I’ve known about Headway for as long as I’ve known about Thesis. I no longer remember why I chose Thesis over Headway, a “drag and drop” framework that has garnered some good reviews. Maybe it was because I was impressed by how large the Thesis community was, as well as the sheer number of glowing reviews. On Thursday I found myself checking out the popular WordPress theme frameworks once again because I not only wanted to improve the look and feel of my blogs, but I also wanted to give my husband’s website a more professional appearance. Up until Thursday, I had been using a modified version of a free theme for his site, which isn’t always a good thing.
I found a great article from Aaron Brazell, where he reviews some of the top WordPress theme frameworks. While he didn’t consider Frugal to be one of the top frameworks, I followed the link to the site to check it out for myself. Based on the size of their community, I’d say that this company is relatively new.
The first thing I did was check the showcase of themes from other customers and was delighted to find that Men with Pens uses Frugal with awesome results. After reading more testimonials and watching the tutorials, I decided to give this framework a try for my husband’s website. I figured that if it didn’t work, I could always ask for my money back.
Because you have 600+ customizations available to you, the interface is daunting at first. Once you figure out where everything is, designing your site becomes less time consuming. What I really like about Frugal is that you can design through the interface or you can go into the backend and change the code to suit your needs.
The result turned out much better than I expected and with minor frustrations, most of which I was able to solve either by watching the tutorials or experimenting with the settings. My husband’s website looks professional now. I was so thrilled with what I was able to accomplish with his site that I decided to work on mine. I still have to tweak the footer a bit, but I consider the overall design project for this blog done . . . at long last.
Update: Well, everything was going fine until I decided to install a plugin that broke my theme. Until I can figure out how to fix that, I’ve reverted back to the Thesis theme.
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