Amazing Grace is a lightweight, super-optimized WordPress theme packed with features. It uses 3 column layout for maximum accessibility and small digital footprint for minimum bandwidth usage and loading times.
Features
- Modern, three columns, Photo-friendly, Widget ready, SEO friendly
- Passes xHTML/CSS validation
- Out of box full SEO optimization including titles and page headings
- Easy to add Adsense
- Optimized for speed and loading time, no javascript usage
- Adjustable rotating images in the header
- Gravatars support
- Out of box Social networking buttons
- Multi-pages widget
- Chunk long urls in comments
- Redirects Google image searches to your site for better exposure
- Customized 404 page
- Access to admin menu from home page (click on blog description)
- Plus much more...
Few words on the theme
The name comes from a popular tune called Amazing Grace. It is my favorite tune and it exactly describes how I feel about this theme. Find more about this beautiful song in Amazing Grace Lyrics, Chords and Movie.
When a theme is in question, I prefer ease of use and speed above everything else. That is why Amazing Grace uses optimized images, excerpts on home page (it helps generate more page views too), no javascript and "you can't miss 'em" navigation menus.
Additionally, I have fully optimized the theme for SEO so you do not have to worry about it. Just write your best stuff and the theme will take care of everything else.
Built in social bookmarking include Digg and del.icio.us.
Regarding design, I have hired a very talented designer called Magnus Jepson who did the initial design. I have taken it from there and after few months the theme came to it's final representation.
Installation & Usage
- Unpack this archive in your wp-content/themes/ directory.
- Go to Admin WordPress and select presentation.
- Select Amazing Grace
- You can also use Theme Test Drive plugin to see how the theme looks with your content before going live with it
Customization
Everyone has a different taste and there are couple of easy customization changes you can do to change Amazing Grace to suit your needs.
If you did not find what you need you can check out my WordPress Forums.
- Make sure to check the Ultimate guide to Amazing Grace, and also part 2
- Change the colors - You can download Amazing Grace psd file and change the graphics to your liking
- Adding rotating images in header (version 2.0 of the theme and up already has this implemented)
- Create images you want to rotate and put them in your images/folder under the names bg-portait1.jpg, bg-portait2.jpg and so on.
- Open your style.css and remove background reference from #portrait-bg section
- Enter this code in your header.php just below the stylesheet line (one beginning with link rel="stylesheet")
<style type="text/css">
#portrait-bg { background: url(<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/images/bg-portrait<?php echo (rand()%69); ?>.jpg); }
</style>- Replace "69" with your maximum picture number
- Preparing rotating images - You can read this tutorial. Alternately you can download the instructions by Sven Niemetz for a more flexible solution.
- Show Full Entries/Excerpts on index page - If you want full entries replace the_excerpt() with the_content() and vice versa. Changes should be applied to index.php and archives.php
- Display categories - Theme will display four categories by default. If you have more then this, you need to edit file header.php, and find wp_list_categories (at the bottom). This function controls how your categories are shown. You can include or exclude certain categories. Full description of the command is available here.
- Display pages - Pages are displayed also in header.php. You need to find a line with wp_list_pages. This command also allows you to include and exclude pages to show and you can read full description here. Alternatively, you can remove the command and just list pages manually one by one in the same way the Home page is listed in the line above.
- Change archives and categories excerpts to full posts - Edit archive.php and change "the_excerpt" with "the_content"
- Add AdSense (or any other) ads - You can add your AdSense code to ad_middle.php. Easiest way to insert ads into sidebar is to create a text widget, paste the adsense code into it and palce it anywhere on your sidebar
- Display Social bookmark buttons - If you want to display social bookmarks buttons, edit function.php, and remove 'return;' at the beginning of the file.
- Different Social bookmark sites - It is little trickier but generally can be done by changes in functions.php. You will need some icons too.
- Download Plugins - Find out about all the plugins I use to help you customize the theme further.
Change log
- Aug 02nd, 2008, v2.4 - Compatibility with 2.6 (mostly CSS changes).
- Jul 06th, 2008 v2.0: Added many visual tweaks and gravatar support.
- Feb 19th, 2008 V1.2: Fixed search issue, changed stylesheet to reflect recent changes on the blog
- Jan 18th, 2008 v1.1: Added hover background for entry links; fixed footer link colors; maximum of five categories displayed by default; category drop down boxes styled
- Jan 13th, 2008 v1.0: Initial release
License
Amazing Grace theme is released under GPL License.
You may freely remove footer links if they bother you.
Reviews
- Very nice review by Ryan of Theme Playground
- Jaypee gave it a thumbs up at Jaypee Online
Services
See my WordPress Consulting Services page for more information and rates.
Hi! My name is 
602 Comments
Vladimir and those wanting to ADD the WP plug-in "sharing is sexy wordpress".
I would REALLY like to upgrade my Amazing Grace Blog with this new social bookmarking plug-in but for some reason, the theme won't present it?
According to the plug-in author, the most common error is because the header is missing a small piece of php code. It' s there, but the plug-in still won't work?
Maybe I should use a previous version (2.7) v. 3.2.9.4?
Any pointers on those who have successfully loaded this new plug-in would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Neil
I can't get the photos to change in the rotating header. Does anyone know what to do? I followed the instructions but it won't allow me to update it once I've renamed the files I want to use as bg-portrait0, etc, etc.
@savannah --
This may sound silly, but the first time I used the theme, I sat there waiting for the pictures to rotate and thought something was wrong. But they don't "rotate" the way ads do. They only change when you refresh your screeen or go to a different page in the site. At least they don't in MY site (who knows, maybe they're supposed to and I didn't realize it!). Try refreshing your screen and see if they change.
Good luck with the site and I'm sorry if this didn't help.
Barbara
That's correct, it only changes when you refresh or change the page. Sounds like you're expecting something more like a flash banner image changer.
No I realize they don't rotate unless you refresh. When I change the original files to the jpgs I want to be in the header, it won't even let me update it. Do you change the jpg files while in WordPress or before you install the theme? Like should I download the zip file and change the jpgs before I install it as my wordpress theme? Or can I change the jpgs after it's been installed as my theme?
Gosh, it's been a while since I've done it but if I recall, I resized and cropped my photos first, renamed them and then uploaded them to the WP media folder (I think I used my ftp program for this step, but I'm not sure). I just checked and my photos are actually in a folder wp-content/uploads.
I did NOT just upload my photos and have them fit nicely into the theme though. I have to copy the original photo and layer in my photo on the background "frame." Then, I saved the composites. I honestly don't know or recall if this was the "proper" way to do it but, although I love this theme, the documentation is poor (but it's free!).
Barbara
I love your theme ... it was the first (and so far, only) WordPress theme I'd used and I was a bit hesitant to get something so "complicated." But it turned out to be incredibly easy to use and modify. I think my blog --- http://www.pound-a-week.com -- is the best looking out there thanks to this theme!
great job :) cool theme :) thans
I really like the Amazing Grace theme. Thanks so much. Will you be updating it so it works with the WordPress 3.0 "menus" tool. I'm looking for an easy way to create drop down menus for my category and pages nav bar.
I love this look of this theme but I could use a little help fixing 1 bit that's a broken in WordPress 3. I'm using the 2 column view. When you view a post, and are not logged in, the 2 columns show below the content of the page. I'm pretty new to WP and themes so any help would be appreciated.
I have the same problem. will appriciate your help
I'm considering upgrading to WP 3.0 and would like to have other's experiences before doing so.
Thanks in advance!!
What I meant was:
Link to <?php the_title(); ?>"
should read
Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"
I have a little bug fix for this theme. People may have noticed that, when they search for a word and it appears in the title, bits of HTML appear in the title.
The answer is in line 25 of amazinggrace/index.php:
Link to
should read
Link to
The tag with _attribute strips out all HTML from the title, rendering it suitable for including in HTML tag attributes. The normal title tag is used in the title that's displayed on the screen, which highlights the search terms.
Hi PREZ,
Why don't you have a look at the 'sexy bookmarks' plugin, I use it on my blog and like the way that you can easily choose which social site you want to use and can personalize the message, it looks great and informal. Perfect for social bookmarking.
Just a thought!
Great template by the way. There were two things I've been trying to accomplish and was wondering if someone could help a a novice like myself.
1. I want to add different social bookmarking sites under the posts with the small icons. I didn't want Delicious and was trying to change the Delicious bookmark to a Facebook one and also wanted to add a Twitter and Myspace button. I was successful in displaying the Facebook icon but I don't know where to change the Delicious link to a Facebook on.
2. I wanted to edit out the calender dates on top so they didn't display.
Thanks ahead of time.
I just upgraded to 3.0 and did a test post and so far, we're just fine. Perhaps it's a plug in conflict Maria, we only have 2 plugins: NextGEN Gallery and WP e-Commerce Plugin. We'll be adding more in the next few days though, so yes, a 3.0 "official" version would be nice. What say you, Vladimir? This is a beautiful theme, and I'd love to see it live on :)
it is on my todo list, but the list is very long. Lot of people expect different things ;)
Hi Vladimir,
I really hope there is planned an update for wordpress 3.0
this would be very nice!!
There are some errors and confusion (categories)
my right sidebar is missing (can´t save widget for the right sidebar)
I can´t save posts