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. Now updated for WordPress 3.0 support!
Features
- Modern styled, SEO Optimized, Clean, 3 columns, Photo-friendly, Widget ready
- Valid XHTML/CSS document
- WordPress 3.0+ support (threaded comments, menu navigation system)
- Optimized for speed and loading time
- Out of box full SEO optimization including titles and page headings
- Out of box Social networking support
- Customized 404 page
- Adsense ready
- 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.
Images
Images used in the themes are provided as example only and have been obtained through Internet wallpaper sites without any known copyright information. They may be copyrighted by their respectful owners.
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.
664 Comments
Your theme looks great and I am thinking of using it for my site. I was just wondering if there was any way for the sub-page menus (sub-menus for pages that have child pages) to be displayed when the page menu item is clicked. Thanks.
Hello,
I like your theme and am using it on two seperate instances, and have been using it for several months. My only problem is I am getting a lot of 404 errors from niftycorners.css and niftycube.css.
Thanks, John
I uploaded your theme Amazing Grace on my website http://www.taxguru.in. My problem is that Unwanted Space between Title and Body of Post.
I am getting large space between header body and First Post appearing on website, Left Side bar and right sidebar. Please solve my query as my site is looking a little dirty due to this despite having so great theme.
How do I change the floating graphics at the right hand top of the page? I'm stumped. I bet its simple--but I can't seem to find it.
Thanks for your theme.
Great theme! Thanks.
I have run into an issue. The Home page is fine but when I open a specific post then the two sidebars are displayed below the article rather than on its right.
Any idea what could be wrong?
Thank.
HI, again...
i want only report an interesting issue about your theme validation regarding particularly this error:
there is no attribute "aria-required" , regarding the comment form.
an attributes that are not yet accepted by the xhtml validator.
look here:
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/218054
bye
G.
Wow thats one nice theme you have there. Thanks for sharing.
excellent theme
thanks a lot :)
Hi Vladimir
I love your themes, I am new to this blogging, have posted several posts, all appear full length on home page, instead of shortened with Continue to read full story, have looked at few of the other sites some are full article some are shortened with continue.
What have I missed or is this the theme
Once again Thank you
Regards Dave
One more thing: I am wanting to do this step that you describe, "Change archives and categories excerpts to full posts - Edit archive.php and change "the_excerpt" with "the_content""
However, I cannot locate archive.php within the Amazing Grace folder. Am I missing something? I checked and another of the themes I have installed has it's own archive.php file.
Amazing theme, thank you!
I am however going nuts trying to figure out how to force the category links at the top to be in the order I want them. I fully understand the codex, but I don't want them sorted by post count, or alphabetically or by the ID number (unless I can edit the ID number). Is there ANY way to do this or is that just a limitation of WordPress?
this theme will be perfect for my new travel blog! thanks ;)
HiVlad,
Fantastic template, very simple to customize, i'm working on it...to change some graphical elements, colors and so on (just to make it a little bit more personal ;))
If you want you can check it on my blog http://luxemozione.netsons.org/.(is not complete, im already working on it)
Only one question, when i check with w3c validator there are many error, that i think are caused by some plugin, im not sure.
What do you think?
How can i fix?
thaks
Bye
G.
Thanks Vladimir.
Nice and clean theme. Now I feel so relax everytime I stare at my screen.
Hey, anyone want a dynamic pull-down menu for Amazing Grace? I posted the project on eLance and have someone who will do it for $80. If we have a few takers to split the fee, then we'll really improve the theme. 8 people at $10 each and we can give the code to Vladimir to share. What do you think?
Pulsing effect is a part of the animated gifs.
Very nice, this theme looks great just as it is and the provided photos are a challenge for me to find or take something of my own that look as nice as they do.
I was able to get the social bookmarking buttons working, but there's a pulsing effect that I'd like to turn off. How is that done? Is it in CSS or is this a PHP thing?
Absolutely fantastic template. It's very clean, sharp, simple and modern-looking. Great job!
Love this theme!
How do I add the following widget under the search box:
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Thanks!
Ivan
I love this theme, Vlad. Thanks so much.
The link above to "Download Plugins - Find out about all the plugins I use to help you customize the theme further." does not work.
I would be really interested in knowing the plugins that use and think are worthwhile.
Thanks so much for your help, Josy!
Hi again. In the previous version I edited the archive.php to always show the full posts (the_content) instead of the the_excerpt, how do I do this in version 3.0 of the theme? And how do I hide the categories tabs at the top? Thank you in advance.
Thanks for your fast reply! Sorry, I wasn't using version 3.0 of the theme... now I am :)
Does it support WP 2.7 threaded comments? I can't get it to work.
Thanks for a great theme!
Nested comments work, but need to be enabled in your Discussion settings first.
Jazzy,
To keep tags from showing, you can edit the theme's php. If you're using WordPress 2.7, got to appearance, editor. If you don't want tags to show up on your blog posts, select the "single post" php and find this code "<?php the_tags( 'Tags: ', ', ', ''); ?>" Simply delete it and save changes... then tags won't show any longer. Before you got mucking with the php though, you might want to make a back up copy somewhere. I generally copy the original php onto notepad/texteditor and then start fooling around line by line... always making sure I've got a copy of the last php file that worked correctly.