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
- 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 Vladimir Prelovac. I am a computer engineer by profession and an adventurer by state of mind.
552 Comments
Very nice theme. You should provide a live demo.
Paolo
Oops sorry, it wasn't the theme that was the problem it was a couple of plugins (older versions of the All in One SEO and Advanced Tag Entry that caused the problem (also with my old theme, I hadn't tested all the admin areas after updating to WP 2.7!) So - now I'll be using your theme for sure! Thanks for making it.
Hi - I would love to use this theme on my site however, I couldn't do without the fantastic OZH Admin menu plugin. If I activate the theme it breaks this plugin (admin pages have the drop down menu in the middle of the page not the top. Any idea why this would be?
I downloaded the most recent Blue and loaded it up. But I'm still getting the same behavior, on some computers Firefox displays the right sidebar underneath the left one.
Dudley
Dudley: download the latest version from Blue grace page!
Olga: Upgrade your WP !
I'm using the AG theme, 3.1. I have access to the site from several different computers using the latest release versions of IE and Firefox. Generally, it displays fine IE. Oddly, with Firefox on some computers, the right sidebar appears as it should, but on others it appears at the bottom of the left sidebar. This seems to happen no matter the screen resolution or the contents of the sidebars. Any ideas?
Installed the amazing grace but getting error:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: single_tag_title() in /home/dietha00/public_html/wp-content/themes/amazinggrace/index.php on line 3
Hoe to fix it?
Aren't those just one level? OK, I will contact him! Thanks! :-)
Brian already created puul down menus for Amazing Grace, contact him directly.
Aha, there is someone replying on the forum about this. Vladimir, does this appeal to you at all, I haven't noticed you replying.
Hi, ya know, the excerpt does not show a "click to read more" link on the front page. How would one change that?
Also, I've been asking for a few months for participation in creating a pull-down menu for this theme. I would have to pay between 50 and 80 bucks to have it done, since I don't know how to make a cross-browser compatible pull-out and pull-down menus for pages and categories within this theme.
Anyone want to share the costs with me and then make the pull-down menu available to everyone...mostly because what if it winds up costing a bit more?
Best,
Dainis
@Chris
You can modify the RSS icon with Photoshop or paint, etc.
This is the rssbig.gif file in AmazingGrace/images.
Also, you can modify it, go to style.css and see on line 47 as this exemple :
#rss-big {position:absolute;
background:url(images/mascotte.gif);
width:100px;
height:70px;
top:128px;
left:120px;
}
* Sorry for my bad english language
a very nice theme.. i must try.. i like maximum accessibility
Hi.
Really nice theme, but I was wondering if you could update it to be localization friendly (using .po and .mo files). Since Wordpress itself is very nicely multilingual, it's a shame that almost no themes are. It would make life so much easier for us who are publishing in other languages than english.
I found a tutorial on how to do it here:
http://www.zyblog.de/2006/01/15/localizing-wordpress-themes/
Adding localization to your theme gains it even more friends.
:)
Is anyone having an issue with photos not appearing in Firefox? If so, did you have a fix for this?
I also have a question. What tools do you use to create those RSS feed icons (guy reading a paper) or buttons? Is it Photoshop or is it flash? or some other tool?
Hello, thanks for this nice theme. Please, I search how to display the comments with the most recent first. Also, when a user has a gravatar, it appears that only half on the dark part of the comment. On the white part the gravatar appears entirely.
Thanks by advance for your reply.
hi, i am using your theme and id like to thank you for this. i just wanted to ask, the theme is supposed to have a 3rd column but in my site, there is no 3rd column, i dont know whats wrong with it. i would appreciate so much if you could help me. thanks again!
Thank you For Themes. I Like It.
Hi,
Ive been using your theme for a time now ant it is awesome, i was just wondering if there is a way that, in a side bar i can show an rss feeds pictures and not the titles. I have a realstate page and would like to show the prefered listings pictures.
Hello,
Could you please tell me how to change the pictures on this theme? I tried uploading the same size files into the images folder and naming them bg-portrait1.jpg 2, 3 etc however they are too large no matter how many times I resize them.
How can I get them to be "framed" as you have with the rotating pictures on the template?
Hi, how can i use a page template in this theme?
I love the Amazing Grace theme but I am having the same problem as Enrique. The sidebars are being shown on the bottom of all pages except the Home page.
Can you discuss the fix for this
Hi,
I really love this theme! I need your help, what happened is the two side bars went down to the bottom page. I'm having difficulty about it and I don't want to change my theme.
Thank you very much
Erique
Hi,
I'm interested in seeing what plugins you use other than your own. I clicked the link above and it's not working.
Thanks