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
Looks very interesting. Thanks for sharing..
http://coolday.blog.com/
Thanks for the feedback
very good theme. have you this for blogger?
Hey Vladimir,
I've been using your Amazing Grace theme for about 6 months now. Only had a few snafus when adding WP plug-ins and widgets but mostly is it works like a charm!
Wondering if you have plans to ADD a "drop down" schema to the PAGES tabs on the top banner/header?
Would also like to modify the 4x main images. I will try and find the method/routine on this in your knowledge base, but if you or some reader has a pointer on this, I'd appreciate the link.
Best,
Neil Ferree
Muy bueno el tema. Lo estoy usando hace unos dos meses. NO había ningún problema hasta que actualicé a wordpress 2.8 Desde entonces no se ven los sidebar en IE. Si se ven desde firefox y opera. ¿un problema mío o del theme?
this is a very fine theme you can see on so many blogs! thanks
Hi Jim,
actually, don't you think that keeping the author's signature would be a "smarter attitude" in such a case !?...
Hey, i was wondering how to remove the footer credit link? anyone done this? or is there no way to remove it actually?
Great theme, Vlad, but I have a question about scroll bars:
I generally use Google Chrome to edit my website at http://www.layofflist.org/ but I checked the layout in Avant and IE and it displays differently on both. It looks great on Chrome and even Firefox (although a page is missing), but Avant and IE have a scroll bar on the side and bottom of the posts, which really is pushing readers away form the site. Why would the scroll bar show up on IE browsers, but not on Chrome and Firefox?
Love this theme! Thank you!
Hi Vladimir, I have to admit I liked your site a lot better when you still had it in the amazing grace theme!
Great theme and look forward to reading your book.
Hi,
I have a problem that I can't seem to fix. While it may be a simple problem, I'm lost. If you visit my site at http://www.layofflist.org/ you will see that the Previous entries arrow is at the top of the post and not the bottom. When I click Previous entries it goes back and then the previous and next selections are in the proper location. Any help is appreciated.
Great template, but I have a question about subpages: I try and add a child page to a parent page but it doesn't show up. The parent page works fine using Wordpres, but when I ask for a child page it doesn't show up. Any suggestions? I've looked around but there are no clear answers. Thanks
Nice theme. Great...it will be appreciated if you can add demo also.
hi..this blog very good..
its important for blogger
thanks
@alex
I don' think there are any italian translation. The best way is change a little bit the code and use .po file to localize your theme. (u can edit po files with PoEdit tool)
check here: http://www.wordpress-it.it/wiki/Main/LocalizzareTemiEPlugin
ciao ciao
G.
Hi Vladimir, this is a great themplate, nice work! :)
In 1hour i built up a great blog for a customer's real estate agency.
does an Italian localization exists already for your template? This would save me a lot of work.
Thank you!
thax Thanks for the feedback. I've added instructions on how to
Thanks for the feedback. I've added instructions on how to show full posts in the customization section.
Trying to remove the blog title from the header without removing the text from the "Blog Title" section. Adding #header h1 { display:none } to style.css doesn't work.
I receive 2-3 new subscriber daily on my Blog. I get an email alerting me to this, but am not clear on how to communicate with these subscribers (I suspect) they are clicking the RSS feed.
Vladimir, do you have any plans to add a eMail communication feature to this theme?
Vlad,
I love the amazing grace theme. Unfortunately I am unable to add any widgets to my left column. Can you give me any advise.
Sincerely,
Al G
Great theme and look forward to reading your book. A Live Demo would be nice also. Thanks!
I'm using text widgets in the sidebars and they come very close together. How to add a bit more space between widgets? Or even a dotted line or similar?