Amazing Grace

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.

Download Amazing Grace theme | Live Demo

Alternately you can download the original version of the theme now called Amazing Grace Classic.

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

1. Unpack this archive in your wp-content/themes/ directory.
2. Go to Admin WordPress and select presentation.
3. Select Amazing Grace
4. 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.

• 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)

1. 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.
2. Open your style.css and remove background reference from #portrait-bg section
3. Enter this code in your header.php just below the stylesheet line (one beginning with link rel=”stylesheet”)
4. <style type="text/css">
#portrait-bg { background: url(<?php bloginfo('template_directory'); ?>/images/bg-portrait<?php echo (rand()%69); ?>.jpg); }
</style>
5. 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.
• 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

Looking for a WordPress & SEO  expert? I offer WordPress related services, like for example theme SEO optimization or custom plugin development. See my WordPress Consulting Services page for more information and rates.