I’ll admit that when I first saw the Thesis wordpress theme I wasn’t really keen on it, in fact I really didn’t see the point. While I’m not a programmer by trade, I know enough HTML, CSS, and PHP to make things happen in the code. However after seeing some of the behind the scenes stuff on Rae’s blog I finally gave it a try, and PURCHASED MY OWN COPY. I can now say that I’m a big fan of Thesis, and am probably what you’d call a brand advocate. If you’re like me and can do your own programming, or just don’t get why Thesis is cool, then read on, and I’ll try to explain some of the benefits.
If you are a novice programmer of have no programming experience, Thesis makes it really easy to dip your toe in the water, since Rae did an excellent job covering that in her Thesis review I won’t rehash that it here. But what about those of us who can do some coding, are developers or publishers, or have more than one website whats the advantage? Chances are you’ve graduated past the free themes and you are using a premium theme like someplace like solostream or woo themes. They are nice looking themes for sure, but they have their limitations. Lets imagine you want to customize the look and feel a little, add or remove things, I can tell you from firsthand experience it’s not an easy task, sometimes it can be excruciatingly difficult, because you have to start modifying the core theme files. Every few months the theme will get an update and therein lies the problem, you’ve now got two choices, stick with your old version of the theme which has your customizations, or migrate all of your changes back into the new version of the theme. If the theme has updated because of a wordpress update, your’re pretty much screwed (I speak from first hand experience here).
When you work with Thesis you won’t have these problems. To customize Thesis the only thing you have to do is change two files custom.css and custom_functions.php. Every time thesis updates, you copy those two files, upload the new version of thesis, and put your two files back. That’s it there’s no go ing back through the core files trying to figure out how to put your modifications back in. Again I’ve done this several times across multiple blogs, not just this one, and each time it goes off without a hitch.
Knowing that I only have to work with these two files is huge time saver. If you’ve ever tried to work with a theme someone else wrote, you know that working with template files can involve a bit of hunting and pecking, is that coming from archive.php or archives.php, where is the author template pulling from, which sidebar file is that coming from, again working with thesis has already saved me a huge amount of time, so I can get more done, and less time wasted on playing with the code.
Another bonus of thesis is how easy it is to change the layout. Sometimes when you work with “pixel perfect” layouts you run into problems. You need to put a 250px wide widget in your sidebar, but the designer made the column 200px wide. In theory you should just be able to go the CSS file and change the two width and everything falls into place. However everyone who has been coding for more than 24 hours can tell you 99% of the time it’s never that easy. You’ve got to spend time going through multiple nested CSS sheets and classes, and hope that a graphic wasn’t involved. However with Thesis it really is that easy, you choose how many columns (up to three), how wide each one is, hit the “big ass save button” and you’re good to go (screen shot below click to enlarge)
For me the biggest bonus of using thesis comes from the time it saves me. Once you understand how to write hooks customizing thesis really is breeze. If you run more than one website you can leverage the programming across multiple sites even though they all have a different look and feel with different custom CSS file. Hooks are really easy to write, lots of people share theirs, you can see my thesis hooks here, and I do plan to publish more. Simply put Thesis helps me get things done with my blog, instead of wasting time on design, themes, and set up distractions.
To be clear this is not a sponsored post, or sponsored review. I bought my own developers license with my own credit card, I was not given a “review copy”, comp’d, reimbursed, or in any way incentivized to write this post. I wrote it because I like the software and I use it, and to be honest I think a lot of you could benefit from it to. In fact I like this program so much I’m announcing a new section on my blog called Recommended where I’ll be listing software I use and think is worth using and owning.
If you think thesis is cool and want to give it a try, a personal copy is $87 and developers license is $164 (under priced IMHO). if you only run one website the personal copy is fine, have more than one the developers license, lets you put it on as many websites as you want. You can also always upgrade from a personal to the developers license. If you found this review helpful and want to pick up your own copy of thesis, you can use my affiliate link to make your purchase.
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{ 38 comments }
Nice review of the Thesis Theme. Do you have any active sites using this theme?
@brian Viralconversations.com uses thesis, as do several others I can’t reveal at this time.
The new redesign here looks great, Michael.
Thanks
Great review Michael, and good to see someone else not only using Thesis – but working to know and use it beyond it’s off the shelf settings. I need to do the same – the vanilla Thesis install on my blog looks far too common -and I’ll be trying the hook you demonstrated with the time based formatting when I finally get around to it.
Great review! Can’t wait to see more of your published thesis hooks.
I’ve been in the same spot as not really seeing the point of paying that much for a blog theme. Just figuring it’s a affiliate thing selling a friends product but you don’t do that like other people do so it did stand out….and your sequence of posts is slowly convincing me to try it.
I am developing my new site on Thesis and after a few weeks on the job, can say you’re perfectly dead on correct here. I have stopped trying to use WP Remix completely.
A couple of plug ins that are huge help with thesis if your site is more than a simple blog are the ‘page order’ and ‘depaginate’ plugins. They save time by letting you be nimble in the “pages” area. I also am using the SEO all in one pack to tweak meta data
I’m nearly done with the content so will be spending more time in the custom style css parts of Thesis, safe in the knowledge that I won’t dread the next maintenance release.
Nice review – the fact you mentioned you paid for it makes it even more compelling.. I’m a definitely a fan of Thesis theme
Have you tried other CMS WP themes? Ive tried four, and my favorite so far was WPUnlimited (caveat – my friend owns it, but I honestly do find it better).
I totally agree – I switched a couple sites from Revolution to Thesis recently, and I love all of the options in the interface.
I’ve been hand-coding HTML since the 90’s, so it’s not a deterrent to work in themes when need be, but just easier to tweak in the admin area.
And the flexibility is big to me. I was playing with all sorts of column configurations last night before settling on one.
Count me as a Thesis fan.
people pay for wordpress themes? it’s open source! after you hack one up, there are only 3 or 4 places to find the things needed to be hacked in any theme. i agree with chris pearson that 3rd party code can get nasty, but with thousands of themes available for free i have never had trouble finding a suitable one to chop up.
@salzano if you think of thesis the way you see CSS Zen Garden done you’ll realize you don’t need to chop up the theme, and get into the HTML anymore. Once you learn how hooks work, it’s really really easier.
ack i forgot the reason i wanted to comment the first place… this forced update you speak of interests me. i have never received notification that a theme needs to be updated. maybe you just had one break after a wp update? i have never experienced such a problem.
@salzano once you move to premium/paid theme you encounter it. Most of the premium theme’s add some special features and they need to be tweaked/maintained/updated from time to time, as features are added and wordpress functions change.
@salzano I think the cost is nominal compared to the time I would take me to mess around and make another theme how I wanted it.
I’d rather work on other projects that quickly make the money back.
Thanks for the review! The dev license can’t be used for 3rd party clients, right?
it depends if they are going to need support you can get them their own version.
Well, I could give basic support myself…
You’re on the button Michael. Thesis is great for novices and people looking for a clean look, an easy options panel and great SEO.
It’s even better for people wanting to get under the hood – for people new to customizations, once you’ve crossed the initial learning curve with hooks it quickly becomes an understandable way to work with PHP (it removes all of the distractions of someone else’s file, and there’s a huge resource in the community as to how to achieve things).
For web developers, there’s huge advantages in the custom files process – it speeds up development time and allows you to build an easily accessibly library of transferable customizations.
We love Thesis!
thanks for the replies, guys!
I have been using Cutline for a long time, which is also a Chris Pearson WP template. The dude just makes sense of things in WP esp for non programmers like myself… I have pimped the *ish out of cutline… I havent touched another template for about 2 years… Unfortunately my css goes beyond custom.css file I am probable using 3-5 .css files for CMS sites…
Anyone who has basic html/css skills can code better than mainstream-looking Thesis.
1. It will look way-more unique than half of the blogs on Internet
2. It will cost less (unless you earn more than $87/hr)
3. You will save time writing ‘oh Thesis is so cool, buy it through my affiliate link’ post.
Never gonna give you up,
/Gary
@gary thesis allows you to take any vision you have for design WITHOUT having to get into the code. The power of thesis isn’t it’s design, it’s the way you interface with it, without having to get into the messy details
Michael
The thing that sold me on Thesis to begin with is the superior typography. In the age of Photoshop and Flash, the importance of type in design has been all but forgotten. While Chris has introduced control over the fonts in the 1.4 version, he still have a great eye for font spacing/implementation that makes for clean, easy to read text. That’s worth the $164 dollars by itself.
Also, worth mentioning the fabulous support community as well as Chris’s personal attention to questions.
Beautiful theme?i like it
I think when I found 2 super blogger (the other one is problogger)rated this theme nicely ,I think ,I shall buy it soon,the other blogger that I read has also “another conffession about how nice is themes thesis wordpress saying almost same ,that ,with no programming skill,the use of this thesis is base on ;simple use,simple implementations.to get better “buyer”
You better throw a meta noindex on the tags or you are going to knock your future rankings into a spin as seen with many wordpress blogs in google webmaster help forums. Grab the “meta robots” plug-in and knock out a few more leaks…
I am finally comfortable with removing enough stuff from wordpress to make my own themes work, I do not like paying for anything Michael.
It took me awhile to find, because it’s buried a bit on diythemes.com (Thesis home site), but there’s a $40 fee to use Thesis on a client site (fee is per site), even if you have the Developer’s License (you can use Thesis on as many of YOUR sites as you’d like).
You say this isnt a sponsored post, but you are trying to sell thesis themes. Therefore no objectivity. Therefore worthless review. Lets call a spade a spade.
I use it now and recommend it to everyone. I love it.
I see this theme everywhere these days. I finally click thru one of the articles deep in your RSS feed and bam, not only your site but your latest post involves Thesis. I have to say from a readers point of view the sites are always very nice to look at. I hope the back end is just as pleasant…
Michael – Why are you not allowing the people who do not agree that Thesis is all that the right to post comments? I am getting emails of a comment conversation different than what is appearing outside of your domains admin. panel.
it’s a wp-cache issue there is a lag time between comments posted, comments approved and comments appearing. Not censoring comments. the post from user chris stands as is
I found this review helpful because, despite Rae’s best efforts, I didn’t get why Thesis was such a big deal. Putting all the custom code into only 2 files is a genius innovation. Keeping custom stuff working with new versions of WP is a PITA.
Next question: Once I get graphics for a redesign, who do I go to (that is reliable and timely) to have them sliced up into a thesis theme? I’m looking for a PSD2HTML equivalent. Thoughts?
@gab yes the “layering” and forward compatibility really appealed to me. Not sure about the PSD2HTML lets ask
As a novice programmer this information is extremely useful and will save me a lot of time as you stated, thank you for this review!!
Thanks for explaining how this theme works, Michael. I’ve been using Solostream and liked the look for a long time, but now it’s just too dark and too difficult to change. I’ve been studying CSS so I started tinkering with my blog files, and I’ve just made a mess.
An update was released to my theme, and I didn’t update because I was afraid I would lose all customization.
And I want to create a second blog. How would I incorporate all the changes I made to it? After spending hours and hours turning my beautiful blog into a hideous thing and knowing I still had a lot of work to do, I started looking around and found Thesis. I think it’s just want I need. Better spend the money than invest so much time. I’m no designer! Now to find the money.
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