The last Wordpress theme you’ll ever need. Bit of an extravagant claim, I know, but consider this:
The Thesis theme for Wordpress has been designed from the ground up specifically to enable non-techie users to customise and change the look of their site at will.
Full Disclosure up front: I use Thesis and I’m an affiliate for Thesis.
So how do you want your site to look?
Want a left main text area and 2 right sidebars? No problem – just select this in the options panel (and select your preferred widths of each), and you’re done. Want a central main text area with a sidebar on each side? No problem. Select that, click save and the look of your blog is changed instantly. Want no sidebars? You get the drift.
You can change the font types and sizes in different parts of your site, define how your page titles will be displaid, use the multi-media box or not, as you please, and a whole lot more, just by selecting or de-selecting options in the options panels.
To take things further there’s a custom CSS file. This file has been set up so that you can define any design element you want and it will over-ride the main stylesheet, without actually touching it.
Don’t like what you’ve done? No problem. Just delete the relevant lines in the custom CSS file and you’re back to the defaults, where you can start again.
And for those who really want to push the boat out there’s a custom functions file too. This uses a system of hooks which allows you to move different elements of your site to wherever you want.
Prefer your menu items to be under the header graphic? No problem. Un-hook them from before the header and re-hook them after the header, click save and you’re done.
Thesis Gallery Showcase – See killer customizations from around the Thesis community – click here!
A quick reality check here: the more complex the customisations you want to make the more you’ll need to know (or learn).
For example: making changes to the custom CSS file does mean that you need to know (or know how to get access to) the correct CSS definitions.
Using the custom functions file does require that you learn about hooks.
The CSS part is easy: you can find dozens of CSS tutorials on the web and, if push comes to shove, let me know and I can help with your CSS coding.
Hooks were new to me. I’ve got the logic behind hooks down, now, but I still need to look up the actual hook names.
But one of the best things about buying Thesis is that you become a member of the Thesis community, which gives you access to support through the support forums.
And if your experience with forum style support is not so good (that’s not the case in my experience with Thesis, but with many products it is), one of the first things you’ll find is how to search the forums for the answer you want from Google (rather than from within the site).
This worked like an absolute charm for me and enabled me to get the hang of hooks and set up a couple of custom functions in the space of about 20 minutes.
Search Engine Optimised
The earlier versions of Thesis were not compatible with the popular Wordpress SEO plugins (All-in-One-SEO-Pack and SEO-Titles) but from version 1.3.2 on this has been corrected.
So if you’re using either of those plugins, just continue to do so as normal.
And if you don’t have those plugins don’t worry – Thesis is, in any case, well optimised for the search engines through the correct use and structure of its HTML, CSS and PHP.
In addition, you can also define specific META tags for each post through custom fields – full instructions are included – which is what the All-in-One-SEO-Pack and SEO-Titles plugins enable you to do.
So why did I say that this is the last Wordpress theme you’ll ever need?
Because the continual development process at Thesis keeps pace with (and incorporates) new functionality in new Wordpress releases as they come out. Add to that the ability, as I’ve described above, to completely change the look and feel of your blog at any time and you have a completely future-proof theme.
For more information on Thesis and a video tour showing its capabilities and ease of use …
Update – 19 March, 2009:
They’ve just released Thesis 1.5 in Beta form.
It now includes the ability to select a Teasers and Features layout (like a magazine style) simply by selecting options in the Thesis Options Screen.
Also included now is a Features box and the ability to define the width of each column individually. So you can now have 3 columns of equal width if you want.
All of that just by selecting options in the Options Screens.
I wrote some more about Thesis here.
Update 4th May, 2009
The official release of Thesis 1.5 hit the streets this weekend. I’ve reviewed it in detail here.
I’m currently running a special offer on Thesis should you be interested in using it. For details click here.
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Thesis themes look really professional which is an important thing when you are having an online business.Personally, I like the Wordpress revolution themes a lot.Now I have the magazine theme.
Tom Lindstrom´s last blog post..Are Online Surveys The Right Choice For Those Outside Of The U.S.?
Tom, hi,
I agree – the Revolution themes are also great. Actually, there are quite a few good themes out there for serious users. I’ve been using the Wordpress Dream Theme for the past year (I only switched to Thesis about 10 days ago). Your site does look great – it gets a lot of content in front of people.
Cheers,
Martin.
Thesis is a nice theme, I’ve really liked the ones over at elegantthemes.com I’ve been using on a few of my sites. (And for $20 and unlimited use of themes that are released during your 1 year membership what a bargain as a multiple site owner!)
I’m on a new hunt to redesign yet again and haven’t found that elusive perfect theme yet. And unfortunately no matter how many tutorials I read I still struggle with making CSS do what I want it to do!
Chelle´s last blog post..New Hair Styles to Consider for 2009
Hi Chelle,
Thanks for coming by! That deal at elegantthemes sounds good – I’ll hop over and take a look.
Theme hunting is frustrating as heck, right? After I’ve looked at them for a while I lose perspective and usually find the next morning that the one I chose wasn’t what I wanted at all!
What I do now with Thesis is create the new look and feel I want on a development site and then leave it till the next day.
If it still looks OK the next day then I reckon it’s worth working with!
Cheers,
Martin.
Sure is frustrating! It’s not for the lack of quality themes available, I think I’m just not positive of what I want yet, and so its a wild goose chase!
Chelle´s last blog post..Bands I Can’t Believe Are Still Touring
No doubt thesis is good..but again customizing it is a sad part..
Wordpress theme with no footer is not a theme in my opinion and I don’t think I can play with hooks and codes to add footer and do other setting..
How about there support forum? How good is it?
Harsh Agrawal´s last blog post..Gmail labs new feature : Senders time zone
The forum’s good, but if you’re not keen on the customisation bit then you’re better off with another theme – no question.
The base Thesis is very bland in appearance. Deliberately so, because most people who would be interested in Thesis would be interested because of its customisability.
If you’re interested in looking at other themes there are lots of theme sites here.
Cheers,
Martin.
Hey Martin, That’s what,
Even if I but it that will be a developer license and that will cost me more then 150$.
Now m I gng to spend that amount of money on something where again I have to start from scratch and customize the theme?
Is int it much better if I simply hire someone who can create a custom theme for me?
Regards
Harsh
Harsh Agrawal´s last blog post..Gmail labs new feature : Senders time zone
Sure – if that’s what you prefer to do..!
Cheers,
Martin.
Hi Martin
Thesis looks great and everyone mentions its SEO capabilities, but how fast does it load?
The reason I ask is that Google Webmaster Tools now has a section for checking the average load times for your site.
All my html sites are super fast but my one Wordpress site is pretty slow.
What a disappointment after all the hype about wordpress.
I wouldn’t bother but Google is talking about using page load time as one of its metrics.
I’m pleased with the look of my theme but if it’s slow… I have to think of which theme to use on future sites.
Keith Davis´s last blog ..The eyes have it!
Hi Keith,
There are quite a few things that can make a WordPress site slow to load – the most common of which are plugins, themes or large graphics.
Plugins that need to access other sites for their information (like Share This or Related Sites) can greatly slow down the speed at which your site loads, if the servers they’re running on are slow or down.
I used to get really frustrated with the speed at which this site loaded and the fix really came when I identified and removed all the plugins that accessed other sites.
I covered that in a bit more detail here.
Thesis itself was greatly optimised in version 1.5 – I wrote about that here – it’s near the bottom in the ‘Under The Hood’ section.
Finally WordPress itself was optimised in version 2.7 – and that made a big difference too.
However, my static sites also load more quickly than my WordPress sites simply because they’re static sites – all HTML based and very few calls to the server to get the files to display.
Because WordPress is PHP based, it makes far more calls to the server and, if you have a plugin (even one that doesn’t access external sites) or a theme that’s poorly constructed (makes more calls than necessary to the server) that will slow down your site load time.
I’m talking here, of course, in relation to your static sites which I’m assuming are on the same server. If they’re not on the same server a whole bunch of other issues come into play – such as your relative server performance and the network connections between your server and your client (the PC where you’re viewing the site) and so on.
One way to identify what’s causing your site to load slowly would be to disable one of your plugins and check performance, then reactivate it and disable the next one, and so on. You could also do the same with your theme: disable it and activate the WordPress default theme.
Keep in mind, though, that WordPress will load more slowly than a static site, unless that static site is also based on PHP and has Flash and a whole bunch of other stuff on it that requires lots of server calls.
Cheers,
Martin.
Hi Martin
Thanks for taking the time to give me a comprehensive reply.
Fortunately all my sites are on the same server so I can start to look at the other things you suggest, plugins, theme etc.
I’ll also take a look at some of your other posts, which you have highlighted.
Much appreciated.
Keith Davis´s last blog ..The eyes have it!