Thesis Demo Site — See the Thesis Theme in action!
My Take on Why Every Blog Under the Sun Seems to be Using the Thesis Theme
When I first decided to start blogging about my financial journey a little while ago, I found blog after blog after blog (and I could keep going) that uses the Thesis theme for WordPress, developed by Chris Pearson. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to fork over the money for a premium theme. A free theme would work right? Sure, but not if you want to do anything slightly custom to the design without editing ALL of the code. And not if you want to stop wasting lots of time tweaking and not actually blogging.
After struggling with free themes, even as a web designer that knows some PHP, CSS, etc, I was getting frustrated trying to get all the plugins and add-ons that I wanted to use to play well together.
So, I purchased the developer license. Out of the box, its a nice theme. If you want to customize it, you do still have to put the work in. I wouldn’t say its been simple to get it customized so far, and I have had a few “oops” I just crashed my site moments, however, I do agree with the masses that once you get the hang of using the hooks, Thesis provides one of the most customizable, well documented and supported blog (and content management website) shells or structures that I have been able to find.
Thesis takes out the guesswork for you with a standards compliant, search engine friendly, well supported theme.
I tend to agree with Ben Cook at WPBlogger who thinks that the Thesis framework could and should be the end of premium WordPress themes. Instead, what’s needed is skins or essentially, custom designs that are compatible with Thesis, whether they are free or paid or custom. (Of course people will continue to have healthy competition I hope!)
Theme vs Framework vs Skin – What Does it All Mean?
The word THEME is actually not accurate in describing Thesis, as a typically WordPress theme is specific to a certain use and is not often that flexible with structure.
Thesis provides a SHELL or FRAMEWORK, built using the php programming language. It has been developed to be solid enough that it does an excellent job of separating design from functionality. It lets you customize without changing the bare-bones structure. If you upgrade to a new version, (free to do) you simply replace the new files and you will maintain the integrity of your site design without headache. Thesis designers and free Thesis ‘skins’ are cropping up all of the place.
I’m not a developer, I am a designer, so I very much appreciate that myself and other designers have the ability to spend more time on aesthetics and design than on structure.
The SKIN, on the other hand, are free or paid or custom designs that make the thesis framework on the site unique.
Thesis takes into consideration search engines, browser compatibility, user-friendly navigation and design options, and is very very customizable.
Plugins & Widgets
I still use a lot of other plugins and widgets to customize my site. Some things you can do with the Thesis Hooks, and some things are just easier or more thorough to use a plugin. For example, you can insert your Google Analytics code in Thesis, but if you use a plugin, you can customize some of the outgoing links that will be displayed and have more options configured from within your Admin. So, all in all, I still believe its worthwhile to install plugins. (Social plugins, Database backup plugins, etc. I’m happy to share the specifics of these if anyone wants me to!)
Thesis-specific plugins that prove useful and are downloadable in WordPress include the Thesis Open Hook Plugin which allows you to paste custom hooks and code by section of the site as well as the Thesis Import/Export that allows you to transport your settings.
I’m not even close to done with the customization that I want to do with my site, but I am satisfied that I picked the right framework.
