WordPress Made Easy: Thesis Review
My name is Travis King and I hate WordPress.
A few years back you would have definitely heard me utter that phrase. Countless hours spent trying to manhandle free WordPress themes left me feeling very bitter about the whole experience. But recently, I’ve turned my attention to premium and freemium (is that even a word?) themes, and I’ve started to make reconciliatory gestures towards WordPress.
Enter Thesis, a premium theme framework that is supposed to make site construction a snap.
What is Thesis?
At first glance we may think that Thesis is just another WordPress theme, but on closer inspection you’ll find it is more a framework than it is a completed theme.
The best way to view Thesis is as a starting point rather than a finished product. A choose your own adventure, if you will; to change to a two column layout turn to Page 50.
Although you download and install Thesis just like any other WordPress theme, it is the design options and editors that really take Thesis beyond your typical predesigned theme.
What can I do with Thesis?
Once you have Thesis installed, your first destination will probably be the Design Options area. Here you can change the layout, typography (there is no Comic Sans option included Huzzah!), padding, color scheme, sidebars, and so on and so on.
Making adjustments is very simple. There’s plenty of drop down menus and check boxes along with excellent descriptions that will make even the most inexperienced editor feel comfortable.
Recently added in version 1.6 is the Custom File Editor which will allow you to muck about in the CSS and PHP code of Thesis. It’s not for the typical user, but for those that understand a little CSS, it’s a great addition.
Thesis also boasts a strong SEO framework because of its clean, optimized code. Free themes can often be bloated with sloppy coding which makes indexing your site on search engines more difficult. Thesis keeps everything solid in your backend so you don’t overly frustrate Google.
Also, Thesis comes with plenty of SEO options right out of the box, including custom title tags and meta keywords that you can edit for each individual post. It’s a nice touch that won’t require you to download an extra plugin to add those features.
What’s not to like?
To be honest, I can’t see anyone winning any design awards with an out of the box Thesis site. For your average user, no matter how much basic customization you make, it’s always going to look like a Thesis themed site. But is that such a bad thing?
There are plenty of sites out there that look beautiful but don’t really have much lasting use. It’s the gold ring in a pig’s nose scenario. I’d rather see sites with strong content over looks, even if that means having a basic, minimal design. Thesis allows people with good ideas to at least put together a functioning site that they can always redesign in the future.
It’s true that there is always something you want that you’ll find missing in any ‘out of the box’ solution. There is not much for social media and bookmarking options in Thesis, nor is there any handy contact form creation. But you will get the core basics like RSS along with a snazzy multimedia box. For any of the extras you will still need to turn to the plugin and widget makers.
Conclusion
Thesis isn’t going to be for your hardcore designer, but it is a wonderful starting point for a large section of first time bloggers and web site owners. It comes with easy customization features and plenty of support that you won’t find in most free themes.
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I use Thesis for my Daredevil (yes, the Marvel superhero) site, and really like it. However, I’m not one of those people who would ever settle for something that looks close to what everyone else has.
I’ve customized other Wordpress (and even Blogger) themes in the past, and have found Thesis to be easy and robust to work with. With the addition of Thesis Open Hooks, and several other great plugins, I now have a site that looks and performs the way I want it too. I’m no hard core web designer, but I’ve got a pretty firm grasp of CSS and XHTML and, with that, I’ve been able to customize my site a great deal. It doesn’t scream Thesis, and has a distinct look.
It is true that Thesis is easy to customize even for the newbie (on the surface at least), but in order to give it a unique look, you need to have some basic design and CSS skills. I recommend it for people who, like myself, are neither professional developers and designers, nor completely new to the idea of getting into the code (but don’t touch the core files!) and know enough to be able to extend it beyond its out of the box appearance.
Thanks for that review Travis. We might add this one to our catalogue.
It’s good that there are these frameworks coming out on WordPress. They take a lot of the gruntwork out of a standard website install.
Nice overview of Thesis.
I’ve been debating on either grabbing a WooTheme or Thesis and modifying it for a blog idea I had. I’m leaning toward Thesis because I don’t need anything fancy, plus I’d love to play around with the back end features.
Good article, but as someone who spends his days doing PSD to Thesis themes, I disagree with this statement: “Thesis isn’t going to be for your hardcore designer”
There are countless sites using Thesis that don’t look like Thesis. It’s easy to customize once you get the hang of hooks. It also helps to know CSS inside-out.
Thesis isn’t the be-all and end-all of WordPress frameworks (yet) but it does make life a lot easier for designers.
You’re right Dave, that is a blanket statement. I’m making the assumption that most hardcore designers are always going to want to start from a scratch.
Working from a framework does make just as much sense.
That’s the problem though – if you don’t know CSS coding inside out, all thesis themes pretty much look the same, and that’s why I don’t like the theme. I’ll be looking at Headway premium theme instead, now that looks pretty damn impressive.
Couldn’t agree more. The Thesis theme is INCREDIBLY customizeable (is that a word?). I’ve only scratched the surface really, after purchasing a developers’ license a couple of days ago but the possibilities for this theme are immense.
Like you said, Thesis is just a framework (and a VERY good one at that). What “hardcore designers” then go on to do with it is anyone’s guess and I honestly think you’ll see some incredible things using this theme as a base!
Its beauty lies in its simplicity and, with the huge number of supposedly “creative” blogs out there that are close to unuseable in terms of accessibility, then I honestly think this is a really refreshing change.
I understand that you COULD go to the effort and clog up this template with loads of unnecessary widgets, providing users with about 54 different ways to get to the same content, but I think its simple, clean design encourages users to minimise this. And THAT is a massive bonus!
Thesis is great, no doubt! As a designer, however, implementing customized Thesis installs can be tiresome with all the settings I have to keep track of and tweak in the client’s dashboard.
Another super-theme you might be interested in is Builder from iThemes.com. Word on the street is that they have something up their sleeve that will make installing customized versions of the theme super easy!
Hey guys.. is it normal to view the IE suggested update bar (i’m guessing its a wp/jquery plugin to get rid of IE 6 worldwide and get free cookies in the process).. if i’m using Firefox 3.5???
BTW its on YOUR site…
Thanks for the review, Travis. I purchased Thesis several months ago, and have yet to use it.
I find myself going back to Starkers, or my new fav–H5 to build visually unique themes.
Theoretically, I understand the child theme and hook concept. Practically, I find it simpler and faster to code the CSS from the beginning. I think I’ll put ‘learn how to use Thesis’ on my new year’s resolution list!
I use Thesis on most of my sites. I like the elegance of the basic design. And you can pretty much customize it – if you know how to use FTP and aren’t afraid of a little coding. The new features of Thesis make this easier.
However, for most of us, customizing Thesis can be very difficult. I’ve run out of time and patience to search the forums for detailed instructions, and don’t trust myself to not mess up. So I stick to basic customizations.
If you’re like me, you’ll prefer the Headway theme instead.
But if you do use Thesis, I suggest you get Transmit. It will make using Thesis (and Amazon S3 and other things that require FTP) a breeze. Not sure if it works with Windows, though.
PS: No affiliate links here
Try the Thesis Open Hook plugin – it makes life a LOT easier.
Just make sure you back up a working version of your custom_functions.php file if you’re changing that because if you make a mistake in there, you can have massive problems (e.g. your site and even admin panel not displaying!).
After using free Wordpress templates for a few years, I finally splurged and bought Thesis for my art site. I am still in the process of tweaking it and finding it very customizable. The support forum has been a great resource. Thesis strength is it’s bones – SEO and code structure.
I don’t use Thesis and still don’t see the point. If you’re coding is clean and optimized from the start, Thesis won’t be of much use. It takes longer for me to go behind someone to change their code than it does to code a site from scratch.
I can see where this would come in handy for a regular user who doesn’t have the money to hire a developer, but I would never recommend it to my clients above a full coding, no matter how optimized or clean someone claims it to be. You still have to code the actual site, so going with Thesis AND a custom design would probably cost more than a custom design with regular Wordpress.
I agree.
Its too time consuming to go make changes, run back and view the site to see if the changes worked the right way, then do a little more tweaking.
I thought Wordpress was simple enough as it is. Why make it simpler?
Thesis is probably the most marketed WP theme ever!
Thesis might be good for beginners or users who don’t know how to customize theme files.
However I am confident that most of advanced to hard-core developers, still prefer starting a custom theme from scratch (or almost). It is faster.
In the same time the theme won’t be cluttered with unnecessary functions.
I will always use a custom theme for my clients.
It’s simplicity itself to remove unnecessary functions from Thesis. I would honestly be VERY surprised if 99% of “hardcore designers” could come up with a cleaner template than this.
I understand what you’re saying with producing custom themes for your clients but you really should have a look at it – it’s worth fiddling with, if nothing else!! The hook system is insanely good once you get used to it.
This sounds handy. I work at a company where we sell WordPress installations every now and then. Some of our customers want to be able to change the layout in the way Thesis makes it possible. I’ll go take a deeper look at it to see if we’d be able to use this to make custom designs, with the user-friendly options to change stuff
Great article, thanks!
While I think this would be great as stated for “first time bloggers and web site owners.” I do think it would be more advantageous to this particular audience to list more advanced alternatives as well as the drop-down choose your own adventure options you’ve so graciously plugged/shown here.
Child themes: http://themehybrid.com/
Blank themes: http://www.refueled.net/blank-wordpress-themes/
Interesting… I’m curious to see what the future of Thesis holds, or what it inspires other programmers to develop! HINT HINT… just kidding
I have thesis also. I started completely from scratch learning wordpress AND thesis in the last four months. If it wasn’t for DIY being on twitter and @godhammer I think I would cry every day. The personal touch of being able to ask questions …they provide links to their forum is fantasticaly helpful. Wonderful Wonderful People.
Yay for Thesis !
On the other hand I have found a new theme that has a WYSIWYG and oh my! fantastic too.
That is pretty sweet, I can imagine lots of people using it. I know of a few journo’s who would love it.
Allow me to be the voice of moderate dissension. Thesis is powerpacked, to be sure, and the mark-up is nothing short of an art form into itself. But it is NOT, even with the advent of Open Hooks, easy to learn, or good for the beginner by any stretch of the imagination.
If you have been coding and tweaking themes for the past few years the old fashioned way, modifying Thesis’ backend will be akin to working on the engine of an Audi Quatro versus working on the engine for a Volkswagon Super Beetle.
As someone said above, without the help of the forum, and a few splinter websites with Thesis info, it would be extremely difficult to master Thesis. I’m a geek, so I learned it in relatively short order, but parts of it still frustrate me.
I love Thesis, but for the average user who just wants a theme they can modify easily without having to rethink what they know about themes, there are other alternatives. Most of which won’t leave you with bald patches on your head, and pits ground into you molars from gnashing your teeth together.
Just my two cents.
I couldn’t agree more!! As a non-geek, I just want to stay in my comfy html/css couch, none of this hooks/ plugin-writing!! I’m not a plugin – author – I’m a designer! My creative side shrivels at the thought of messing with those ‘hooks’.
I have been using thesis for close to a year and I love it!
Here is my website, built on thesis
http://www.deysonortiz.com built on thesis.
P.S. I am still learning
I have to say for the less experienced Wordpressers amongst us, it looks pretty expensive compared to other options.
As I said I am fairly inexperienced though so would welcome comments.
When I first started using wordpress I tried free themes, I found one liked then after a short while I got bored of it, and I was left with little or no room to grow, afterwards I started using paid themes, the same thing happend, as I wanted to add more features to my site and make it more my style I would keep hitting limitations.
Then I was referred to Thesis, I was blown away, every feature I wanted to add to my site was not a problem, and every update I got from thesis ( which is free after you purchase the theme ) came with amazing new features and their forum support is also very helpful.
As far as cost, time is money and the amount of time I wasted on other themes I tried was a lot more than I spent on thesis, that is not counting the amount of money I spent buying other paid themes that I ended not being happy with.
Check out their videos and showcases on http://www.DIYthemes.com,
in their showcase you will find they are responsible for many clean professional sites.
Hope all is well.
Deyson
http://www.deysonortiz.com
Interesting, I just started with Thesis and then you guys write an article about it! I’m trying out seeing how much design customization you can do with it. There do seem to be a lot of great things about it though.
I totally agree!! I just don’t understand how designers can LOVE thesis!! Every time I’ve ever (had to)design a site on Thesis it takes forever to figure out how to use those stupid hooks (php) instead of just plain html. I love me, some html!
Yeah, as Travis mentions ” free WordPress themes left me feeling very bitter”, think most of user would has the unpleasant experience.
Recommend a freelancer platform — http://www.taskcity.com
Here you may have lots of good designers to customize your WordPress themes meet all the features you want.
Just the fact that Comic Sans isn’t an option tells me that this is created by people who care about design and know something about good design.
I gave Thesis a try, and being a designer who likes as much control as possible over the look of what I do I couldn’t get too excited about it. Then I tryed Justin Tadlock’s Theme Hybrid – http://themehybrid.com/ and I have found that very promising. It is more of a theme framework that works well with child themes. It is free to download. There is a growing collection of free child themes available and for a very reasonable cost you can join the “Theme Club” and get responsive forum based support as well as documentation and enhancements downloads. From now on when I do wordpress, I start here. Definately worth checking out.
I have been using thesis for close to a year and I love it!
As I said, I love Thesis very much!