My First Impression Of The Thesis Theme
There has been so much hype over the Wordpress Thesis theme that I finally decided to purchase it and try it on this blog. As you can see it’s no longer active, mainly because I like my previous theme a whole lot better. I am however running it on my Load Of Bullshit blog, after all, there’s no reason to let all that money go to waste.
I wasn’t overly impressed mainly because I expected so much more from it. I expected it to be more of a ‘plug and play’ theme where all it would take is the click of a button and things would happen. Take for example the placement of a header. With the theme that I am currently using on this blog, all I had to do was point to where the header image is located, make a selection to say I wanted it to display and presto it was there. With Thesis it involves a whole lot of CSS manipulation and if you are not CSS proficient, which I am not, you are forever cursed to search the Support Forum for a solution. I did find one but I haven’t implemented it yet.
It does have a lot of features but to access them you do need to manipulate either the PHP or CSS files and while I will get to them in time, I was hoping for something a whole lot simpler to use. I will do another update once I get my head around this theme, but for now I ain’t at all impressed.
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The FlexSqueeze Theme gives my blog that professional look. I loved it so much that I bought the developers license. It's the easiest most customizable theme I've come across. See how easy it is to change your theme's appearance! Compare it to Thesis to see how much better it is! I am so thrilled with this theme that I highly recommend you to get your FlexSqueeze theme today!
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Filed under: Reviews
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I just took a look at it; nothing special, as you said.
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That’s because at the moment, apart from the header, it is straight out of the box, so to speak. Once I have come to grasp with all the ways that I can customize it using CSS and the so called hooks I should be able to transfer it into something unique.
I can understand your point of view, but as someone who earlier in the year wrote my own theme and am able to code most stuff that I want to do, I just ported my blog to Thesis.
I think it comes with way more out-of-the-box click-and-go functionality than probably any other theme and certainly way more than you’ve given it credit for. You can change the number of sidebars, their positions and widths through dropdown menus and you can check the box if you want to show comment numbers, author name, tags, categories, date, select pages and links for the nav bar. The non-coding aspect is pretty huge.
Yeah, you need to use CSS and hooks for certain things, but welcome to the world of customisation.
When you buy the Thesis theme, you’re not so much buying the theme as buying a membership to DIYthemes, where you get forum support, theme updates, soon there will be the Cosmo addon to Thesis and there’s other cool stuff to come.
Anywho, you can tell I’m a fan, but I’m not trying to argue with you at all. I think there has been a bit of a misconception as to how different you will get Thesis to look, just at the click of a button. However, there is still quite a lot of options that are at the click of a button…
Hope you enjoy using thesis anyway. It’s actually a great way to learn more about using WordPress as well. I’ve learnt heaps.
As I said Kristarella it is just a first impression. As I start to learn how to use it to its full potential I am sure that I will appreciate it more. The problem is that at my age I much prefer to take the easy option if it existed rather than having to learn a whole new heap of codes and stuff.
It obviously comes a lot easier to you, especially if you have designed your own theme, but for newbies like me its like a whole new language.
I’ve noticed on the support forum that those who have an inkling of what they are doing are able to garner something from the answers, those who do not are just as mystified as when they began.
One particular thread involves customizing the color of the sidebars. I managed to change the color but only to as far as the bottom of the last text or widget and not to the bottom of the page, which looks really dicky. Others are having the same problem and I still haven’t seen a resolution for it. I’m sure one exists, I just can’t find it.
Yeah, it did come easier to me, thus my efforts to help out on the forum :) The issues that arise are issues that come from wanting to customise any theme, at this point in time there are no easy options in that regard (there might be some on their way though).
I haven’t been on that thread about the sidebars… It has been a CSS issue almost since CSS began. I’m going to try to find that thread because I think the solution would be to use
.custom #content_box {background-color:#fdd;}.custom #content {background-color:#fff;}
The whole content box gets a background colour and the post area gets a background colour of white (you would probably want to change the hex colour from pink though ;) ).
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Thanks Kristarella, that worked a treat. There was nothing like that in the forums and I would have never worked it out on my own.
Thesis theme is good but I think it is overpriced for that simple design theme.
I will hold off on my opinion of it’s value dollar wise until I have had time to assess the theme properly.
You do raise some valid points and I agree that there is still room to go for Thesis to become even more “point and click” simple for certain types of changes. What I do think it has going for it is a solid foundation. So when the time comes to add more clickable options, the foundation will already be there. Of course, like Kristarella points out, there are quite a few easy-to-use options already.
@Hussein – I wouldn’t discount the value of simplicity. Before I bought Thesis I tried a few other themes and spent too much time trying to get rid of things I didn’t want. Thesis takes the opposite approach of starting with a simple, clean, elegant out-of-the-box look that you can then customize and tweak and add onto. I, for one, was more than happy to pay money for that over something more flashy. But everyone needs to satisfy their own tastes.
Patrick K. O’Brien´s Last blog post..Thesis Theme 1.2 Revealed
Hi Patrick, as far as functionality goes the current theme I am using on this blog is really pretty good. Via a simple click of the button
I can choose the blog style, either blog, magazine, list or a combination of magazine list. I can also choose the following;
The side bar position, either left or right.
The Header Logo image or Site Name text.
The Heading Text Color:
The Colored Bar:
The Widget Box Color:
The my Footer Color:
The Global Content Font Style:
The Global Headline Font Style:
The Global Font Size(px):
The Global Font Line Height(px):
The Global Image Alignment:
I can also choose the Heading image setting, either static or rotating images.
There are a few others but I don’t want to ramble on, and these are all straight out of the box and are clickable. It also shows a live preview so that when you save your selection you can see what effects it has on the blog.
There is one thing that Thesis could do almost instantly and that is to allow you to edit the custom.css and custom functions php, from the edit theme panel or somewhere so that the user doesn’t have to continually edit it externally and then upload the changes.
It would definitely be worth suggesting some of this stuff in the suggestions section of the forum. Always room for improvement :)
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Now there is an idea!! Trust a woman to open a man’s eyes to his short comings
This theme is beautiful
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It is pretty good isn’t it?
I kind of assumed the themes you pay for were much easier to customize than the freebie themes where you have to do a lot of code editing. Thanks for the heads up – I think I will stick to the freebies if they are still going to require a lot of work. :)
~ Kristi
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Kristi, apparently it is a whole lot easier using something they call ‘hooks’ to make changes and stuff, I just haven’t got around to seeing how it works. having said that as Kristarella said, there is a whole lot of stuff that can be selected simply by clicking.
The one thing I like about it is the author is continually upgrading it and all upgrades are free. I will be posting some suggestions in the forum and it will be interesting to see what eventuates in the future.
Its a nice looking theme, but personally prefer some of the themes over at ithemes (hence why I paid to join the theme club). There are some nice premium themes available now which are great if you want something impressive looking straight out of the box.
That’s true Nick, but the theme not only has to look good, it has to be functional. Once I get my head around the theme I plan to pay for the developers license so that I can us it on all my blogs, and each blog will look like it has it’s own theme. I will never have to worry about updating or changing themes again.
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I really like the Thesis theme. I hate paying for it though:)
Unfortunately Jason, this theme you have to pay for.
Thats to bad :( How much by the way? I am deciding whether or not to try to “monetize” a blog.
I think it was $79 and if interested you will find the link at the top somewhere.
I have been hearing a lot about how WordPress themes are not very optimized for the search engines, and came across a blog post mentioning that it was the best out there.
It certainly is my favorite, that’s for sure.