Many people are using WordPress to develop their domains including me. Finding themes that I can use “out of the box” is very hard. Finally I found a theme that I can use to develop a domain quickly and I have used it to change this blog into a cleaner simpler website. The theme is called Thesis and it is very special in a number of ways. This theme solved a number of real world problems for me and has really allowed me to start building and maintaining sites much more quickly than in the past.
WordPress theme problems
OK, I want to be up front and say that I am promoting a product by making this post but this is truly secondary to the fact that it solved a number of issues I was having. Sometimes the money is worth spending if the productivity you gain is worth it and that’s why I bought the developer option.
With various free WordPress themes, I found myself having to customize the themes and running into a lot of problems doing so. Many themes are badly written and so customization just made those flaws visible. It is a nightmare tracking down the problems as they appear.
Often I had to hack the core of the theme to get what I wanted. The problem is that if I ever update the theme, I lose all the customizations I make. The workarounds require far too much time and effort.
Sometimes I found myself making the same changes over and over. The tasks became time wasters and frankly boring.
How Thesis can help
Chris Pearson introduced me to the Thesis theme on twitter and after some research, I thought I would try it out. The first thing I found was that it had a lot of dialog boxes in the back end which seemed overkill at first. The truth is that a lot of the boring repetitive tasks can now be done with one click in the back end. For example, it can convert from a 1 column to a 2 column layout and even a 3 column layout like the one I am using here. This was a simple dialog box choice. Also you could pick from a list of widths for the columns. I cant tell you how often I change these settings when customizing a website.
You can also choose which pages to include in your navigation menu by clicking on the ones you want. One of my major gripes with WordPress was trying to find ways to exclude pages from menus. There were plugins that could help but why bother if your theme does it for you.
If you use statistics like Google Analytics or Quantcast, then you need to place scripts in the code of your website. This means you need to edit the code in a file or else install yet another plugin. In Thesis, there are boxes where you can just cut and paste your code, save and you are done.
What’s wrong with lots of plugins?
Plugins come in variety of flavors and some are fantastic like fellow Irishman Donnacha’s WP Super Cache. Many others however are badly written and force you to upgrade regularly. They can also be incompatible with some themes or with each other and can break html validation. Some even take some of your ad commissions unless you hack their code.
So bottom line, for me, the less plugins the better.
Hooks
For more advanced users, the Thesis themes has hooks which allow you to customize to a whole new level. Best of all the custom code all sits in a folder away from the rest of the code so when an upgrade comes out, your work is still there. No more do you have to redo all your customization and remember how you did it in the first place. While they take a bit of getting used to, they are well worth learning.
Is Thesis perfect?
No. I would like to see more options available in the back panel as opposed to requiring hooks. Also I would like to see more flexibility in how to display ads or photos though it is a huge improvement over free templates and themes.
I am considering making some tutorials, perhaps videos to help show you how I am using Thesis and so you can see how it might help you if you are going to develop your own domains. I was thinking also of customizing Thesis for various types of websites and then making available the custom code. You can then upload the custom code if you buy Thesis and your website would be designed for your niche. I wonder if there would be interest in that?
Anyone else have any experience with this WP theme? Do you have a favorite of your own? How do you think the new theme looks on the website?
Thesis theme for personal or developer use
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I LIKE the way your blog looks. Thanks for sharing about the theme. It sounds like a winner! The price of the developer is certainly reasonable. Look forward to seeing other Websites you create with ‘Thesis’.
Hi Jeff,
Thanks. I will certainly showcase sites I do with Thesis. It is very adaptable. I may have to speed up buying domains to keep up
Thesis is a nice WordPress theme. I mention a few of the other good places to buy premium themes in my latest post: Do you make these 7 mistakes when you develop your domains? (Barry, I also mention WordPress MU and your WordPress/Wordpress MU ebook in the post as well).
Thanks,
Joel
http://www.DomainSuperstar.com
Can you explain more about:
“Some even take some of your ad commissions unless you hack their code.”
… for instance how can we tell if a plugin does this or better yet — which plugins do this.
A good question as to which plugins do this and which do not. I do not have a list for you and I am reluctant to name them since the plugins are obviously useful. Some have a percentage setting right in the admin screen for the plugin. You can change that and it is usually pretty obvious. I would encourage you to make a one time donation if you set it to zero and continue to use the plugin.
Others are a little less helpful. They state that they take a percentage but dont put that statement in a very obvious place. They also tell you that you can remove it but dont give you instructions to do that. In fact in one case you have to hack the plugin core.
Check the authors website and any readme or other document files that come with the plugin.
Obviously this applies to PPC or affiliate plugins. I do show a specific hack to prevent this with one particular plugin in my e-book so obviously it would not be fair to give out that information for free when others have paid for the book.
Also be careful where you get your plugins. I recommend getting them from the WordPress website. There have been reports of malicious plugins and themes.