I finally gave in to peer pressure and bought the Thesis theme for my blogs.
All the cool blogs seem to be running on Thesis nowadays, so I figured it’s worth a shot. Total disclosure moment: I honestly am not that enthusiastic about it on the get-go. There is a lot of hype on the thesis website and I’m more of an understatement kind of person. Sorry, but “check out the new awesomeness” is just the kind of phrase that makes me wary.
Still, I just paid $164 for this, so I’m going to give it a fair chance and hopefully be pleasantly surprised. I’m going to install it on some new blogs, while jump starting a few others with regular templates. Here’s what it looks like, fresh out of the box, on a new blog with just one post -
I wonder how much of a difference thesis is going to make in terms of traffic and specifically search engine traffic. One of their top claims is the SEO qualities of this theme. Personally, I believe off-page SEO is much more important than on-page optimization. With off-page promotion being roughly the same, let’s see if Thesis provides any unique traffic edge.
My expectations in the design department are even lower. With all due respect to the theme’s fabled design “customization”, I can ALWAYS tell a thesis design. Something about the navigation system, and often with the fonts, layout and overall feel to the site that gives it away.
So, I just installed the theme on a new blog (on an aged domain) and will start hacking away. This product is definitely not an “out of the box” solution. Just looking at the new page in front of me, it’s already offering an unrelated image on the main page, and the widget areas have text directed at the site owner. You can’t just activate this one – you need to prepare everything in advance, unless you want your users to see unrelated content on the blog.
Oh well, better get to work then. I’ll let you know how it’s going and reveal the result in a future post.
What about you? Are you using Thesis? Love it? Hate it?
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I really can’t comment much about what Thesis might do for SEO because I converted to Thesis about 3 months ago and within that time there’s been an update and my PR dropped. Not that PR really means that much, but it’s part of it. I was surprised.
I felt the same way you did when I first started with Thesis in the end it’s a much better theme and creates some good custimization features.
If you need any help don’t hesitate to ask.
Extreme John´s last blog post ..Tan for Cash Giveaway from Extreme Tan and Smoothies
I guess Thesis could have effected the PR of internal pages if you used it’s “PR sculpting” options, but it really can’t have effected the PR of the main page for good or bad.
I just started using thesis, I do like it do to how customizable it is, but there is a learning curve. The best part is, there are thousands of tutorials, so just google whatever you are trying to do and I am sure you can find out how to do it…
Best of luck.
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The learning curve is the part I enjoy, really. I love playing with my new toys. I’ve been thinking about my resentment last night and I think it boils down to the extreme hype around the theme. In the end, it is just that: a WordPress theme. Some extra coding and CSS, sure, cool beans, but a theme after all.
Twitter: blogviet
February 7, 2010 at 6:47 am
Thesis is quite good so far and I have just reviewed a very nice skin that you can buy for cheap price as it is not offering introductory offer. See it here http://go.eblogviet.com/simplepress
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I was considering going to Thesis, but using the “All in One SEO Pack” for any wordpress theme gives you the same SEO capabilities built into Thesis, I have done many articles about SEO and wordpress blogs. I want to go to Thesis for the professionalism of the look and the hooks, but haven’t justified paying the over $100 for the theme cost for my personal blog yet.
You are right, you can always tell a Thesis theme, and seems many people use it just to try and “advertise and get affiliate sales from it”.
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Good point. And since I am not an on-page SEO freak, I don’t use any SEO pack (neither will I be utilizing the SEO features of Thesis). To me, putting the time into crafting title tags, keywords and whatever is just too much. I expect WordPress to do the basics and the rest just doesn’t matter.
Twitter: selurus
February 7, 2010 at 12:13 pm
I’ve heard a lot of buzz about the Thesis theme recently but I’m in no position to try it right now. I’ve recently installed the BlueGrey theme by skinpress.com and I’m happy with it.
Twitter: AlisonMSmith
February 7, 2010 at 1:07 pm
I’ve been using Thesis for a number of months now and I really love it. Really.
There is an obvious look to Thesis if you only add minor customization (as I do), but I’ve seen Thesis themes that I only detected because I looked at the source code.
To me, the best part is that you can customize it to the brink and still upgrade it without rehacking all the changes you made.
My first blog (started over 7 years ago) was not so lucky. It’s got a free theme that is customized all over the place and — even with my copious notes — upgrading is a nightmare.
I’m actually going to pull out all the hacks over the next few weeks and then put Thesis on that blog, too.
Good luck with your experiment!
Alison Moore Smith´s last blog post ..Pretty Link Pro is My Favorite WordPress Plugin
Actually, that’s one thing that bothered me. On the Thesis page, along with the notes of the latest release, they mention people with CSS hacks may need to work on those. I know what you mean about the frustration of upgrades and customized themes (I experience that with every Vbulletin upgrade…) I don’t want to get into that with multiple installations of Thesis too.
Twitter: myblog2day
February 7, 2010 at 5:19 pm
I’ve been using Thesis for quite some times and I must say that this is an awesome theme that I’ve never used before. I used to switch my blog theme every 3-4 months in the past, and not anymore after switching to Thesis theme. I love the thesis optimization.
Overall I must say that I love thesis theme.
Have a nice weekend Anne!
Regards,
Lee
Twitter: websiteweekend
February 8, 2010 at 7:53 am
Thesis CSS is a bit overdone.
Use the builtin callbacks as much as you can, it will make everything much easier.
Install the OpenHooks plugin, a definite time saver.
Dave Doolin´s last blog post ..Pre-Writing Is Your Friend – With Benefits (Part 1)
OpenHooks installed – the easiest way I could find to get rid of the Thesis link at the bottom. It’s my latest pet peeve with Thesis
Twitter: AlisonMSmith
March 8, 2010 at 11:24 pm
I replace the entire footer for my clients, but that’s something I might write up a little tutorial on. It’s not hard, but the few steps aren’t really intuitive.
Alison Moore Smith´s last blog post ..Start a New Blog in 1 Week
Twitter: techmaish
February 8, 2010 at 8:17 am
Thesis is one of my favorite theme. It allows you to make a unique design for your blog.
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Twitter: FamousBloggers
February 11, 2010 at 3:01 am
Thesis need some work to be ready to go, but I like it because it has a clean working space, means there no images and design stuff that interrupt you, it’s very good for designers as much as website developers.
Can not wait until I see the new features of the 1.7 , I think you should play with this version you have until you get the new one!
Hesham @ FamousBloggers´s last blog post ..Thesis 1.7 A New Generation of Website Optimization
I put thesis in my blog to try it, when i began to customized i got inlive with it!!! With all the tutorials in the web anyone can have a very personal thesis theme.
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I’ve been using Thematic a lot on my projects but lately I’ve been considering buying Thesis just out of curiousity and if it would be useful to my web projects.
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