Thesis Wordpress Theme Review

Chris Pearson launched the Thesis Wordpress Theme just over a year ago. It has quickly become one of the most popular premium Wordpress Themes, it is the backbone for sites like, Chris Brogan, Copy Blogger, and Matt Cutts just to name a few.

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I’ve been a big fan of Pearson’s design style but his previous WP theme releases were free. So I’m sure a lot of people are asking “If I can get thousands of themes – even Chris’s old ones – for free, is it worth paying $87 to buy a premium theme?” And ultimately “OK, is Thesis really worth it?”

I hope to answer these questions and give you my honest review of the Thesis Wordpress theme below:

I first saw the Thesis theme used on Sugarrae’s blog. After seeing Thesis in action and reading a little more about it, I decided to buy it and test it out on a few of my other blogs. At first I bought the single user license, but after playing with it I really started liking it. I wound up getting the developer’s license so I can use it on this site and other blogs as well.

So here are my takeaways from having used Thesis on a number of sites:

Design

Thesis is a beautifully laid out theme. It’s very modern, simple, and has just the right balance of white space. What makes it really cool is that you can change the number of columns (1 column, 2 column, or 3 column layout) as well as their widths in the Design Options panel with just a few clicks (no programming necessary) – and each configuration still retains that professional look.

You can also change the fonts and their sizes just as easily (for the body, headlines, sidebars, etc.)

Thesis is the most flexible Wordpress theme I’ve ever come across in that regard. In just a few minutes you can create your own combination of column sizes and text styles to personalize the theme specifically to your liking.

After you download the theme, you also get a background starter kit to let you change the main background easily – for even more customization.

SEO

One of the biggest selling points of Thesis is that it’s developed with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind. Wordpress by default is one of the most search engine friendly blogging platforms out there. However, it’s still not perfect and how your theme is laid out affects how search engines see your site.

I’ve seen themes out there with crazy code bloat, doing things that are terrible for search engines. Thesis is very clean and presents your content well, it uses a clean code structure, canonical urls, and the like. It also has the ability to specify each post’s title tags and meta tags without a plugin like All in One SEO Pack

Unique Features

One of the best features in Thesis is the Multimedia box, which lets you put rotating pictures or a videos in your posts. There’s a default option for all pages, but Thesis uses Wordpress’s built in custom fields function to post specific photos or videos for any page or post you wish. This is great for YouTube videos, photos, and even page-specific advertising.

Also:

• You can replace your default feed with your feedburner link
• You can specify which pages appear in your navigation menu and reorder them on the fly. This part is really flexible – you can even use a specific category’s posts or add a custom blogroll to it.
• Configure how your Title tag is laid out.
• Add Mint or Google Analytics tracking code without messing with your files.
• Specify a post image and how it should be used in the layout. Just to name a few.

Support

This one is one of the biggest advantages of the Thesis Wordpress theme over other themes. After you buy the theme, you get really impressive support. Future upgrades are free and if you have any questions about the theme, Chris and the Thesis community is really good at helping you out.

I checked out the forum – Chris and his team have been answering all the questions they have been asked and have gone out of their way to really help people customize their sites. (You simply don’t get this from a free theme).

It’s Not Perfect

Thesis is by far the most impressive theme I’ve seen out there when it comes to design, SEO, and features. It will be the base theme for a majority of blogs I run (and I’ve started to convert a fair number of existing ones already).

That said, here are a few things about the theme that aren’t perfect:

You have to FTP the custom stylesheet (if you add any custom styles). The reason for this is that if you need to update the theme, it won’t overwrite the main CSS stylesheet that’s editable within Wordpress. I understand the reason behind this, but it’s still not as convenient.

If you are looking to use Thesis for a photo blog, and plan on using the [ gallery ] it needs a few improvements to the way it handles Wordpress attachments (introduced v. 2.5). Hopefully Chris Pearson and team will fix this for future releases.

I was also a little disappointed that Thesis doesn’t have a built in featured post slider, like some themes. I expect this will be something that is included in future updates as they already have a box in the customization area.

And finally, I wish it would have options for displaying trackbacks. As it stands now – if you have a ton of trackbacks they push your comments down the page and take up more room that I’d like.

Conclusion

Over the years I’ve installed, tested, hacked, and played with a lot of Wordpress themes (and have even created a few). The Thesis Wordpress Theme has definitely impressed me. It’s beautiful, very easy to customize, and comes with features you won’t find in any free theme.

Is it worth it? In my opinion, yes. $87 is not a lot to spend for something that will save you a ton of time, even if you end up customizing the heck out of it (which I know I will) all of your changes will be future proof due to how Thesis is designed.

I paid $164 to be able to use it on many blogs. Just having as solid a foundation as Thesis provides makes it worth much more than that to anyone who’s serious about blogging.

If you decide to get Thesis for yourself, I’d appreciate you clicking the link below to support Art of Blog and future posts regarding Wordpress, themes, etc.

Once you have upgraded to Thesis I have started a series of how to customize it. We show you how to to pimp out your Thesis theme and tweak it to REALLY rock! If you want to see anything specific or have questions, please drop us a comment via our contact form.

If you are looking for a very detailed and indepth review of Thesis features and specs check out Nick Reese’s Review of Thesis.