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Thesis WordPress Theme Review

Review of: Thesis Theme
Theme by:
DIYthemes, LLC
Price:
Starts at $87

Reviewed by:
Rating:
5
On August 26, 2011
Last modified:April 30, 2012

Summary:

Thesis is a very flexible framework for WordPress that comes backed with lots of options, great SEO, and the best online support community I know of! We like Thesis so much, it's what we personally use for our websites.

Chris Pearson launched the Thesis WordPress Theme just a few years ago. It took traction… pretty much right from the start.

Thesis already has the pedigree that other WordPress Themes don’t have. Top sites and bloggers like the Domino Project, Tony Hsieh and Matt Cutts use Thesis as their Premium WordPress Theme of choice.

As we all know… building a new site is hard.

Its even harder when you look at the sea of WordPress Themes, and the fact that some of them are pretty bad. Even the premium ones! That’s why I wanted to take a serious look at Thesis.

Chris Pearson has a great sense of design aesthetics… so I’ve always been a big fan. Going back to his free WordPress Theme days.

Thesis: Do more, code less

You may be asking yourself… “Is Thesis worth $87?” Especially since WordPress has thousands of free themes, even Chris has free themes available for download.

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

A little backstory, I kept seeing Thesis everywhere. I decided to pick it up and take a serious look at it. Immediately I saw its potential and wanted to using it on some of my other sites.

I had first bought the single user license. So I wound up upgrading to the developer’s license so I can use it on this site and on my other blogs.

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

Flexible Design

Thesis Site Options

Thesis is a beautifully laid out theme. It’s very modern, simple, and has just the right balance of white space.

It’s so versatile. You can go from a 1, 2, or 3 column layout, right away… it just takes a few clicks.

You do it right in the design options panel. No programming skills needed… at all!

Adding your header, is as easy as uploading a file.

Not to mention you also can change the fonts and their sizes just as easily (for the body, headlines, sidebars, etc.)

I’ve never seen a WordPress Theme as flexible as Thesis.

You really have a great deal of control. 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.

Best in Class SEO

Thesis SEO Options

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. What does that all mean? It means that your customers are going to find you a lot easier.

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

Thesis Multimedia Options Box

Another great tool, is the Multimedia box. Thesis has the ability to rotate images and videos. It really makes a great impression… your readers will love this.

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.

New Google Web Fonts

Also new in Thesis 1.8 is the ability to use Google’s web-fonts.  These fonts are safe, secure, and stored on Google’s servers, which means that any device in the world that has Internet access and rich-HTML capabilities will be able to use these new web fonts. These new fonts will help you think outside the “standard web fonts” box with just a toggle of the options panel. All in all, these allow you to create a uniform look without long downloads or additional tweaking.  This is especially important in a world increasingly populated with smartphone browsers and tablet users.

Under the Hood

As impressive as the user-interface side of the feature list is in the new iteration of DIYTheme’s theme is, the inner workings might be even more impressive.  Full support for WordPress 3.x features such as the navigation menu are in place, Page Options has now grown into a complete tool that allows the easy tagging, categorizing, and taxonomy of pages, all of which are important for SEO purposes and come complete with optional per-them/per-category/per-taxonomy page headlines and SEO tags.  In short, the easily accessibly SEO technologies that have made Thesis desirable to so many have gotten so much better in 1.8 without losing their ease of use.  Then there is the entire loop API, which can be used to make amazing websites even more amazing by those with a minimum amount of programming experience and skill.

Easy to Understanding SEO with SEO Character Counts

Back on the SEO front, SEO character counts are now available for the title and meta description fields.  These figures are important to keep track of for anyone who is optimizing their site. If you are one the few who aren’t, here is a guide.  Also important is the use of the all-important favicon, which can now be uploaded simply with the new Favicon Uploader included in Thesis 1.8.  Putting your logo next to your site name has never been this easy before.

 

Support

This one is one of the biggest advantages of the Thesis WordPress Theme over other themes.

Support is stellar!

A big win for Thesis and future upgrades are FREE, also 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 Almost Perfect

Thesis is by far the most impressive theme I’ve seen out there when it comes to design, SEO, and features. Being completely sold… I’m going to say it right here:

I will be extensively using Thesis for my sites. That said, here are a few things about the theme that aren’t perfect:

You have to FTP the custom stylesheet (not everyone needs a custom stylesheet… but I do)

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.

So I get it… It’s just an extra step that makes it a little less 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.

Being SEO optimized from the start… was such a big win for me.

That meant more that MORE people would be finding me. And not just more people… but the right kind of people, people who where actually interested in what I was writing about.

Since I’m using Thesis on multiple sites. I paid $164 for the developer’s option. (price can be a negative to some, but it outshines other themes)

Just having as solid a foundation as Thesis provides makes it worth much more than that to anyone who’s serious about blogging.

So if you think that having a solid, flexible, straight forward WordPress Theme with an entire community of supporters, is important to you. Then Thesis is your Premium WordPress Theme of choice.

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.

Get Thesis Theme

Once you installed Thesis… come right back. I started a series on customizing it. You won’t want to miss it. I’ll show you how to really pimp it out!

You’ll be tweaking Thesis to your hearts content.

Also use the comment section below as a forum for you Thesis questions.

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

You should also check out The Ultimate Quickstart Guide to Thesis Theme.

Written by

Nick Reese is the author of Traffic and Trust, and all round happy dude. When Nick isn't managing web properties he enjoys biking, shooting video, and drinking tea. You should follow Nick on twitter here.

{ 78 comments… read them below or add one }

Patrick K. O'Brien September 25, 2008 at 6:35 pm

Nice review of the Thesis theme. I also bought the developer version, have used it on a few sites, and have become a fan. I’m looking forward to the next update, rumored to be out very soon, which should add even more customization options.

I’ve got some tips on my blog, for anyone interested in using the “Twitter for WordPress” or “Photo Dropper” plugins with Thesis, for example. And I look forward to learning more from your site as well.

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Tyler @ Building Camelot November 24, 2008 at 6:11 pm

I’ve been thinking about switching over but I’m worried about my old post images. The theme I’m currently using has a wide (750px) post are and some of my images are that wide. Is there an option to have Thesis resize your old images so the posts don’t look all screwed up? Or do you know of a plug in that will do that for you?

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Tyler @ Building Camelot November 24, 2008 at 6:13 pm

that’s supposed to be “…(750px) post area…”

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Sun Tzu November 25, 2008 at 7:20 pm

@Tyler: you’d probably need a plugin to automate something like that if you have too many posts to go through manually.

You might want to look at something like http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/flexible-upload/ or http://www.soldesignco.com/wordpress-imaxwidth.html

Otherwise, it might even be worthwhile to outsource something like that through odesk or rentacoder (to go through your old posts and readjust).

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Tyler @ Building Camelot November 26, 2008 at 12:04 pm

@Sun: Thanks for the links – I’ll head over and check those out. I read somewhere that you can modify the .css and tell the images to fill 100% of the post but I’d much rather have a plug in do it for me. Thanks again!

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Jeff December 14, 2008 at 7:04 pm

Thanks for the Thesis review. I’m leaning towards giving it a shot (and will definitely use your link if I do).

I’m new to Word Press (but not web development). It seems like every time I switch themes and get it customized to the point that I love how it looks, I find some bit of functionality that doesn’t work any more (for example, I just found that my RSS subscription link is broken at http://blog.usedcargenius.com — using a slightly tweaked “A Dream to Host” theme). I’ll get it all working one of these days… :)

Thanks again!

Jeff

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communicatrix December 25, 2008 at 7:09 pm

I learned a lot doing all the customizing of Grid Focus on my main blog—chiefly, that I would happily forgo the customizing. I’ve also been a fan of Chris Pearson’s for some time, and am happy to throw a few bucks his way for a great product (and to you for providing a great portal to it.)

Thanks for a review that’s comprehensive, but not mind-numbingly so. Looking forward to getting the new bloggy up & running!

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Sun Tzu December 25, 2008 at 11:31 pm

Cool, thanks communicatrix!

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Brian F January 4, 2009 at 6:02 pm

I am wondering how Thesis compares to Semiologic theme, which claims to be the best for SEO?

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PotatoChef March 16, 2009 at 5:54 pm

Hi..I have a few questions. I have a few websites up and running right now. I am happy with the theme that they are on. But I will be starting about 10 more blogs during the next few months.

1. If I buy the developer’s license for $164 does that allow me to run as many blogs as I want on the theme, or is there a limit?

2. I am by no stretch of the imagination a coder. I know nothing. All I really need to know is how easy is it to put Google Adsense in the right hand column, a large Google Adsense block in the upper left corner of the blog post, and a large adsense block at the bottom of the blog posts.

If anyone could help me with those answers I would appreciate it.

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RaiulBaztepo March 28, 2009 at 6:29 pm

Hello!
Very Interesting post! Thank you for such interesting resource!
PS: Sorry for my bad english, I’v just started to learn this language ;)
See you!
Your, Raiul Baztepo

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George Gunter May 20, 2009 at 11:20 pm

what a letdown for me from Mr.Sire. Yet, I somehow trust the blogger’s review and will definitely purchase this Thesis. Question now is: the risk of developer or just one license?

Could use some convincing via my email, please.
Thank you!

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BloggerDude October 8, 2009 at 8:19 pm

I don’t know If I said it already but …Cool site, love the info. I do a lot of research online on a daily basis and for the most part, people lack substance but, I just wanted to make a quick comment to say I’m glad I found your blog. Thanks, :)

A definite great read….

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Keith Davis December 22, 2009 at 5:47 pm

Hi Nick
Great overview and I would agree with using a premium theme.
You soon get your money back by being able to get help when you need it.

I notice that on the Thesis website, the Developer Option allows you to use the theme on any sites that you own and it says…

“Sites that you own” are any sites where you are listed as the person (or business) who registered the domain.

I buy domains for my clients so does that mean that you can use the theme on client’s sites.

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admin December 23, 2009 at 12:30 am

Keith,

In the case you described you would have to have a client option for each site.

Once you buy the developer verison you can buy client options in 3 packages:

$40 – 1 License
$180 – 5 Licenses
$320 – 10 Licenses

Alternatively they could buy a individual license.

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Steve December 24, 2009 at 8:43 pm

Thanks Nick. I was just trying to decide if I should use a free theme or Thesis for my latest Website. This review sealed the deal for me. Hopefully, they will address the outstanding issues you listed, sooner than later. Cheers.

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Sriraj January 2, 2010 at 8:16 am

I currently use Brain Gardner’s theme and Am looking to purchase the thesis Dev version. Since I am using the All in one SEO plugin now (which isn’t required for the thesis theme), is there an option on the thesis to move all that meta data (title, description and keywords) into Thesis?
P.S. I already have a running blog with over 800 posts

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Nick Reese January 4, 2010 at 4:52 pm

Sriraj,
Here is a work around to get AIOSEOP to work with Thesis.
http://hyder.me/wordpress/all-in-one-seo-to-thesis-migration/

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Justin January 16, 2010 at 1:50 pm

I know I’m a tad late to the original blog posting, but thanks for the review. I’m currently in the market to switch my theme to something a little more SEO friendly than the crud I have up now.

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scott January 28, 2010 at 12:12 pm

I’m interested in buying the Thesis theme, however I like the CU3ER feature. Can the CU3ER feature be added at the top of the Thesis theme? If so, will it negatively affect the SEO ?

http://www.progressivered.com/cu3er/

Thank you.

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Nick Reese January 28, 2010 at 1:32 pm

Scott, This will require some custom PHP coding but is doable.

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scott January 28, 2010 at 1:48 pm

Thank you. . . How do I do that? What are my options regarding accomplishing this?

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Dawn Farias March 21, 2010 at 12:24 pm

I’ll definitely be using your link to purchase Thesis. Thank you for your posts on Dreamhost and Thesis.

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Nick Reese March 21, 2010 at 1:01 pm

Dawn, Sounds great! Let me know if you have any questions I can help with.

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Julie - Inspired to Write April 12, 2010 at 2:07 pm

I have been tossing the idea around and am leaning towards forking over the $87? My concerns are being able to use my own header designs, etc. How “custom” can you get with it? And do you need to be a CSS expert to customize? Thanks for the review on this.

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Nick Reese April 12, 2010 at 3:20 pm

Julie,
You can definitely use your own designs no problem.
Check out this tut. http://www.billerickson.net/thesis-wordpress-click-logo-header/

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Seth M. Baker April 23, 2010 at 10:29 am

Best Thesis review I’ve read so far…with some great comments! Been sitting on the fence for a while, looks like you’ve pushed me off. Thanks for the great post. Clicking your ad now…

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Bosmol May 19, 2010 at 1:53 am

I love thesis for its ease of use and SEO rich features

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Thesis Wordpress Theme Review June 1, 2010 at 2:10 pm

Great review of the brilliant Thesis theme. It is worth mentioning that many of the things you have mentioned as problems have already been changed, and there have been many other improvements.

And with version 2.0 on the horizon, there is never a better time to purchase thesis. Thanks for a great review.

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Luis Rico Moreno June 2, 2010 at 6:12 pm

I live in a Spanish speaking country. I understand and speak English quite well, but not my readers. Can anybody tell me if THESIS is a “translation ready” theme or, in other words, does it come with the *.po, and/or *.pot files needed to make a translation?
Tons of thanks

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Nick Reese June 2, 2010 at 6:28 pm

Luis, I have little experience with translation files. I know that Thesis 1.7 has better support. Here is the comment from Chris Pearson in the 1.7 documentation.

Thanks to the help of our fans in other countries, I’ve been able to identify certain parts of the code that were not so translation-friendly. To fix this, I’ve gone through every single string in Thesis and made sure that everything is up to spec for internationalization. Now, it will be easier than ever to use handy translation software to translate Thesis into different languages!

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piks June 4, 2010 at 2:11 am

This must be the best and perfect theme for wordpress its only drawback is that its not free. Are there problems encountered when upgrading thesis versions?

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Nick Reese June 4, 2010 at 11:29 am

Piks, everything within Thesis is “Future Proofed” which means you can upgrade without breaking your design.

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Gayle June 7, 2010 at 5:42 pm

Currently using semiologic…seriously considering making a change. What are the advantages of Thesis? Is there good support. SLP is not so good and yet it is very important.

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Nick Reese June 7, 2010 at 7:05 pm

The support is outstanding. I pretty much learned PHP because of the Thesis forums. Currently there are 140,000+ posts in the forums and 23,000+ active users.

No other theme can compete on support.

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Hugh Durkin June 8, 2010 at 5:58 am

Fantastic review of Thesis Theme – and i’m loving the customisations you’ve done to it for this blog.

I’ll be using Thesis for several more personal projects i’m working on, after going over and back to Themeforest to buy themes from there. I really feel I wasted my money with those, and hopefully Thesis will start to pay decent traffic dividends for me.

Quick question though – do you know if installing loads of plugins has any effect of the SEO capabilities of it? For example I wish to install GD Star Rating on one of my sites, and i’m a bit worried the standard display methods of the rating mechanism might affect SEO. Any thoughts on that would be very much appreciated :-)

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Nick Reese June 8, 2010 at 12:01 pm

Hugh, GD Star Rating is definitely a bloated plugin. While GD Star Rating will not directly effect the options within Thesis it may decrease your page load time which is considered to be a ranking factor in the current Google algorithm.

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Mamunur Rasid June 24, 2010 at 5:43 am

Hi,
This is such a great resource that you are providing and you give it away for free. I enjoy seeing websites that understand the value of providing a prime resource for free. I truly loved reading your post.
Thanks!

Mamunur Rasid
oDesk Outsourcing Provider.
Be Your OwnCoder

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Jordan Francis July 10, 2010 at 7:44 pm

I already own and use Thesis exclusively, and yet I still enjoyed reading the review here. Probably due in part to it justifying my own admiration of it =)

You know, I’m a firm believer in the idea that “you only need one theme,” and for many reasons. Here’s just 2 —

1. They all can achieve the same design & layout (ultimately)
2. By sticking with just one, you get to know it intimately throughout the course of using it…

Naturally, choosing the right “one theme” helps tremendously to get you started, and I can’t think of a better “one theme” than Thesis. It’s about the most cleanly-coded professional theme on the market. It’s a great theme to learn and grow with, it’s dependable, it’s just…smart!

—Jordan

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Jeff B July 27, 2010 at 6:59 pm

I am getting ready to set up a Wordpress site for rental properties we want to lease out as well as properties we want to sell. Is Thesis a better option than some of the themes that are more tailored for the real estate industry like AgentPress (http://www.studiopress.com/features/agentpress) that already has real-estate friendly widgets?

I guess what I am wondering as a Wordpress newbie is whether I am better off with the SEO and design features of Thesis and just figure out how to find and integrate the widgets I want.

Any objective input? ;)

Jeff

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Nick Reese July 27, 2010 at 8:48 pm

Jeff, in this specific case I would suggest using Agent Press. Thesis is still my theme of choice but for someone who knows very little and wants to do more complex things (specific to real estate) go with agent press.

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hayat sigortasi July 30, 2010 at 7:49 pm

Thank you for this useful article.. I will be publish this on my blog in turkish language..

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Nick Reese July 31, 2010 at 3:12 pm

Hayat, glad you enjoyed it. Please make sure to link back to this original article.

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Pete Carr August 4, 2010 at 6:04 pm

Hi Nick,
Thank you for your review.
You have convinced me to buy Thesis.
It really has impressed me.
I hope to have my blog running Thesis in the next 2 days.
Thanks again
Pete

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Steve McLaughlin August 29, 2010 at 4:25 pm

Hi Nick,
First, thanks for all the info included in this review.

As for support, I noticed this review has been ongoing from 9/2008 to 8/2010. And your responses have either been on the same day or the day after. That is SUPPORT!

Like many of the other posters have stated, I use other themes, paid and free.
Today, I will click your “Art of Blog” and purchase Thesis.

I have read many other reviews, articles, post, and forum comments about Thesis.
You sold me, and I thank you.

Steve

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Nick Reese August 29, 2010 at 11:21 pm

Steve, thank you for YOUR support. If you ever need help or have questions with Thesis feel free to shoot us an email via the contact form. ;) Hope you enjoy Thesis!!

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Jon September 6, 2010 at 8:59 am

Jon,

While your comments were certainly colorful and interesting they were rife with rudeness and showed a lack of technical knowledge. We wish you best in your future ventures.

AOB Editor

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Eric September 23, 2010 at 1:20 am

Nick, thanks for your review of Thesis, I found it helpful. I’ve followed Thesis since it’s inception, via the partnership with Brian Clark of CopyBlogger, and became a bit concerned for the theme when CopyBlogger and Thesis parted company. What makes Thesis a better choice for SEO than say themes from StudioPress and Elegant Themes?

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Nick Reese September 27, 2010 at 1:00 pm

I think Thesis is on the track to be better than ever since the parting. As far as SEO, I think Thesis is an outstanding Theme and has pioneered many of the options StudioPress has integrated into their theme.

Now it is just a matter of time to see who can continue pioneering.

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chris g tucker October 1, 2010 at 12:44 am

I am considering converting my antique website in my link to the Thesis or The Studio Press Theme. Any opinions on what one is better ? My site is old, with many backlinks to its pages, will I lose them if I switch to wordpress ?

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Nick Reese October 1, 2010 at 10:16 am

You will need to handle URL migration when you move over to Wordpress. You might try using the “Redirection” plugin to help wordpress send people to the correct content.

I like Thesis, but Genesis theme is a great product as well.

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amar October 28, 2010 at 3:29 am

I need to set up a blog for a business. Their site is using Joomla and have Wordpress installed for their blog. Can I install the Thesis theme without issues working within Joomla? I wouldn’t think so, but just want to make sure. Thanks for your help.

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Amy October 28, 2010 at 1:13 pm

Nick,

Can you install Thesis theme over the top of any wordpress installation? Any version, that is?.

Currently I’m hosted where the webmaster has to run some sort of script to do a wordpress install, will I need his intervention to install this or can I install Thesis alongside my current themes and have it remain hot-swappapble?

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Nick Reese October 28, 2010 at 1:49 pm

You will be able to upload thesis, however you will need his help or atleast FTP access to change the permission settings to allow for full customization. :)

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Amy October 28, 2010 at 1:22 pm

Oh, one more question heh heh…

Somehow (I’m assuming a whois search) the software will check your ownership of various websites. I own about 50, some are private, some have bogus names, there are about 5 “account” numbers associated with my websites that I own outright. How will this fare with the $164.00 version? Will I be able to use it on all of them or will I have to do something special or will it not be allowed?

Please let me know asap… I will definitely buy through you link!

Cheers.
Amy

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Nick Reese October 28, 2010 at 1:50 pm

Amy, you would be able to use the developer version with your situation.

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Amy October 28, 2010 at 9:15 pm

Hi Nick,

I downloaded thesis from your link. Thanks.

I’ve got it almost configured the way I want very easily!

I’ve never worked with hooks and I’ve read the manual, but I have a question. I want to modify the two default sidebar entries, I can’t find the right hook to modify, I see the before and after hooks, but I don’t know how to modify these “like a ninja” I can’t find where the default content is, so see an example either.

Could you point me in the right direction?

Thanks.

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Nick Reese October 28, 2010 at 9:38 pm

Amy,

Under one of the tabs, you can turn off “display default widgets” or something like that. :)

Also check out http://www.artofblog.com/thesis-introduction-to-hooks/

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Amy October 28, 2010 at 10:11 pm

Thanks again, Nick.

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RK December 13, 2010 at 12:35 pm

Thanks for the review, Im considering Thesis as I have the old Twenty Ten Theme and its pretty basic… I was going to go for Frugal but Thesis is getting good reviews…

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Jimmy December 24, 2010 at 12:02 am

Thanks nick for sharing that……i m personally using thesis…….. thats excellent

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loyd January 3, 2011 at 1:20 am

iam also using thesis on my blog and the openhook plugin is very handy, no need to play with custom.css anymore, all codes are placed directly through this plugin.

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Amy January 6, 2011 at 11:29 am

Hi,

I need to get WAY more granular with the control over the elements of the page… I need a uniquely labeled div tag around everything… ie, within the menu I need a div tag that’s like menu-top so I can say in the css something like:
div.menu_top {
background-image: url(“/images/menu-top.gif”);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
height: 7px;
overflow: hidden;
}
to create cool graphics around my elements… I also need to create some custom elements like my own boxes, etc… where would be the best place to “hack” the theme? Is it even necessary to hack it? Am I missing something?
Any advice or pointing me in the right direction is greatly appreciated. I’ve asked this question on the thesis blog and have not yet received any input.

Thanks… my need on this is rather urgent, but I’ve gotten great response here in the past! Thanks again.

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Karyn January 13, 2011 at 12:34 am

Nick:
You come highly recommended by several of our colleagues. My husband and I both work together out of our home as writers/speakers. I own several websites and he will be developing more than one. Some are in my name. Some are in his. Do we each need to purchase a developers license? We hope to hear from you soon so we can get started. Thanks!

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Sandy January 21, 2011 at 3:15 pm

Karyn: Have you found the answer to your question yet? I also need to know this. Thanks!

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Sandy January 18, 2011 at 6:03 pm

I have the same question as Karyn above. My husband and I would both like to use Thesis, but our multiple domain names are registered to each of us. Do we need 2 licenses? Thanks!

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Aion Planet January 20, 2011 at 6:15 pm

Thesis is one of our favorite Wordpress theme now and we appreciate for your review, because we don’t have enough information about new blog engines in Russia.

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Rene Cunningham January 22, 2011 at 10:23 pm

Great review! I just purchased Thesis using your recommendation link. Cheers.

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Kevin February 12, 2011 at 7:18 pm

Well I’ll put in just a word here for those considering Thesis. It’s an awesome framework for those running a standard WordPress blog, but for those looking to add a blog to another platform, i.e. Magento, Anahita, etc., beware there are custom functions in the Thesis framework that make integration a more daunting task than other frameworks, i.e. Gantry. Support for these third-party integrations is limited, so you should either have a healthy budget or great coding skills.

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Annette February 12, 2011 at 8:02 pm

Thanks so much Nick. Just delving into Wordpress and I like to do my homework on anything that I use. I’ve been reading up on Thesis and thanks to your review have now decided to give it a try. I’ll click on your link to purchase it. Well done and keep up the great posts.

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charlie May 24, 2011 at 7:53 pm

Hello Nick-
i’m a novice to blog and website building; researching it primarily to create a video/illustration archive/portfolio; perhaps an occasional foray into actual blogging. (my primary goal is make different aspects of my work as easily/quickly viewable/sortable, and i’m guessing that a blog structure would allow that via tags.) would you recommend Thesis for this? i read in the above review/comments that at first this may have been a Thesis weakness, but perhaps there have been improvements in this regard. i see there are video/multimedia themes out there; not sure which are the most robust/supported.
thanks in advance for your input!
c

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Troels June 8, 2011 at 11:52 am

Thanks for great review Nick.

It gave me some really good inputs for my on site – and all in all I love the Thesis themes.

/Troels

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Jifdc October 3, 2011 at 4:29 pm

Are there any hidden fees? Are there any monthly fees that aren’t being advertised about Thesis?

The reason I ask is because I have experienced, in the past, paying for hosted plans where features were limited unless I pay an additional subscription fee on top of what I was paying already and it wasn’t clear from the start. Thesis claims to just charge a one time fee…. is this true? I won’t have to pay to unlock additional features or whatever? I understand the client options/pricing, I have no issues with that, my main concern is about the 1 time fee thing – meaning no monthly fees or subscription fees…

Any verification/clarification on this is deeply appreciated. I have been using Blogger to host my sites for free, and have come to a point where I see impractical obstacles coming later down the road. Honestly, I want to have my sites on paid hosting solutions using Wordpress and Thesis as my framework. And I really would like to know if there are any fees after we pay for a plan whether it may be the personal plan or the developer plan. Thanks in advance.

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Jim Butz October 8, 2011 at 1:56 pm

Nick:
Thinks for the great posting. We recently put up a new website and decided to use Thesis, which we purchased a Developers License some time ago but hadn’t used it until now. We have a need to have multiple pages with the ability to lay them out differently than the home page, but haven’t found out whether this is possible using Thesis. Someone recommended that we get a custom skin to customize the site, but he couldn’t recommend any place for us to look. Any recommendations?
The site is for a non-profit targeted at helping early stage tech companies get started. So we are working with an extremely limited budget.
Thanks,
Jim

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JaxRolo - Build Niche Websites November 10, 2011 at 3:54 pm

This is one of the best reviews I have seen for the Thesis Theme. It is always good to see what other are saying about it.
I use it on several websites along with some other themes and always end up going back to Thesis.

Great Job

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Francisco January 26, 2012 at 1:52 am

Hello:
Great review, all good info. I do not own Thesis yet but I have been reading about it and will end up buying it but still I have one question and it is this, “do I need to buy a Thesis Skin, I am not a developer so do I need to buy one of those skins”
Thank you

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Petra May 5, 2012 at 4:21 pm

Do you know what would be better for real estate websites between Thesis and Agentpress? I believe Agentpress has a built in listings database, but it doesn’t sound like Thesis does?

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Eric Binnion May 7, 2012 at 10:16 pm

Thesis is a great theme, but you would have to create your own custom post type if you wanted the listings capability as in Agentpress. I do not have experience with Agentpress, but it’s run on the Genesis framework, so I’m sure it’s solid. The Agentpress theme is using the Agentpress listing plugin to bring that listings functionality to the theme through using custom post types and taxonomies.

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