Update1 (10 Oct. 2008): I have now chosen to buy Thesis and this site currently uses that. I don’t know why I bought it, may be the curiosity killed the cat and to risk the investment to give an unbiased review. For whatever reason I bought it and set it up. Since I’ve already done all this investment I’m yet to find a reason not to use Thesis now. However here’s my original review.
Update2 (04 Nov. 2009): With the improvements in Thesis Theme in the last one year, Thesis has come a long way stepping through many versions and changes. As of Thesis version 1.6, I find it considerably user friendly. Not only that, it even is developer friendly and many developers use it as a starting base to design sites for their clients. I’ve thus chosen to promote Thesis for the excellent theme framework it has become. I’ll let this article remain here for historical reasons and… nostalgia.
The recently released version of the Wordpress theme – Thesis – is hot in the news especially in the blogger arena. It’s developed by Chris Pearson. The theme has been talked about at popular sites like ProBlogger and others and all the hype carried me to DIY Themes. Finally after taking a look (whatever I could do for free) at the theme, I have serious doubts whether a professional blogger would like to buy it. They say there’s nothing like bad PR (point 23). I believe that with all my heart and soul. So with all due respect to the developer here’s what I have to say about this theme.
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Body font
The first impression is lasting but not necessarily useful in the long run. It’s worse if you try to impress a web designer with this one. We are talking about the font-family here. The use of Georgia and serif font in the body text goes against the principles of typography. This makes the text harder to read while putting a lot of stress on your eyes. When you’ve chosen to purchase a premium them, you expect better. I seriously doubt any established web-designer would approve of such quirks to lure prospective customers claiming beautiful typography. Its lame.
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The features
Are there any at all? The claims point to the theme options or the configurations options panel feature. You can put the Google Analytics code and have your feeds redirected to feedburner. You can customize navigation from the options screen and put in a few images that cycle everything you reload the page. You even can add your custom CSS and images to a custom folder that comes with the theme. Guess what? I’ll give you some very easy alternatives for $999. And I’ll also give you an option not to pay at all
- Get the feedburner feed redirection plugin from wordpress codex. That will take care of it for you.
- Get the all-in-one SEO plugin to take care of Search Engine optimization.
- Use the text widget from the widgets section and put in all your ads, tracking code there. You want to pay for that? You have my email.
- And finally if you are so intent at customizing the CSS, navigate to the Theme Editor option under Design in the default Wordpress theme. It will allow you to customize anything and everything without you needing a developer license. Put in a GPL license and you can even distribute on the newly gone public Wordpress Theme site. Customize it all you can.
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The price
$87 for a personal license and a $164 for a developer license. My take – I submit to you that if you are a developer, you start from scratch. Build some rocket-science features and then sell them for $10. That will only underline your authority as a developer and a creative one at that.If you are a blogger and more intent on using the theme, take a look at some of the best themes out there on the Wordpress Theme site. Also take a look at the free UBD Moneymaker Theme.
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Accessibility
You want to take another look at the Wordpress default theme? You can customize the header no end and it works on almost every known browser and mobile device. Pep it up a bit and it’s all yours to claim. There are better options than paying for this theme.
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What it doesn’t have
I’m also looking for some beauty and style here (other than threat created solely by the image rotator bore). I expect a lot of polish from a premium theme that I pay for. Gradients, colors, rounded corners, anyone?
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The big problem
Now you are left with (less or more) about a hundred some dollars. Well, you can forget about it or else send them to me.
Before I conclude, here’s another things I’d like to mention. They say “Great products polarize people”. So you are all free to buy and find the truth yourself. With that said, I’d like to hear what you have to say. And by the way if you are Chris Pearson don’t hit me please. Your comments go right here…
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No problem at all, after all I’m a blogger that also has rules and therefore understand that I must follow those of other bloggers. It’s only fair.
I did not like Thesis theme. Good job at PR but highly pricey for what they claim to offer.
Thesis is a great theme for anyone who doesn’t care about design, cross browser compatibility or customization. Every site I’ve see that uses this theme(including all the sites on the theme’s own page) ends up looking like a 14 year old kid designed it for his 9th grade intro to the internet class. Amateur at best… but I guess somebody needs to keep the “I built my site in 1998″ look going.
We’re using Thesis and loving it. Our site truenewzealand.com is on it. I bought the dev version and feel like I’ve already made my money back from one client site.
Client site…? The license restricts you from distributing Thesis to clients. But I must really appreciate Chris Pearson for the continued development and introduction of new features.
Hey,
Thanks a bunch for your view on DIYWORDPRESS THESIS. I appreciate your honesty and the great sense of taking it for the team attitude.
I feel like I owe a sales commission for helping me save my money. ..
Okay, I’m over my sense to thank you with any monetary compensation now.
Your comments are useful.
However, what has been your experience with WP plugins and Thesis?
The only drawback that I’ve seen in regards to this theme, is that it allows the less than fully knowledgeable tinkerer access to a LOT of different customization features. In some cases, too many choices is not a good thing.
If they really don’t know what makes for good site design, then of course the website is going to look like it was done by a 6 yr old with a box of crayons.
The only real difficulties I have experienced while experimenting with this theme are directly related to my lack of knowledge.
That being said, there is absolutely NO shortage of easily accessible information about ANY feature or customization that you want to know about or implement. The community based around this theme really rocks and are happy to help.
If you’re not already a developer, this is an EXCELLENT platform with which you can start learning and see immediate results or failures (using a local thesis install.) The basic user settings are easily accessible and are designed to keep you from destroying the core of the theme. Mistakes are easily found and repairable.
Put this side by side next to the premium WP themes out there. The value you get with Thesis blows any other out of the water.
It’s got solid framework, and allows for practically limitless possibilities.
BUT…. if you just want plug ‘n play, there’s a ton of free or premium themes out there that MIGHT have all the features you want.
All I know is that I’ve never found one.
I’m new to WP but decided to give Thesis a try on a little project site to test some SEO ranking theories.
In about 45 minutes, I got it installed, added a contact form, customized the nav a little, and added a widgeted footer.
I was impressed with the ease of all this and I’ve never used WP before.
Will see how it goes moving forward as I try to really add some contect to this site.
RM
Thesis claims to have excellent support. Not true.
I purchased Thesis and found that I could not do threaded comments. I tried to find some way to get a question answered. The programmer is impossible to email. I joined the forum, but I could not post a question. Yes, I can read the forum, but not participate. I tried YouTube, and also did a Google search on the topic.
In short. Zip.
Thesis 1.61 sets page/post TITLES to H2 instead of H1 every time when you make a sticky page or post.
This is a serious slap in regards to ANY SEO efforts – because if you have a static front page all of a sudden your blog tag-line is in H1 tags, not your post/page title for the front page.
I tried to understand their reasoning for this – but whatever they gave as reason to all of a sudden use the tagline in H1 tags is totally beyond me.
FUTHERMORE:
Thesis throws HTML validation errors like you wont believe. Even some of the showcase sites come up with a LOT of w3 validation errors. Now, proper W3 code is not the most important thing, but it IS also important for SEO. Why a simple one page made with thesis would throw over 70 (!) html strict validation errors is beyond me.
I also think its not very nice that you first need to buy/order the theme to even access their support forum.
Unless thesis fixes their weird philosophy with exchanging H1 H2 header tags and starts producing CLEANER code with less W3 validation errors i will not purchase this theme.
The “BUY before you TRY” philosophy is also very much against my own philosophy and i strictly oppose this. Its almost like they want to hide something (including their own forum)…and you will only see the flaws AFTER you buy.
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