Are you aware that taking back control of how your WordPress blog looks isn’t as hard as most bloggers think?
The Thesis Theme (affiliate link) that have been created by the two very respected bloggers, Chris Pearson and Brian Clark (www.copyblogger.com) is know to be one of the best, most flexible and popular to date – used by more than 25.000 blogs. Compared to most other themes this is rather a framework that can be configured to your needs, your niche while other themes are typically fixed in a specific design and require development skills to be adjusted even slightly. Thesis is a mature product and have developed into a tool that makes it easy to set up a new blog and make adjustments as the requirements change. The latest version 1.7 really added a lot of new features and makes it worth taking a closer look.
Disclosure: Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links and I will earn a commission if you purchase through those links (at no extra cost to you). I recommend that you do your own independent research before purchasing any product or service. This article is not a guideline, a recommendation or endorsement of specific products.
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On the front this theme is really simple and clean. It is designed to be changed to your needs really and this is a great starting point. To see it in action simply go the the thesis site where it is of cause used.
The Thesis options
Once you’re logged into WordPress admin with the theme installed you will see that there’s a new menu and from here you can reach all the configuration pages and different options available. The options pages are what makes this theme different and very interesting.
Site Options
This section includes option about Document Head, Display Options, Navigation Menu and Stats Software/Scripts. What is new here compared to earlier versions is mainly the left column where a lot of useful features has been added. For example you can now control robots meta tags and specify no index, no follow etc. on pages, categories etc. It’s side wide setting and really great for SEO as Search engines can be ordered to focus on your main content and ignore lists.
Design Options
The Design Options page includes options for controlling look and feel of the blog. It is really impressive how much it is possible to configure without coding – fonts, column layout, images, thumbnail, etc. In version 1.7 there are new options for Comment and Javascript.
Page Options
This section includes Home Page Options, Category Page Options and Tag Page Options. This is new feature in version 1.7. Main focus here is to allow you to specify titles, descriptions and keywords for pages, categories and tag pages. This is important for SEO. One of the interesting options here is the ability to configure what JavaScript libraries to be loaded – like jQuery, prototype etc.
Custom File Editor
The file editor is like in version 1.6. It is a great feature really to be able to edit theme files this way.
Options Manager
On this page you find a Thesis Import/Export feature. You can download current option, upload another option file and restore default any time. This is a key feature for backing up settings before trying out new ideas but even more important for moving configuration from a staging server to your production site – or if you’re a consultant it could be to a client site.
Advanced Theme options
As well as the in-built menu options, Thesis also allows great flexibility in customizing the theme using a custom stylesheet. The developer focus on code quality and good development practices and as style is kept separate from the core theme files, the custom folder allows you to keep any custom changes even when you upgrade the theme to the latest version.
There is also a system of hooks that allow you to add your own content into various parts of theme. This is obviously for more advanced users and will not be covered in detail here. Still it is a great feature for the professional blogger as it give ultimate flexibility.
Other great Theme developers:
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Thanks for the info its a nice theme, but i dont like the price. Im pretty cheap.
Thanks!
Wordpress is such a great platform because of its flexibility. The plug-ins are excellent for SEO as well.
This blog is very interesting
I think Thesis can be very good choice for who has not any coding skills besides that if you want to make your own theme Thesis framework will be very helpfull to you…
Buna! Imi place blogul .Te intereseaza un linkexchange in blogroll cu http://www.poze.haioase.org ? Raspunde-mi te rog un mail daca da, o zi faina Alina IS
I have got Thesis 1.8, great theme however requires a little work to get it to look really good as it’s default configuration is quite sparse looking. Going to have to spend a lot of time customising it or buy a “skin”. however i’m sure the SEO advantages will be worth it.
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