I bought my copy of the Diythemes Thesis Theme almost a year ago – in July 2009 – and immediately forgot about it. I’m a clever boy. It’s only now, with the summer providing some more free time than I expected, that i’ve gotten up off my rear end and decided to push forward with some WordPress based projects – and of course i’ll be using Thesis on them all.
But first things first – what is the Thesis Theme anyway? And, at $87 for the single use option and $164 for the developer license, why should you buy it?
I’ve bought my fair share of WordPress themes over the years, and i’ve even (ugh!) shelled out loadsamoney for custom built ones. Some were good, some were not so good, but all of them had one thing in common – they had to be tweaked constantly to improve SEO performance, and they all required heaps of plugins to allow me easily customise title tags, meta tags, header tags – the lot. After a while you get used to it, but installing heaps of plugins when you don’t really need to is a huge waste of time. The Thesis Theme eliminates that workload – and so much more.
Here’s some cool reasons why you should check it out, organised into lovely little headings.
Easy to install
One of the first things that struck me after I downloaded the Thesis Theme was just how easy it was to install. Recently I had a harrowing experience with a theme I bought on Themeforest, which ended in massive tears. I wasted almost a day trying to get it working. I sent emails over and back to the developer (who had ‘bug tested’ this thing and put it live for sale), but to no avail. Yes I had the most recent version of WordPress installed. Yes I followed the installation steps (i’ve been doing this interweb thing for over a decade, so duh). And Yes, I did chmod that particular folder to 777 just like the developer asked. But after all this, the darned thing didn’t work.
My Thesis Theme experience? Download. Unzip. Upload. Click ‘Activate’ in the ‘Manage Themes’ part of my blog. Et voila, it was done. Easy peasy. Installation done in seconds.
Out of the box readability
When I clicked ‘refresh’ in my browser after installing the theme on this blog, I noticed the way the theme looked ‘just right’ out of the box. The default font Thesis Theme ships with – Georgia – is super easy to read, and the default font size the developers have chosen is just right. The layout, whilst 3 columns and not 2 which i’d prefer, still works well and is a good, clean starting point for most bloggers and developers.
The out of the box colour scheme is a mixture of blues, greys, and a background of white – think New York Times and you’re on the right track. It looks just like a good online (or offline) newspaper. Easy to read, uncluttered, and without any ‘Web 2.0′ bells and whistles. Why complicate things when you don’t need to, eh?
Of course you can customise the theme using an easy to use point-and-click interface in the WordPress admin area. You can even customise the site-wide font with one click by selecting your favourite from a drop down. And you can – with a few clicks once more – change the number of columns from 3 columns to 2 or 1 column, and change the site background colour and various other elements using a simple palette selection tool – no css coding is required. Check out the video below for an idea of how it works.
If you do like to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty, you can dig in and play with the layout, styling of elements, and add in things like tweetmeme buttons using the built-in custom file editor. Simply chmod three files in your Thesis Theme folder to ’666′, and you can edit custom.css, layout.css, and custom_functions.php files via your WordPress admin area. The last file – custom_functions.php – is the place where you can add custom php code to utilise the themes’ great ‘hooks’ based system to play with the order of site elements and such. Websites like Thesishooks.com provide a handy reference, so you can roll up your sleeves and get moving elements around in a jiffy.
Fantastic community participation
So let’s say you want to do exactly what I said above, and roll up your sleeves to get customising your Thesis Theme. But let’s also say you’re possibly a total novice, and the thought of hooks, functions, and echos has you scratching your head in dismay. Never fear. On top of some great video and article tutorials, you’ll also get access to the Diythemes community for a lifetime. It’s a vibrant place frequented by Diythemes staff, enthusiastic developers, and users of the theme who will most likely have encountered whatever issue you’re experiencing, solved it, and posted their solution to the forums.
On top of the php / css type help, you’ll also find links to great articles on how to set up your Thesis theme in the most search engine friendly way possible (it’s very SEO friendly out of the box, but tweaks can be made on a site by site basis to optimise it), how to write great content, how to promote your blog, and how to use analytics and statistics to improve and refine the content on your blog.
All in all the community access is well worth the $87 personal plan price alone – you’ll learn so much more from it than just Thesis-related tips.
Search Engine Optimisation Benefits
Matt Cutts uses Thesis Theme. Isn’t that reason enough for anyone to buy it? Matt Cutts – for those not in the know – is the head of Google‘s webspam team, and the guy every SEO in every corner of the planet would love to have a pint with. He knows what makes pages rank highly in Google, the holy grail of free organic traffic. So if he’s using it, it says a lot about just how good Thesis Theme is.
If you’re the biggest sceptic in the world and you don’t even trust Matt Cutts when it comes to your SEO advice requirements, all you need to do is search the web for anything to do with ‘Thesis Theme Reviews‘ or similar, and you’ll see stories from loads of users with real life proof of just how well Thesis has worked for them. No wonder the community around Thesis is so active and vibrant. Everyone who uses the theme feels like they have to give something back, or feel they must spread the word about it. How cool is that?
Generous license
$164 buys you the developer licence, which will allow you to install the theme on as many sites you own as you like. You can even (I think!) install it as a theme on WordPress MU if you want to set up a multi-user blogging community. Your money also gets you access to a lifetime of updates – as well as a lifetime of access to video and article tutorials, community forums, and super quick support.
Think about it like this – if you buy it once, you’ll never have to buy another theme again. Cha-ching!
Pricing
Thesis Theme – as I said at the top of this post – costs $87 for a single use licence, and $164 for a developer licence. You can, at any time, upgrade your personal licence to a developer licence for the difference between the cost of both – so there’s no huge risk in buying it for the ‘one use’ price, giving it a whirl, and if and when you like it, upgrading to the full whack package.
Diythemes give you a 30 day money back guarantee too, so there isn’t really any risk in giving it a bash – and you should.
Forget all the other wishey washey bling bling superficial but seo unfriendly themes. Give Thesis Theme a whirl and you’ll see the difference in your blog traffic and user engagement in weeks.
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