Thesis

When Chris Pearson, author of the Thesis theme, announced that he was setting up an affiliate program for Thesis, I immediately decided to get on board. Not only because it might allow me to recap some of the dosh I splashed out to buy it, but because it would also give me an opportunity to enthuse about Thesis, which I can do with absolutely no reservations.

Earlier this year when I decided to make a switch from Blogger to WordPress I started surfing the net looking for themes. I tried out several before settling on Chris’s Neoclassical theme, which I fell for because it offered a rotating header feature. However, something wasn’t quite right, I felt I needed a wider text column and more ‘air’ in my theme, which finally brought me to Thesis. I was initially put off by the [modest] price tag - after all, there are lots of themes out there that don’t cost anything - but those uncertainties vanished when I realized all the great features my money would be buying.

The first thing I fell for was the rotating picture feature. I was looking for a theme that would allow me to feature photographs of Niceland - one of the most photogenic places on Earth - but I didn’t expect to find a theme that would actually ROTATE the photos for me. I didn’t even know such a feature existed. So when I saw that I was already halfway sold.*

The next thing I found really impressive, not to mention reassuring, was the excellent community that existed around all of Chris’s themes, and his own very evident enthusiasm for his work. By which I mean that not only was he writing all these themes and giving some of them away for free, he was also engaging with the people who were using the themes and very generously offering advice and help through the comment sections of the individual theme sites. I thought that was pretty cool.

Little did I know, though, that that was just a small indicator of what was happening around the Thesis theme, which actually had its own user forum. After I had bought the theme and joined the forum I was absolutely thrilled at the amount of support and advice I got there. People were so welcoming and nice and so forthcoming with their help and tips - it was great. I realized I’d joined a very cozy little online community where everyone was totally enthusiastic about what everyone else was doing with their themes and their sites and where this great atmosphere prevailed.

Then about a month ago, Chris released an updated version of Thesis. I confess I wasn’t too keen on having to return to coding and suchlike - it’s not my forte and takes an immense amount of mental effort to get my head around some of the things I want to do - but Chris reassured me that a major component of the update was LESS CODING with better results. As soon as I was able to carve out some time I started playing around with it and I’m delighted to report that the updated version of Thesis is much better than the previous version. How? Basically in the background stuff. For instance there is a separate options panel that allows me to really easily implement settings and do stuff that previously I had to dig into the guts of the theme to do … such as easily upload the rotating photos. It even figures out the exact sizes they are and codes the page accordingly, which I previously had to fiddle around with myself in the template design - it’s totally genius!

With the new update, the forum was also strengthened and Chris now has an excellent moderator on hand - Rick - who really goes out of his way to help. He even went and dug into my theme for me when I had an issue - and fixed it. Seriously, where do you get that kind of support any more?

Anyway, I could probably gush about this ad nauseum, but the bottom line is I’m really very happy with the Thesis theme and everything around it. It’s a smart, cool theme with excellent support that has hooked me up with some really nice people. Incidentally, what I’ve mentioned above are only some of the great features of the theme … there’s all kinds of other stuff that cyber-illiterate peeps like me can’t really comprehend, like search-engine optimized coding and suchlike, which supposedly helps search engines - and by extension real people - to find the site. Plus - when you buy a license you’ve bought it for life. It then allows you to download updated versions of the theme for as long as they keep coming out.

So if you’re looking for a great WordPress theme, I can heartily recommend Thesis. Feel free to email me if you have any questions I haven’t addressed!

* PS you can also have rotating videos, or ads, or custom code where the rotating picture box is. That’s the great thing about the theme - it’s so easy to customize!