Thesis theme for WordPress

I was prompted to write this post because I get questions from people all the time about my WordPress theme, which is called Thesis.

The question I’m asked the most is: would you recommend Thesis?

Short answer is: YES!

Long answer is: YES! Details below:

1. Thesis is highly customisable and easy to use whether you’re a coder or not

My previous themes have all been so clunky to work with. The last one was especially a pain to customise. Typically, with many WordPress themes, you have to edit multiple theme files (some people call these “template files” or “base files”) to make your custom changes appear across the whole site. Frankly, that is a pain in the bum.

Thesis is easy to use if you’re not a coder
If you’re not into coding, you can tweak your site layout very easily and quickly using the admin panel that you access within WordPress, no coding required. The sidebars are WordPress widget-ready, and you can easily create a 1, 2 or 3-column layout via the admin panel without knowing how to code. The Thesis admin panel gives you an amazing amount of control over the appearance/layout of your site, without the need for advanced knowledge of CSS or HTML.

Thesis gives coders the power to do even more amazing things!
If you like working with CSS, HTML and PHP and you want your site to do something not offered in the admin panel, you can enter custom code in the custom functions php file and make even more layout customisations in the custom css file.

More great news for coders
With most other themes, if you’ve mucked around with the individual template/base files and later you want to update the theme to the latest version, you risk losing the edits you made in all those files and may have to do them all over again after updating. I also found editing multiple template files meant it was easier to make a mistake and break my site, and it was harder to troubleshoot too. When starting out, I did break my site a few times – catastrophe! With Thesis, your advanced customisations are in just two files – the custom functions php and custom css files, so when you update the theme to the latest version, all you need to do is make a copy of the two custom files and then copy them back in.

2. Thesis is not graphics-based

A lot of themes look beautiful but are heavy on the graphical elements, which are what make them look good or distinctive in the first place. It means sometimes you’ll find sites that look just like yours because you’ve used the same theme with those same beautiful distinctive graphics.

I wanted something very plain, yet elegant so that my content (my text and my images – especially my images) would be the focus and would be what made the site look good and interesting – not someone else’s vision of a graphically attractive theme. The strength of this blog (and I would suggest most blogs, especially food blogs) is its content – my writing and my photographs – Thesis allows my content to be the star attraction of the blog.

3. There is a large Thesis community out there sharing free support and tutorials

This is very important and has saved me so much time. You can learn to do all kinds of cool things to make your site look and work awesomely. The beauty of it is, you don’t have to delve into the custom code if you don’t wish to – but Thesis gives you the option and the power to do so easily.

Most of the customisations I’ve made to my blog’s functions and layout I’ve learned from reading tutorials written by people who’ve used Thesis for their blogs. I’ve never used a theme that had so many users all willing to share their tips and tricks.

Whenever I’ve thought of something I wanted to do with my site function- or layout-wise, I’ve simply googled it and found a how-to (quite often, more than one how-to) explaining how to do it.

Once you’ve paid for Thesis, you also have access to DIYThemes’ support forums and documentation files, which are a treasure trove of information. There are many knowledgeable and helpful people on the forums answering questions and offering advice on everything from basic usage of Thesis to more complex customisations.

4. Thesis is SEO-optimised

Thesis makes it easy to have an search engine optimised blog. You can enter metadata for every page and post in WordPress whenever you write or edit your pages/posts. So not only will your site look good and work well, your content will be found more easily by search engines.

Get Thesis

Visit DIYThemes Thesis website for more information, including pricing, video demonstrations and a showcase of Thesis-powered sites.

Thesis has a 30-day money back guarantee, so you can buy and try it at no risk.

If you decide to buy Thesis, I hope you’ll consider using one of the Thesis links on this page so I will get a commission for your sale – all the links to Thesis in this post are my affiliate links. It’s completely up to you of course, you are not obligated in any way. Thanks for reading!

I know at least a couple of TFP readers also use Thesis. Feel free to share what you think of Thesis, good or bad!

If you’re currently trying to decide on a theme for your blog, I hope you found this post useful. I’m happy to recommend Thesis to anyone, referral commissions or not. Personally, I’ve found Thesis easy to use and I think it’s really helped improve my site.

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