If you’ve ever taken a look at Chris Pearson’s Thesis theme (aff) for WordPress, you’d be forgiven for not being blown away by its supposed awesomeness. Out of the box Thesis looks kind of boring. Yes, it has pretty typography and a cool multimedia display box thingy, but it needs something. Like colour.
So this weekend I made the decision to convert the Thesis theme I’ve had kicking about for the past 12-months into something more lifelike.
What makes Thesis so special?
Thesis does something very clever. It allows you to manage the functionality of your blog’s theme without getting your hands dirty. A lot of time went into designing a Thesis admin panel that allows you, among other things to:
- Add <head> code.
- Add tracking codes.
- Adjust the dimensions of the theme container.
- Add or remove columns to your design.
- Change typography rules.
- Change the way posts and pages display.
For a non-technical person, this is brilliant. For those of us who usually spend hours tinkering with a theme’s code, it makes life a bit easier.
A word about Thesis Hooks
Going in to the project, I didn’t even know that Thesis used hooks. Had I known I would have given up, but by the time I opened the index.php file my design was complete and I had to press on.
In essence, hooks are bit of code that tell WordPress to make functions happen. For example, the hook ‘thesis_hook_header’ tells WordPress to fetch the HTML/PHP code that makes the header section of the Thesis theme display.
In theory, hooks are simple. In theory, communism works. I spent the better part of Saturday trying to understand hooks and I’m still a bit fuzzy about exactly how useful they are. If you want help getting to grips with them, I’d recommend the DIYthemes forum, Kristarella’s blog and Sugarrae’s dummies guide.
Speaking of the DIYthemes forum
When I post a question on a forum I like to receive an answer. It’s just the way I am. Sadly I’m still waiting for answers about hooks which leads me to conclude that either nobody likes me or they need more people answering questions over there at DIYthemes.
On to the design
If you’re reading this in a feed reader, this is what I had in mind for the redesign of thinkdave. If you’re reading the post via the blog, behold the glory (and leave a comment)
The hardest part of this design was figuring out how to display my header and navigation outside of Thesis’ HTML container. It took me a good hour to figure out how to do this (hint: use the full-width option in the Thesis Options).
I’m usually not a fan of CSS positioning, but as far as I can tell it’s the only way to move things around the Thesis theme. So I moved my logo to the top left, moved the navigation to the top right and removed the default Thesis footer. To create the illusion that all these elements were removed from the HTML container, I had to do a bunch of display:none work on Thesis’ custom CSS file.
I digress. The finished product looks very nice – IMHO. I probably could have got it done in the same amount of time working from scratch, but I wanted all the shiny add-ons that go with Thesis, so I endured the pain.
Thesis Pro’s
What makes Thesis worth $87 is:
- It’s a really clever framework to build on. A lot of though has gone into the structure and the user experience.
- Out of the box Thesis looks clean & tidy, and doesn’t really need any customization.
- If you’re non-technical and you want more control over your WordPress theme, there is no better solution.
Thesis Con’s
- Hooks. I know they’re vital to the theme’s functionality, but they’re going to trip people up.
- Support. I only asked one question on the DIYthemes forum so perhaps I’m being a bit harsh, but I expect answers to my dumb questions when I’m a paying member of a theme club.
Should you buy Thesis?
Yes. You’ll be getting a very robust theme framework and a brilliant starting point towards a theme you can keep forever. Thesis costs $87 for a single use licence and $164 for a developers licence. I think it’s worth the money.
If you’re a Thesis user, or you’re considering Thesis, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Hello, I’m Dave. I work with web design agencies, freelancers and bloggers to develop standards-compliant WordPress and Thesis themes.
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I’ve used thesis and programmed through hooks. Actually it has a pretty steep learning curve. On the other hand i’d have to agree with my friend Sire and his suggestion of the FlexSqueeze http://wassupblog.com/thesis-theme-is-just-not-flexible-enough/
Hi Dave,
I like the look – you did a great job – even if you had to give up your weekend for it. At first glance it doesn’t look like Thesis, which is great – Thesis sites really start to look alike.
For basic customizations Thesis is great and includes the features needed by most uses. But as you discovered more advanced customizations are not so simple and you need to learn hooks. And there seems to be an attitude that a “real” developer will understand them.
I haven’t had a problem with the forums though. But I’ve also found most of the answers I’ve needed through searching the forums and haven’t had to ask many questions.
If you’ve got hooks done, there is money to be made with Thesis customizations. For your own site though, I think you should use your own design.
Also what is the little checkbox below the comment box with the letter a next to it?
@stratosg thanks for stopping by. I agree about the learning curve. It was steep, and I still don’t really understand what I’m doing. I think Chris’ concept is a good one, but my concerns are that he makes it too damn time consuming to customize Thesis.
I’d be interested to see what level of customization the theme can achieve now that 1.5 is out of Beta.
@Kim I was so looking forward to your comment! I kind of disagree about using your own theme though. I find it more challenging to customize a framework than to knock together something new. Next up I’m going to try the Hybrid Framework to see how customizable it is.
If someone wants to give me money to customize Thesis I’m game. Although I don’t think it’ll be a quick, or a cheap project.
And as for the letter ‘a’ below the comments, it’s a complex tracking system I use to monitor site users’ eye movement as they leave comments on my blog… OK, it’s actually the ’subscribe to comments’ option that I forgot to fill in. Thanks for spotting it.
Just testing…
Dave – That’s a really good point. I guess it is harder to customize an existing theme then to design one from scratch.
As for the eye tracking software – please stop. My facebook account has already been compromised today and I’ve had just about enough of being spied on
@Dave: I started thinking about it “what a complex system has he installed like a clickheat or something”… I went for it
I’m not sure this is true. For some things maybe, but you can rearrange the header significantly by unhooking the default header, or unhooking the nav and putting it somewhere else. (Some instructions on my blog.)
Anywho, I love what you’ve done with the header anyway. It looks great!
I’ve actually become a big fan of positioning in CSS because IE obeys it much better than floats and makes cross-browser compatibility a bit easier. Depends what it’s for though, I wouldn’t want to go over board.
Cute footer too! Love it.
You have a nice-looking site, and have done a lot with Thesis. My Thesis-based site is more “traditional” with much of the out-of-the-box appearance. I’ve done a lot of subtle changes to other things besides appearance, though.
I’ll have to disagree that the hooks are a negative aspect of the theme. It took me a while to get my head around them, but once I did I realized how much power and convenience they afford. There are some very good hooks tutorials that I’d be glad to share if you email me.
And the support forum is one of Thesis’ greatest assets, in my opinion. I have seldom had a question go unanswered for more than a few hours. I’ve found that the ones that did have a longer wait time were those that are more common: translated, that means that I could have found my answer by searching rather than asking it anew.
Keep up the good work — you’re doing great!
Thanks for the comments everyone. It’s so nice to have this many people disagreeing with me (reminds me of home!).
@kristarella Thanks for stopping by. The reason I ended up positioning everything is because I couldn’t figure out how to place the header hook before the container or add a new div before the container. So I ended up cheating by using CSS to put things where I wanted them. Not an ideal solution by any means. It shows my lack of understanding of hooks I guess.
@stratosg hehe! Actually, it had me fooled for a while too. Still not sure why the default setting for the subscribe to comments option is set to ‘a’ though. I would have thought that ’subscribe to comments’ would have been a better option.
@Mike Nichols. Hi Mike. Thanks for visiting. I think its becoming obvious that I don’t understand hooks properly. I’ll drop you an email right away. And as for the forum, I’ll reserve judgement until my next problem crops up. Actually, I think I’ll start hanging out in the DIYthemes forum. Maybe I’ll learn something. Or even, shock horror, teach someone something!
Well i can help with hooks too Dave if you need anything. Actually hooks is the way WordPress generally works. Actually they call it “actions” and “filters” but it’s the same thing… Anyway i’m here if you need anything…
I was thinking of starting a support group for people who want to change their theme all the time. I think that starting a “please teach me hooks” support group would be way better. I’m all for Stratos and Mike teaching me too
@stratosg thanks. I’m pretty sure there are a lot of people struggling with Thesis’ hooks so it may be an idea to put together a decent list of resources. I’ll be in touch.
@kim just missed your comment. I’m thinking a bunch of tutorials. Anyone want to guest post?
i loved ur previous theme ……….
Every now and then it’s always time for change
Thanks Saurabh. Previously I was using Typebased, a free theme from Woothemes. I really like the Woothemes stuff, but I felt like it was time for a change.
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