If you’re a regular visitor to this blog, you will probably notice that things look a bit different since your last visit.
I’m experimenting with a new theme called Thesis which is now running the look and feel of this blog. Thesis is created by Chris Pearson, a US-based web developer who has produced some pretty cool WordPress themes over the years.
Thesis is a very good example of a new breed of WordPress theme - a theme that contains some intelligence in its creation and significant added value to go along with it, all of which enables you the blogger to adapt it to your specific requirements without having to do any PHP code editing.
You can do almost all your tweaking with a combination of the Thesis Options page in your blog, which appears once you’ve installed and activated the theme, and a custom cascading style sheet (CSS).
What you’re looking at today is Thesis literally out of the box. About the only design thing I’ve done so far is add some of my own images to the rotating images feature you see at the top right of the page which automatically changes the image as you move from post to post on the site.
I’m not sure if I’ll keep that feature - it’s quite neat, though - nor what elements of the out-of-the-box theme I’ll change or adapt.
Whatever I decide to do will largely be driven by my desire and wish to have something that is a bit personal to me and this blog and not just another cookie-cutter WordPress theme (or as the default WordPress tag line says whenever you install a new blog, ‘just another WordPress weblog’), points directly address by Chris Pearson:
Just a WordPress theme? Hardly. Thesis is a search engine optimized HTML + CSS + PHP framework equipped with an innovative options panel that makes it easy for anyone to run a professional, customized blog or Website (without being a code jockey).
For some months, I’ve been thinking about re-designing my main blog as I’ve had the current design for about a year (my own adaptation of a WordPress theme created by Michael Pollock).
So part of my reason for installing Thesis here is to play around with it as a potential prelude to implementing it on the main blog. Or not.
Another theme I was considering is one of the Revolution series of themes by Brian Gardner. Like Thesis, Revolution adds intelligence to provide you with easy-to-understand controls from within your WordPress blog admin to tweak the design pretty much how you’d like without your having to dive into any coding.
Revolution is becoming quite ubiquitous, which was a downside for me. I see too many blogs using one or another of the themes in the series without much customization. A bit cookie cutter.
Of course, Thesis could end up like that. But it’s early days yet and I just like this one better.
Earlier I mentioned that Thesis has ‘added value’ to go along with its added intelligence.
That ‘added value’ comes primarily in the shape of a full-blown support forum as well as online help, tutorials and other useful content on the Thesis blog that Chris Pearson maintains.
All of this represents quite a commitment and so if you want Thesis and all the extras that come with it, you’ll have to pay for it to the tune of $89 for a single-blog license. I’m more than happy to do that.
Thesis and Revolution (which also provides a forum, tutorials, etc) are leaders in the pack of so-called premium WordPress themes - themes that you pay for and get additional value beyond the collection of PHP files, CSS, JavaScript and images you upload to your server.
You do have a number of alternatives that range the scale between free themes and hiring a theme designer to develop your own exclusive theme.
But for me, Thesis seems to be nice middle ground.
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 0 comments… add one now }