As you can see if you are a visitor of my website, I use the Thesis WordPress theme (it’s pretty obvious). Since I really like it, I figured that I’d write up a review to help you understand why Thesis is such an awesome theme and why you should really consider using it for your website if you don’t know what theme to choose.
Even though it doesn’t take rocket science or a WordPress guru to help you pick out a theme, I want to make a case as to why this theme kicks most themes asses and really puts them to shame.
History with Free WordPress Themes before Thesis…
When I first started blogging online in 2007, I went through tons of free themes. I would try to find ones that looked good, but most of them would end up looking like complete crap. I would find a few that looked pretty decent, but none of them ever delivered the design that I was trying to find. At one point, I was convinced that in order to run a good website and be successful, that I needed to get a customized theme from somewhere like UniqueBlogDesigns because all of the powerhouse make money online gurus were getting them. Although they make some pretty legit themes, I ended up checking out some of their designs and just wasn’t very impressed with what I saw.
Anyways, I did find a couple of themes that I liked that I was able to find for free through the WordPress search, but most of them just didn’t look right and some were very slow loading. First of all, I absolutely cannot stand websites that take forever to load, and I also hate looking at websites with poorly chosen themes. If you have a website about TV shows and choose a free theme with Seagulls flying across the top and your navigation is halfway off the screen, most people are probably going to never return to your website… That’s just common sense, but a lot of people seriously need help when it comes to choosing a theme, even if it’s free.
I did end up finding a few pretty sweet themes, and believe me, if you don’t want to pay any money, there are some really good themes out there. However, if you want to be guaranteed the whole package: clean looking, highly customizable, user friendly, fast loading, and great SEO (Search Engine Optimization), I’d tell you that you’d be crazy not to consider getting a copy of the Thesis theme for WordPress.
Thesis WordPress Theme Launched by Chris Pearson in 2008…
Back in 2009 (or somewhere around there), a very talented theme designer named Chris Pearson released the Thesis WordPress Theme. Some people began trying it out and noticed that they were getting good SEO results with the theme as well as had an easy time using it. Popular bloggers including Matt Cutts, Copy Blogger, and Chris Brogan all used the theme and people began to jack their swagger. Well, most people were like, “Well if the Google SEO mastermind Matt Cutts is using this theme, I’m pretty sure it’s no joke.” And to make a long story short, this theme started spreading like wildfire across the internet and is still spreading today. Since you’re probably interested in the advantages and disadvantages, I’m going to break it down for you starting with the disadvantages.
Disadvantages of using the Thesis WordPress Theme
A lot of people use it – Probably the biggest reason that I was a little bit hesitant to get the Thesis theme was that a lot of peeps already have it. I’m not some Matt Cutts groupie and don’t want to be classified as a huge follower of people using it. I almost avoided getting it because every blogger and their mother (and their mother’s mother) seems to know about Thesis. When so many people use it, it kind of takes away from the uniqueness of your website. Fortunately the theme is not free otherwise way too many people would be using it and it would be a little bit played-out.
It looks fairly plain and minimalist - Just looking at a regular Thesis WordPress theme actually looks pretty darn plain. The background is white, the text is black, and there’s nothing about it that really stands out. In other words, the theme itself isn’t overly flashy, but flashy isn’t really what I’m going for on my personal website. I’d rather have people actually read my content instead of be distracted by the theme. If I had flash animation with fireworks going off in the background, sound effects, and Shaun T running sprints across my screen, it would be pretty badass, but I think most people would just be distracted; I know I would be.
What do the peeps think? – I would love to hear from people as to what they don’t like about thesis besides what I already mentioned. I honestly racked my brain for disadvantages of the theme and can’t really think of many more problems people would have with it besides the fact that it’s fairly plain looking and is used by a lot of people. With that said, if you can think of any, just let me know in the comments section below. Otherwise I’m going to break down the advantages of Thesis.
Advantages of using the Thesis WordPress Theme (There are a lot…)
There are so many advantages that I might actually forget some so just like the disadvantages, if you can think of any advantages that I forgot to mention, feel free to post up a comment below and let me know what I missed. I tried to cover all of the ones that I’m familiar with and know about so yeah, let’s get to it.
Highly customizable – The great thing about the Thesis theme is that it’s highly customizable and easy to customize. In other words, what I could do is have a customized header image on my website with a graphic so that my website really stands out more. I could add pictures to the sidebar easily, and have no problem adding pictures to individual posts because there is a “set featured image button” on each post (which just makes it way more user friendly). You can change colors, menu settings, and layouts with the click of a button; it’s really simple. There is really a lot you can customize including SEO options, the width of your website, number of sidebars, positioning of sidebars, and more. Plus it even has an easy favicon uploader for your favicon (that little icon you see on websites in the URL bar). Everything is just way easier with customization as far as Thesis goes. What else is cool is that you can replace the default feed with your own feedburner link and it’s easy to add Statcounter or Google Analytics coding to your website if you want to keep track of stats (something I recommend).
Fastest loading wordpress theme? – It may not rank number one for fastest loading WP themes, but it’s definitely near the top. I have used plenty of other plain themes and for the amount of customizability that it offers, it is easily among the fastest themes. I haven’t run tests on a bunch of themes to figure out which one loads the fastest because it would be a waste of time. But, I do notice that people have no problem loading my website and don’t complain about loading speed. One thing that you definitely won’t have to worry about is loading speed with Thesis. Plus, although you may not know it, loading speed does play a small role in where you are ranked in the search engines. If you have a really slow loading website, your load speed may be at fault for a drop in rankings or as most flamers call it: SERPs.
Font readability – Everything from the normal paragraph text to the headers are easy to read and well thought out. I really like how the Header 1, Header 2, and Header 3 tags look. I have even occasionally used the Header 4 tags and they are literally perfect size. Although I wish the H3 tags were a little bit darker, there’s no complaints coming from me; I use them all the time and think that they look good. Obviously if you want to make your articles more readable for your visitors, you are going to want to have headers that look decent. Additionally, the post title font is perfect size and style of text; everything is good with the title tags.
Navigation – It’s easy to navigate a website that’s using Thesis because there aren’t any confusing links, text that needs to be realigned, etc. You won’t have to worry about your navigation being confusing to people that are trying to find their way from Point A to Point B. For example, if you wanted to read about my experience with the workout program Insanity, I have it set up so that you could click on “Tags” in my sidebar, the “Categories” in my sidebar, and I also have a nice search bar in the upper right hand corner for you to just type “Insanity” and find articles. It’s very easy to maneuver a website that’s using Thesis compared to most themes.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – One of the biggest reasons that people use Thesis is for SEO purposes. If you know what you are doing as far as optimizing your content for search engines like Google (the main one), you’ve got to be using a theme that allows it’s robots to properly index your content. If you are using a poorly optimized theme, you aren’t going to get as much website traffic. If you read my article about How To Increase Website Traffic, I did mention the fact that you should choose a tasteful theme that sets you up for success when it comes to optimization or SEO. I’m no SEO guru, but I know quite a bit of stuff and I know that Thesis will get you on the right track. Plus when you install the theme, you don’t have to worry about downloading the All-In-One SEO Pack plugin. Websites that aren’t using Thesis usually will want to make sure that they have this plugin to help the search engines index their content properly so that keywords can be targeted. All of the keyword targeting can be done right in your Thesis Theme set up. If you look at the keywords I’m targeting, you’ll see “Fitness, Blogging, Internet Marketing, Make Money Online.” Since this is a personal website (Andrew Pavelski), I don’t really care much about targeting a keyword, but figured that targeting some of my interests in the title is better than nothing.
Add pictures easily – If you want to add pictures to your website, this theme makes the process really easy. There are plenty of ways to add whatever pictures you want and the cool thing is that you can have pictures change each time someone refreshes your page. There’s a little spot on my sidebar up near the top right where you can have pictures cycling through which I think is soopah cool. Plus you can customize the size of their display easily for your visitors.
Free technical support – Chris Pearson and his gang have a team of people constantly offering support on their forums. If you take a look around, most people that have problems with the theme find the help that they are looking for quickly and easily. You don’t have to be experienced with WordPress, themes, editing, C++ or a total nerd to fit in, you can be a total random person that is clueless and you’ll probably find help to get Thesis the way that you want it even if a little bit of learning is required.
Unique features – One cool thing that Thesis offers that most themes don’t include is a Multimedia box. Basically that’s what I was referring to when I said you can have pictures cycling through. You can also include videos there if you want them to cycle through. What else is cool is that you can customize the pages that they show up on and have advertising or pictures that show up only for a certain page which is really dope.
Clean appearance – There aren’t too many solid themes that have a clean cut appearance out there. If you’re going for a minimalist appearance with your WordPress theme, Thesis works well. If you’re looking to add pictures, a custom header image, and still keep it “so fresh and so clean clean” (in the words of Outkast), this is definitely what you’re going to want to roll with for a theme.
Professional theme – This theme is very professional looking, but can also be personalized. It’s really the best of both worlds (like Jay-Z and R. Kelly); I’m on a roll with these rap references. Anyways, you can keep it professional and run a really great website just by using Thesis as your default theme instead of another. There are some that may look more professional, but chances are good that they don’t have nearly as many advantages in all the areas that Thesis does.
User friendly (easy to use) – Honestly the best thing about this thing besides everything that was mentioned above is that it’s really user friendly and easy to use. You don’t have to be a total computer or website nerd to figure everything out with Thesis. My favorite feature is that once you do some editing, it has a “BIG ASS SAVE BUTTON” which you can click on to save any changes you made to the appearance. You can also customize the text if you are offended by the word “ASS” and could just put “BIG SAVE BUTTON”…
How much does the Thesis WordPress Theme cost?
The thing is, Chris Pearson has been on the grind putting out new WordPress themes for a long time. Most of his in the past were free, but when push comes to shove, all that hard work that goes into themes needs some compensation. Many of his old themes are still available for free on the internet and if you don’t get Thesis, I recommend checking them out.
Thesis WordPress Theme price options
Single License (Personal for 1 Website): $87
- Use of Thesis on one live website and one localized development server
- Access to the Developer’s Option Upgrade for only $77
- Access to members-only Answers and Forums
- Lifetime Thesis upgrades
- 30-day money back guarantee
Developer’s License (Multiple Websites): $164
For less than the price of two Single Licenses, you’ll get:
- Unlimited use of Thesis on sites that you own
- Access to all-new beta versions of Thesis before final release!
- Access to Client Site Options, which allow you to deploy Thesis on sites for clients
- Access to members-only Answers and Forums
- Lifetime Thesis upgrades
- 30-day money back guarantee
Plus, the awesome thing is that even if you get a Single User License with Thesis, you can upgrade to the Developer’s License without having to pay the full $164. You’ll just have to pay the difference of $77 which makes it perfectly set-up with no complaints from people wanting an upgrade.
Is Thesis the Best WordPress Theme on the market?
I would argue that it is among the most elite WordPress themes on the market today. There are good themes out there, and the “best theme” really depends on the style of website that you run and what kind of interface you’re going for. People have already made the case that it’s currently the best theme on the market and after using it, I understand why. There aren’t too many themes that are as powerful as Thesis that are still easy to use and customize. The cost of this theme really isn’t that much if you want your website to look good and maximize its overall potential.
Plus you get free upgrades, technical support, and more. It’s really all I could ask for so regardless of whether you hate it or love it, it’s the only theme I’ll be using unless someone stops by and offers me a free customized design. When I first bought this theme I was somewhat skeptical of its capabilities, but it has delivered and I’ve been more than satisfied with it and highly recommend it for any people that want their website to look good without having to spend $10K on a unique design.
Conclusion
Even if you are a complete noob at blogging or starting a website, I think that you can save yourself a lot of time by going with Thesis for your website theme. At $87 for a Single License, it is well worth the price, I would have paid more. I think that the Developer’s License at $164 is an absolute steal considering you can use it on as many websites as you want and get free lifetime upgrades. I wouldn’t be surprised if at some point the price went up for this theme because it is that good.
When you buy the theme, it comes with its own starter kit to help you get everything set up. The starter kit is pretty much like a walkthrough and explains each feature. If you just want direct support and help setting it up, you can ask someone on the technical support forums (which you’ll have free access to). If you buy the theme through my link below, I’d even be willing to help you set up or configure a few things if you need it.
Over the four years that I’ve been working online, I’d say that this theme just saves hours of time. If the price seems too high for your budget, you can certainly work with a free theme, nobody is forcing you to get Thesis. However, I know how much time it will save to get off to the right start with the Thesis Theme. I hope you enjoyed my thorough breakdown and review because I tried to be as honest and straightforward as possible. The bottom line is that Thesis just kicks major ass compared to most themes on the market… it’s not really a competition…
CLICK HERE TO TRY THESIS NOW
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