I have been a WordPress user and developer for over four years now and use WP exclusively for customers who want to use a CMS. In that time I have learned how to change a site’s look and feel by developing a custom WordPress theme for each site. Hacking each theme by writing PHP code has been the norm and I have even done some pretty complex magazine sites like Haute Living Magazine which uses WordPress.
Now that some more sophisticated theme packages have been developed for WP I wanted to try some out, especially the Thesis WordPress Theme. So, I bought a license for Thesis and installed it on this site.
Programming Hooks
So far, what has impressed me the most about Thesis is the programming hooks. They take a little getting used to but essentially Thesis provides a mechanism for you to customize the CSS and also some programmatic functionality of your site without modifying the underlying core code for Thesis. I hope this will be a big benefit when it comes to upgrade to new releases of the theme.
Administration Options
Thesis has an options admin panel that lets you determine things like what pages to include in the navigation menu and it also has good support for widgets. Another cool feature is the image rotator that a lot of customers are asking for nowadays. After uploading several images to the rotator folder they just start appearing in the rotation (each page refresh).
Search Engine Optimization
Thesis comes with the ability to enhance your page titles (the most important part of SEO). However, I installed the SEO Title Tag WordPress Plugin which offers even more flexibility.
Going Forward
Well, here’s to a good start with Thesis. Â Now that I have it installed I have to work on my content and information architecture. Â This is one of the benefits of using Thesis. Â It is designed to let you focus on publishing. Â Let’s see if I can avoid hacking the core.
:p