I purchased Thesis earlier this year after reading all of the hype. It is a great theme but, as others have said, unless you are proficient in CSS and can alter your custom.php file as well – you can’t do all of the great things that you would like to. I understand the latest version allows more color customization etc without doing additional coding though but I also understand the there have been problems updating to the new version so I have left it alone.

I did not know I needed to know coding when I purchased the Theme and so I bought some books to help me and frequented the Thesis Forum. But the forum has been unable or unwilling to help me with some of my issues so I don’t feel welcomed there.

I was wondering if you know some other site where we Thesis, users that are NOT css coding experts, can get some assistance? Since we paid a price we should get some reliable support IMHO.

I have needed help with my header problem for months now but have no where to turn.

Thanks for reading

PS LOVE your fat footer and wish I could create one! I have been joneseing for one for months

SonDan

Besides the theming difference between Thesis and Carrington, are there other important differences on the backend with respect to plugins, etc?

From the ground up we’ve found Thesis has been an incredible foundation for both the architecture of every site we’ve developed and also as a springboard for what we believe are simple to use, yet visually stunning sites….

Nevertheless, I can say that when I decided I wanted to start a blog, I immediately hunted through endless free themes. I found elements that I liked & some that I didn’t, but when I chose a theme that was the best compromise or “closest” to what I wanted, I would then discover that this or that functionality was broken or make some other disappointing revelation about what happened on deeper pages, etc. When I would attempt to get support for an issue, there was none.

I checked out Thesis, and was not impressed with the out of the box look–boring. But, the more I tried to get something to work for me, the more I realized that Thesis is clean and mean, it has well-tested code, and a whole community of support behind it. That’s what I need. I realized that ultimately with the ability to customize the look really as far as you are willing and able to take it, what you are buying is a clean framework with support. I was frustrated that some small customizations took more effort for a newbie than expected. Still, overall, I am very, very pleased with the framework, which is a much better starting place than almost any I’ve seen.

Cheers!

cheers mate!

Thank goodness. If Thesis were any better-looking, it might be left live “as it comes” and would soon be as bland, obvious, and overused as any other $60 “pretty bits” theme/template out there. If you’re looking for a whore in a corset, the template mills have you covered; but nobody we’ve spoken to is buying Thesis for the visible skin. The fact anything displays whatsoever is almost a happy byproduct of the skeletal framework.

If Pearson made Thesis look halfway as decent as many of his own “premium themes” from years past, the arguments for Thesis being an “overseen” design would be quite valid, and we’d have surely ignored both him and Thesis forever. It’s the fundamentals that set a product such as WordPress apart as a blogging, site, or CMS system, and it’s the secondary enablers such as Thesis that make a combination “done to the fun bits” in a few minutes.

In our opinion, the rapidity of the versions and adoption rates means that in many bases, “oh look dear, a fresh Thesis” sites today are the equivalent of those animated Under Construction GIFs from ten years ago. Some will remain that way forever and die, but for the rest, the owner will get respectable site traffic the entire time they’re dodging orange cones and unwashed crews in plastic hats.

Specifically though, as I’ve discussed above, there’s some killer features in Thesis that I haven’t seen anywhere else. For developers that’s a combination of the power under the hood and the framework setup. That’s on top of a great options panel if you’re that way inclined.

With respect to the generic nature of the Thesis theme, I’ll put my hand up and say that I personally don’t and won’t make much use of the default styling. But that’s not what Thesis is about, it’s a canvas. In terms of structure, the default setup is a great starting point, but the extent to which bloggers and developers leave it at that it entirely at their discretion.

On top of all that, one of the most invaluable resources I’ve found with Thesis has been the community – I’ll admit I haven’t participated in all of the communities of the themes mentioned above, but from what I’ve gathered there’s really nothing on the scale of what’s going over at DIYthemes.

Matt: Sorry, but I’m with Chris on this one. No point fighting assertions with assertions, but there’s a body of evidence out there – much of it in real world examples – illustrating the power of Thesis SEO. Not to mention some of the great resources out there to stretch every last drop out of Thesis on that front.

Thats not a weakness, rather a strength. Thesis comes so well coded and configurable straight out of the box with no code touches needed that you can launch a new site quickly and put all your effort into coding. The great layouts and SEO help get your site going quickly as you then tweak and customize over time.

I’ve had much better SEO results with Thesis than with launching with custom developed or any free theme out there. In fact, I dropped Thesis into a 2 year old blog of mine, spent a couple hours tweaking the design a little, and within a month had gone from an average 6000 visitors to over 8000 visitors.

There are great themes and frameworks out there, some free some paid, but Thesis is the first one I’ve found I can develop most effectively for.

So really, don’t take my word for it.