So after not a small amount of poking around at the various free WP theme out there, I bit the bullet and actually bought a theme: Thesis. Part of what led me to it was that there’s an actual industry around Thesis — it’s not just the extensive documentation and support at the site itself, but folks have their own support sites and ideas around it.
Perhaps it was in part self-serving, but it helped that I read more than one site that said, “I scoffed at the idea of actually paying for a theme, but I finally went ahead and tried it out, and now I’m hooked.” It might be a vast conspiracy, or there might actually be some there there.
It also helped that I liked the general look of the theme, natch.
So here’s my review conclusion: Thesis is to WordPress as WordPress is to old school blogging.
By old school blogging, I’m talking about the way MT was back in the 3.x days and before, and the foundation of what I actually started blogging with. The underlying database was strong, but once you grabbed a theme and went with it, it was all hand-crafted, with tons of HTML progamming and tweaking and polishing, and heaven help you if you decided to change your theme.
WordPress brings a huge amount of modularity to the process. Through PHP functions, CSS, and, most importantly, its control panel and use of plug-ins and widgets, you suddenly have a huge amount of flexibility and ability to make relatively large changes with relative ease. Want a new theme? It’s not trivial, but it’s pretty much plug (and poke and polish) and play.
Thesis — which is more properly called the rather pompous “framework” than “theme” — takes that all a step further by putting the style sheet (CSS) controls into the control panel. Want to change fonts? Want to include or exclude a media box? Want two columns, three columns, three columns left, three columns split …? It’s all powered by the control panel. Major redesigns (at least in terms of turning things on and off, or modifying their values) are suddenly a snap.
Thesis includes a separate CSS and function file that you can play with (manually) to override or add to the provided bits. This allows upgrades to Thesis (which appear to come out at a regular interval, and are free for people who’ve bought it) to be put in without losing those customizations.
More than that, Thesis, as a framework, includes “hooks” — control points within the templates where stuff goes (before the post, after the post, before the comments, after the comments … all of that, but multiplied by twelve). By applying desired functions to these hooks in the custom function PHP file, you can make those functions (written by yourself or from widgets) appear wherever you want without actually modifying the template files. Again, this provides both reliability and portability with only a minimal loss of hand-craftability.
Normally these hooks, and the custom CSS and function files, have to be manipulated manually, as the WP control panel doesn’t point to them. That’s where a free plug-in called OpenHook comes in. OpenHook takes all the Thesis hooks (and a few of the WP ones) and makes them available in the control panel. In other words, all of the controls over how the blog look can be handled solely within the control panel, which is a huge quality of life add, simplifying matters tremendously.
The overall result — a good-looking theme out of the box, with tremendous (and tremendously easy) flexibility.
And, as a nice bonus, Thesis is robustly supported. Not only is there the broad user community I mentioned above but the Thesis designer is in there pitching, answering questions, and expanding the setup. Too many free theme (trust me) are too clever by half, then abandoned by their creators who are on to Bigger and Better (or at least Newer) Things. That support is a Good Tthing.
Thesis is not perfect. There are a few places where the “hooks” are not quite as ubiquitously placed as I might like (though nothing stops me from actually screwing around with the template code, that almost feels like cheating with Thesis). The documentation is extensive, but not flawless (figuring out how to apply hooks manually, before I got OpenHook, could have used some more practical examples). The relatively wide Thesis community means a lot of people using it and therefore similarity to other blogs (though that can be mitigated fairly by simply, well, tweaking the CSS; the gallery of Thesis sites shows the variety available). And, of course, it set me back $87 for a single-site (here) license.
I don’t plan on using Thesis at any of my other blogs, because that would probably be overkill. And I’m not a professional site designer, so the opportunities for expanding my Thesis use don’t seem broad. On the other hand, it’s given me a solid platform for DDtB that I should be able to use for years to come. I’d expect the design here to change and evolve a lot more often than it has in the past. I already have a few ideas, and Margie’s suggested the site is a bit stark and white for her druthers. We’ll see.
At least the little column of pictures is back.
I’m glad I got WordPress. I’m equally glad I got Thesis for it.