Over the past several months I’ve noticed a lot of SEO gurus touting DIYthemes’ Thesis theme for WordPress. Initially I didn’t think much of it other than it was just another WordPress theme with a couple of bells and whistles. For whatever reason, several weeks ago, I revisited their site to learn more about it and found the theme to be more than I thought. I was so impressed with the theme, after learning what it was all about, that I bought a developer license and will be using it for all of my own and clients’ websites.
What’s So Great About The Thesis Theme?
Well, for starters, it’s extremely flexible. It allows for a high level of customization without a lot of effort. Those of you that are weak in HTML or PHP will benefit greatly from this built-in flexibility and ease of use. Those of you that are more experienced modifying WordPress themes will find the built-in features great time savers.
It also comes out of the box SEO ready. Now, yes, you can download one of the many SEO plugins out there, but with this theme you don’t need them. Plugins are great, but too many of them can cause issues with website performance (slow load times) and the speed of your site is becoming an important on-page optimization ranking metric. Also, plugins need to be kept up-to-date, so the more plugins you have the more time you’ll spend on blog maintenance.
They Got Me Hooked!
Besides the extreme flexibility and built-in SEO features of Thesis it also comes with hooks! Hooks were a new concept for me, but I think once you understand them you’ll get all warm and fuzzy inside like I did.
The term “hooks” is a bit misleading and I like to think of them more as place holders instead. Hooks are a basic set of commands that allow you to add to, subtract from, and modify the functionality of your Thesis installation. Huh? Hooks allow you to insert your own custom HTML into specific locations within the theme. This allows you to isolate all of your HTML customizations/tweaks to a single file!
Why is this so cool? Well, those of us that have customized themes in the past and then upgraded WordPress know the pain of seeing all your hard work go up in smoke. Your options are to leave your WordPress installation at the current version with all the customization or upgrade and redo all your customizations again. (Note: Leaving your WordPress installation at its current version and not upgrading shouldn’t be an option as it may allow for security risks. I recommend you always upgrade to the latest stable version of WordPress.)
By having your custom HTML in a single file and leaving the core WordPress files alone you don’t have to worry about losing your changes when upgrading! You are in essence future proofing your website! You startin’ to get all warm an fuzzy?
Sounds Great But I’m Not Paying For A Theme
Why would I pay for a theme when I can find and use 1,000′s of free WordPress themes you might ask? Well, without sounding too cliched, “you get what you pay for.” Here’s how I look at the free themes vs. paid themes argument. Just because a theme doesn’t cost anything doesn’t necessary mean that it is free. Unless you are going to use a theme without modifying it at all you are going to “spend” time customizing it to where the paid theme probably already is. You are going to pay either with your time or your money.
DIYthemes.com has a number of videos that go into detail about the Thesis theme that you should check out. I highly recommend anyone that is serious about optimizing their WordPress site start with this high quality theme from DIYthemes.com.
