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Everything You Need to Know About Cosmo

by Chris Pearson

As of version 1.3, Thesis is capable of producing nearly every useful, basic HTML markup structure. This has massive implications, simply because it is now possible to recreate almost any design by using a deft combination of custom styles (custom.css), images, and functions (custom_functions.php). Just last week, I demonstrated this amazing flexibility by adapting the award-winning Copyblogger design to the Thesis framework.

That’s compelling stuff, but how does it relate to Cosmo? Well, for starters, I’m sure that many of you (perhaps all of you!) assumed that Cosmo was going to be a completely different theme from Thesis—a magazine-style theme, if you will. Originally, I shared this same assumption, but in the last few weeks, I’ve realized that Cosmo cannot justifiably be released as a separate theme.

On a functional level, Cosmo only does one thing differently than Thesis. It allows you to control the display of your home page rather than being tied to the reverse-chronological list of recent posts that typifies most blogs. Outside of this home page control, however, Cosmo’s functionality would literally be identical to that of Thesis.

When you think about Cosmo in this manner, you quickly realize that the only sensible solution here is to build home page control into Thesis. I’m not going to reinvent the wheel here; I’m just going to make the wheel better.

I know you’ve all been waiting patiently for Cosmo to be released, and on that note, you’ll be happy to know that the next major Thesis update is going to contain home page layout and display controls. Effectively, this is going to be the first release of Cosmo, but we’re not going to change Thesis’ name to reflect that fact.

All Thesis users are going to have access to this functionality at no additional cost, so if you were worried about having to pay more for “Cosmo,” worry no more.

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Another Reason to Buy Thesis Theme @ chrisg.com
October 28, 2008 at 7:10 am

{ 81 comments }

Chris Pearson October 31, 2008 at 10:14 am

dinu — Neither Google nor I recommend the use of an XHTML sitemap anymore, so I won’t be including that in the theme.

Rick — Don’t call it Cosmo! You’ll confuse the n00bz :D

Rick October 31, 2008 at 10:35 am

That’s right! How soon I forget. I meant to say “Thesis 1.4″! Old habits die hard….

Rick

Aleksander November 3, 2008 at 4:01 am

Chris, will Thesis 1.4 be localise-ready?

Chris Pearson November 3, 2008 at 11:02 am

Aleksander — There’s a slim chance that 1.4 will be completely localized, but I’m thinking it probably won’t end up happening. The release after 1.4 (either 1.5 or 2.0) will likely be the first completely localized version of the theme.

Dias November 4, 2008 at 11:43 pm

Hi Chris

Do you have any roadmap, like when 1.4 will came out? :)

Gary November 5, 2008 at 12:55 am

Chris – FYI, I wondered what happened to copyblogger. In IE 7 copyblogger’s left sidebar bleeds over into the content panel and the writing in the content panel bleeds over into the right sidebar. But everythings fine in FireFox. What’s ^?

Rick Wolff November 6, 2008 at 12:33 pm

I may as well chime in. I’m not disappointed that the magazine-style theme will be a super-tweak of what you’ve built up Thesis to be, rather than a whole ‘nother theme. It means that everything I’ve learned in Thesis so far is even more applicable than before. Whatever you call it, I’m sure it will be great!

Maybe I should fool around with another, “non-premium” theme, just so I can appreciate the stability and completeness of Thesis, and have more of a frame of comparison.

Naaaah.

Travis Prinzi November 6, 2008 at 12:40 pm

I agree with Rick. I had been anticipating Cosmo, but thinking, “I really hope it’s as awesome as Thesis.” Now, I know it will be.

Jon S. November 7, 2008 at 6:50 am

Hey, I’m excited about the-theme-formerly-known-as-Cosmo, and I understand the concept, but seeing even some rough screen shots would really help me sell the theme to my partners.

A magazine-type theme would be perfect for our project, and your groovy SEO and typography has sold me, but a visual would help sell this to my friends. Thanks!

Simply Mike November 8, 2008 at 11:18 am

Lookin’ forward to it, dude !

Glad all we’ve found out about Thesis will be added to, instead of having to learn all that over again.

The best part is one theme is being made into all we need … ever.

Why in the heck do some theme “designers (?)” pump out a new theme every few days and never work to make the one’s they have actually work.

We don’t need more, we need better themes.

More functionality, not different colors.

More usability, not more to choose from.

Thanks for Thesis … especially 1.4 and beyond.

If we can’t call it Cosmo, can we call it Maxim ;-)

Chris Pearson November 12, 2008 at 9:41 am

Gary — The display issues in IE7 are a product of the text size setting in the browser. In a couple of specific instances (not every Windows machine, strangely enough), the theme renders inconsistent text sizes, and that’s what you’re seeing. Ironically, Brian (the Copyblogger himself) experienced this problem, and this was actually the catalyst behind the forthcoming interstitial release, version 1.3.2. Essentially, the major component of this update is a fix to the IE7 rendering weirdness.

Jonathan November 17, 2008 at 6:27 pm

Wanting to grow out of cutline and Thesis looks like the answer. One simple question I did not see addressed: Is there a simple way to create rounded
corners with Thesis?

Jonathan November 19, 2008 at 12:22 pm

I am pretty sure that I would like to run my whole site with thesis and have a “blog” tab on my home page. I am hoping that I can use the cosmo options to change the look of the home page and still be seamless with the blog side. What I don’t understand is, can I still have separate html extension files like sales, disclaimer, and privacy policy pages on the same domain but separate from wordpress? I looked for a way to load HTML and php pages on another site run by wordpress and could not make it work. Please help me understand if this can be accomplished, and if so, then how.

Chris Pearson November 19, 2008 at 12:33 pm

Jonathan — Your best bet would actually be to recreate your other pages (sales, disclaimer, etc.) as WordPress Pages; that way, you’ll be able to manage everything from one location, and you won’t have to worry about the potential implementation issues.

You can create any kind of page you want for any purpose, so in my opinion, it doesn’t make sense not to use WordPress to handle this.

Jonathan November 19, 2008 at 8:35 pm

Hey Chris, thanks for the quick response. I sell digital products and use a security program called DLGuard which requires that all sales pages have a php extension. I could put these on a separate domain if need be. Can thesis support this Format?

Chris Pearson November 19, 2008 at 8:48 pm

Jonathan — WordPress allows you to set your file extensions, so you can actually force .php onto the end of your standard URLs. For instance, under this setup, your sales page would end up with the following URL:

http://yoursite.com/sales.php

Is that the result you’re after?

Jonathan November 19, 2008 at 10:15 pm

Thanks Chris – Yes, that should work. Even though I’ve been using cutline for about a year, I just discovered this site. Already, so many of my questions have been answered how could I not go for thesis. The pointers and support are exactly what I’ve been looking for. With about 200 posts, going back and setting up categories the right way looks daunting. Better sooner than later though. If I do that before I change themes will it make the transition easier or will I need to redo anyway?

Jonathan November 20, 2008 at 9:06 am

Chris, one more quick one. Can a page tab be turned into a link to a different URL? I have tried unsuccessfully to alter the code to make this happen. It looks like it might be possible, is it?

Paul November 21, 2008 at 4:04 pm

Hi Chris,

I am hoping to buy Thesis 1.4 as I am interested in the magazine features you have planned. Any update on the ETA?

I have my CC warm and ready! ;-)

Paul

Roman November 24, 2008 at 1:29 pm

Thanks very much for your work! I love digging through the Thesis code to see what you’re up to.

Jonathan November 25, 2008 at 6:54 pm

Hey Chris – Ignore the last two posts! Got thesis, it’s up and running and so far so good. It’s strange but my RSS subscribers jumped by 20% after one day, go figure. Still lots of code questions but reworking my categories will keep me busy for a few days.

Darren November 27, 2008 at 10:15 pm

I cannot wait for Cosmo [Thesis 1.4] and wondered if you have a ‘rough’ idea when it might be available. I am working on a new site which would fit in a magazine Thesis style brilliantly, and want to launch it in December.

Tim November 30, 2008 at 1:39 pm

I have a feeling the upcoming wordpress 2.7 release will delay Thesis 1.4 even more….I read on a blog that Thesis’ option pages are not compatible w/ WP2.7…. Those option pages are the heart of the current and new thesis….

Am I right, Chris?

Chris Pearson November 30, 2008 at 1:50 pm

Tim — WordPress 2.7 loads up CSS styles for admin panels a little differently than prior versions of WordPress. The required “fix” will take only a few minutes to implement, so ultimately, no, you’re not really right :D

Chris Pearson November 30, 2008 at 2:06 pm

Darren — Although 1.4 is in development now, I’ll be vacationing in Europe from Dec. 2–16. As a result, the new version of theme won’t see the light of day until after I return, but in the meantime, I highly recommend checking out the new Thesis OpenHook plugin.

Rick Beckman (KingdomGeek on the forums) has put together a remarkably easy and efficient plugin that allows you to use hooks without writing a single line of code. Essentially, the plugin reduces the hooking process to nothing more than copy and paste, so it’s just another tool you can use to lower the barrier to remarkable customization.

Tim November 30, 2008 at 2:07 pm

Well that’s good news then….I knew that would get us a peep out of you…so how’s it going?

Really looking forward to 1.4…

Tim November 30, 2008 at 2:15 pm

Hey Chris…

Before you take off, any chance we can get a “fix” beforehand? I’m thinking of upgrading a thesis site to 2.7 beta 3 – The official release will prob’ly be out before 12/16…

Darren December 7, 2008 at 8:32 am

Hi Chris,

I meant January, rather than December, but thank you for the update and I will look into the plugin you’ve mention. Are you going anywhere nice in Europe?

Max January 16, 2009 at 7:38 am

Hi Chris,

Any news on a realistic Cosmo release date? The last I heard was just before the year-end… Or has the project been cancelled altogether?

Cheers,
Max

Kingdom Geek January 16, 2009 at 9:38 am

Max: “Cosmo” as a separate product has been nixed; rather than release a separate theme, it has been decided to add all of the planned “Cosmo” features into the Thesis theme, creating one super-powerful theme framework. These features will be introduced in Thesis 1.4 which is development at the moment. Based on what I’ve seen and heard from Chris, I’d say we’re rapidly approaching the release date, but nothing *certain* has been publicized.

Thanks for your interest and patience. :D

Max January 16, 2009 at 12:51 pm

Thanks for your quick reply. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the release… (we) have been waiting since September 2008 for it.

I won’t even ask for a date no more ;-)

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