Thesis 1.0 is Available Now!

Casper, Colin, Jorge, and Yancey — Removing lines 74 and 139 per Jorge’s suggestion is going to severely limit the image-handling ability of the multimedia box. I worked on this problem last night, and with the help of a couple of users, I was able to code up a smoother solution that does not require direct URL file access.

The new and improved version is available for download, and for those of you who’ve experienced problems with URL file access, the two files of interest to you are:

• /lib/admin/options_page.php
• /lib/function/multimedia_box_functions.php

Lisa — Awesome! I would think people would be knocking down your door to have you customize a Thesis installation for them. I still find myself dropping by Wild Keys every now and then and letting out a smug and content, “Ahhhhhhhhh!”

Miguel — Your new custom.css file, which is located inside the /custom folder, is empty. Place your desired header image in /custom/images; place the definition I gave you above in your new custom.css file; and then everything should work properly.

Eric — Because you’re choosing to use CSS to insert your header graphic, you’ll be best-suited by an image that is 960px wide. Once you’ve cropped an image accordingly, make sure that the #header declaration in your custom stylesheet looks like this:

.custom #header { height: 117px; background: url('images/BreadtopiaM938wide.jpg'); }

Finally, go into your Thesis options panel, and then uncheck the first two settings under Display Options. This will remove the title and tagline from the header.

Wayne — If I recall properly, you already asked a similar question on a different page of this site. In case you missed it, here’s my response regarding (some of) the advertising options with Thesis 1.0.

Christopher — I don’t know anything about the WP-Remix theme, and even if I did, I’m not in the habit of commenting on competitors’ offerings. I can only speak to the merits of Thesis, which features the most finely-tuned codebase of any theme on the market today. Also, I really believe there’s a huge upside to having pixel-perfect typography on your site, so that’s one of the things I don’t even think about compromising. The Thesis design is based entirely around effective use of typography and whitespace, two things that have immediate and significant effects on your site’s users.

Given its current level of flexibility and the direction it’s heading, Thesis is a great choice for any site. Of course, that doesn’t preclude other themes being effective choices as well, but the bottom line is this—you simply can’t go wrong with Thesis.

Christopher — I am support and the author, and you’re actually on the Thesis demo now. Actually getting behind the scenes of a theme is not something that I foresee happening in the near future, simply because that would require access to a WordPress dashboard where the theme is installed. This presents all sorts of concomitant-access and security issues, so that’s why you probably haven’t come across it yet.

Once again, I’m not going to go over a competitor’s product and dissect it in that manner, simply because I consider it poor form. I wouldn’t have bothered to create Thesis unless I felt like every aspect of theme development needed significant improvement, so that’s pretty much the driving force behind my efforts here.

If you want a more in-depth explanation of some of the most beneficial features of the theme, please take a look at this post. Also, be sure to read the testimonials of users, as I think it’s important to gain a very clear understanding of how the community feels about the product (and the people behind it!) before you make a decision.

Christopher — Thesis is, first and foremost, the most precise and SEO-friendly framework available today. WordPress itself handles SEO-friendly URLs, and where WordPress falls short—with archives and tags, for instance—Thesis picks up the slack. Tags, for instance, are not linked by default, and even if you do choose to link them, the resulting links are nofollowed.

Although Thesis includes a page template that allows for easy archive creation, I don’t recommend using it for the very reason you mentioned. If you still want the benefit of archives without the associated page bloat, then I suggest adding your archive pages to your robots.txt file.

I find it a bit ironic that you are asking about archives and SEO with microsites, simply because archives don’t seem to be a piece of that puzzle. Because WordPress gives you such finite control over posts and pages (and because this is where Thesis excels), using the theme in this capacity would yield maximally efficient results.

Videos are on the horizon, but I’ve still got a lot of work to do before I get there.

Christopher — Cool. I really think you’ll enjoy the level of control Thesis offers and the ease with which you can roll out highly refined sites.

Jerome — Judging by the amount of customization you’ve been able to apply to Press Row (which is a far less customizable framework), I think you’ll find Thesis to be a walk in the park. I’m trying to make it so users can do sweeping customizations without touching a bit of code, but no matter what, if you are relatively proficient with CSS, you’ll always be able to bend Thesis to your every whim.

Domenica — Let’s take these in order:

1. Thesis is actually intended to be the easiest theme to use and to customize for people of all abilities. In fact, the primary focus of my development efforts is to make it drop-dead-simple for a beginner to customize and run an amazing site.
2. PayPal is secure in that regard—none of your purchase information here on DIYthemes is ever going to be publicly available, and if you use a fake name to protect yourself, you’ll be fine.
3. There will likely be a lot of image/video options in the magazine layout. Flexibility is the name of the game there, so you should be able to do it all.