Welcome to the second edition of This Week in Thesis, our weekly* feature here by which we can highlight all the great Thesis-related content our community is creating — reviews of Thesis, tutorials, add-ons, and so on.
Articles are eligible for inclusion if they haven’t been included before — regardless of whether they posted within the “week of” or not — and while I’ll be watching Technorati and Twitter (hashtag: #thesiswp) for relevant content, I’ll no doubt miss plenty.
For that reason, I invite you to share links — whether yours or not — that you feel deserves a mention here with me; you can send me your ideas on Twitter (@KingdomGeek) or via e-mail.
* I’m using the word “weekly” loosely… Some weeks we may see nothing, others we may see a ton.
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On the fence about whether to purchase Thesis? Perhaps Tyler’s five reasons why he chose Thesis for Building Camelot will leave you convinced. I really like his emphasis on the long-term benefits of using Thesis!
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Searching for the search box? The sidebar’s a fine place for it, but what if you want to put the search box in a spot that no one could overlook? Ben shares how he created a custom search box with Thesis. A quick & simple tutorial that may be just the springboard you need to do what you’ve been wanting to do!
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Adam gives us two tutorials to share with you.
The first is an ingenious method to turn your multimedia box into a widgetized area, with all the flexibility of a regular sidebar. Whether you want to add the widget calendar to the section or maybe list out your popular posts, it’s all made quite a bit easier when you can swap it up through use of a widget!
Next, we have his tutorial on adding sleek social media links to the sidebar. Get your social identity noticed by your visitors!
Adam has promised us even more tutorials, so be sure to keep your eye on him!
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Last, we have a tutorial from the always popular Sugarrae wherein she lets us know how to use our multimedia boxes to serve up targeted ads based on category. This is a great tutorial and can be used for far more than just ads! The skies the limit, boys and girls.
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Great article! Thesis has the best community, by far.
You’re just happy ’cause you got two links.
I couldn’t agree with you more, though; the Thesis community rocks.
Thanks for the mention Rick! I’ve enjoyed being part of the Thesis community and I’m humbled to be mentioned here. I’m glad I have a little to offer.
Thanks for the links, Rick! And Adam, thanks for the social media links tutorial- I just added it- very fun!
Nice theme! I’m going to download it and play around with it for my new blog design.
Thanks!
On second thought.. I’m sorta broke right now so I guess I won’t be downloading it. I didn’t realize it was for purchase.
I am considering buying Thesis because I understand it can be customized to have a magazine-style layout. However I cannot find any examples of how this will look. Can anyone point me to a few demo sites so I can check it out before I buy? I tried going into the forums but you have to buy the theme before you can get in…
Michelle: Actually, the magazine-style features are “upcoming”; the current version of Thesis doesn’t have anything of that nature yet, but the new features (or at least the first batch of ‘em) will be rolled out in Thesis 1.4. There is no set release date.
Oh ok, thanks. So I’m confused - this Cosmo theme that was advertised is not in the current release yet?
Do you have a ballpark estimate of when 1.4 will come out? ie. 1 month from now? 2 months? 3? 4?
“Cosmo” was advertised as a bonus for users who purchased Thesis during August; since that time, the plans for “Cosmo” have been merged into the plans for Thesis, which will result in an even more powerful theme rather than keeping the both separate. The “Cosmo” features will make their first appearance in Thesis 1.4, and no, there is no release timeframe. If I said a month and it took Chris two months, well, that looks bad on both he and I; I usually tell people that it it’ll be done when it’s done, which is the only 100% sure answer I can give.
So if I buy the theme now do I get the 1.4 upgrade for free?
If you get Thesis, you get all future updates to Thesis at no additional charge.
Been using Thesis since v1.0 … I’m still stuck on V1.1 actually because I quite heavily customised the php files but if I had a choice, i’d go with v1.3 now.
Just wanted to say that Thesis really does rock, really customisable and very user friendly with customisation and especially to noob bloggers.
I’m holding back on v1.3 and eagerly awaiting what you guys have planned for v1.4 before I upgrade the site design again.
Keep up the great work here.
Some great links there, KG. I’m also certain I’ll find a use for Ben’s search box mod!
I posted this over at the forums but can’t help but plug it again: we’ve done a number of sites based on Thesis now but I’m just wrapped with how far we’ve been able to push Thesis with our latest site.
Using hooks we’ve seamlessly integrated SlideShowPro and have been able to do a tonne of cool stuff, like overlays for sold properties and preview images for all posts. Best of all, all of our customisation is sitting safely in the custom files and I haven’t had to touch a single core file from the theme!
Thesis has been an incredible foundation for both the architecture of the site and also as a springboard for what I think is a simple to use, but visually stunning site.
Thanks DIYthemes!
i want to buy thesis but am unable to get any pre sale support? i want to know how can i use custom fields in theme?
@Mitch: I’d love to see a proper write up talking about what you’ve done
kang — Thanks very much, and keep an eye out for 1.4, cause it’ll be droppin’ soon.
Mitch — Fantastic work on your real estate site, which is a perfect example of the boundless possibilities that exist when you use Thesis as a framework (and not so much as a set design).
I think that a lot of folks still don’t understand how insignificant the default Thesis design really is relative to what the theme is actually capable of doing. Thankfully, your site illustrates this better than I ever could!
umair — Out-of-the-box, Thesis employs 7 custom fields that you can use to control the multimedia box, add some SEO details to your pages, and add some additional style as well.
Of course, you can still declare and use your own custom fields in any manner you like. If you need to go this route, you’ll find it easiest to use custom data in areas where you’re able to hook it into place using the Thesis hook system.
Chris - Thanks for the compliment, really means something when it’s from a pro like you! You’re right though, the true power of Thesis is very much in the framework and we couldn’t have achieved what we did with the Luxury Portfolio website (and certainly not in the time we did it) without having Thesis in the engine room.
Please feel free to use us an illustration wherever useful!
Adam Taylor - I definitely plan on kicking off my own blog in the near future - and no doubt I’ll dedicate some of it to describing what I love the most about Thesis. I’m just too busy enjoying making Thesis sites for the rest of our business at the moment!
What I can tell you in the brevity of a comment though is that everything was done using just the custom.css and the custom_functions.php* files. That, with a bit of trial and error, some serious use of Firebug, a few plugins and a healthy share of the DIYthemes forum really is the best way, if I had to keep it under 100 words, to describe how I built the site.
*I really can’t stress the beauty of this file enough: even with pages such as our Meet the Team page I’ve preferred using custom functions and Thesis’ great hooks system as opposed to mucking around with trying to paste code into the Wordpress editor. It’s awesome!
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