Version 0.3 of the theme is now available for download, and I highly recommend upgrading because nearly every template file has been improved for this release. Don’t fret, though—version 0.3 is much, much smarter than its predecessors, and I’ve made lots of changes that will allow me to provide you with better support, design help, and custom mods in the future.
Although most of the improvements are behind the scenes, there are two major changes that I am excited to share with you.
First, you now have the option to choose between a dynamically generated navigation menu and one that is manually controlled (how it worked in previous releases). The dynamic nav menu is simply a list of your WordPress pages, so if you only use pages in a limited capacity, this option will be perfect for you!
Second, you can now show a video in place of the rotating images if you prefer. As savvy user Ken pointed out, it’s all about multi-media, and now Thesis has you covered in that department as well.
For a more comprehensive and geeky list of the changes to version 0.3, as well as some key upgrade tips, make the jump!
Thesis Version 0.3 Improvements and Changes
- Smarter configuration file
- The theme’s configuration file,
config.php, now contains simpler settings that provide for more user control and fewer errors. Also, this move brings us one step closer to a fully-functional options panel within WordPress, which is the next big step for Thesis. - Lots of CSS consolidation
-
In previous Thesis releases,
style.csswas littered with quite a few unnecessaryfontdeclarations that not only increased the file size, but also made it more difficult to change the theme’s fonts efficiently. To fix this, I consolidatedfontdeclarations into just a few key places, so now you’ll be able to experiment with different font combinations when you customize Thesis.Also, I was unhappy with the way I handled
inputand otherformelements in previous iterations of the theme, so I took some time to extract these styles in a way that would make them more deployable and usable. This move resulted in a file size savings of roughly 6%, and in addition, the developers among you will find it much easier to create fully-styled forms on the fly. - Style and usability improvements
-
Thanks to you early adopters out there, I was able to see Thesis operating out in the wild under many different conditions, and as a result, I noticed elements that needed to be tweaked in order to make Thesis more adaptable and usable. Here’s a quick rundown of the styling changes:
- Adjusted the sidebar headings (
<h2>) so that headlines spanning more than one line of text would be handled in a more aesthetically-pleasing way - Spaced comment meta data (the date and time a comment was made) away from commenters’ names so that the names would have more of a visual impact
- Increased sidebar line height so chunks of text in either sidebar will read as gracefully as the content area
- Tweaked image styles so framed images will look a little nicer
- Increased the height of the comment box so that users will be able to see more of their comment while writing
- Posts with comments turned off no longer display unnecessary “comments off” text
- Adjusted the sidebar headings (
- SEO improvements
- I’m always looking for ways to decrease the number of followed links on every page, and I realized that I could add
rel="nofollow"attributes to comment links that follow posts on index and archive pages. This move further protects your link equity and tightens your keyword optimization—two things that will help your site rank in the search engines. - Custom stylesheet abstraction
- In order to protect against upgrade headaches and unintentional overwrites, I’ve abstracted the custom stylesheet file,
custom.css, from the Theme download file. If you’re a new user and don’t yet have acustom.cssfile, you’ll want to download it separately from the Thesis downloads page.
Helpful Upgrade Tips
Nearly all of the core Thesis files have been modified in some way for version 0.3, and if you want to have a seamless upgrade, you’ll need to follow these steps before you upload the theme:
- Open your new
config.phpfile and set the appropriate variables for your site (especially$thesis_feed_urland$thesis_use_paged_nav). - If you’ve set
$thesis_use_paged_navtofalse, then you’ll need to set up your navigation menu in the newnav_menu_items.phpfile. Note that the CSS classcurrentis no longer supported—it has been changed tocurrent_page_itemto mirror WordPress’ auto-generated navigation code. - If you have customized your rotating images, you’ll need to include the
/headersfolder androtating_images.phpfrom your previous Thesis installation.
That’s everything, and now it’s time to download Thesis version 0.3!
New to Thesis? Find out how you can improve your site immediately with the most optimized and accessible template system on the Web.
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Hi Chris!
Sorry if this post was placed twice, I am not sure if I did the first one.
Anyhow, I absolutely love your theme and was wondering what the licensing rules are for it? Basically I would like to know if we are allowed to use your theme for client sites? As other premium themes call it a developers license I guess.
Thanks!
p.s. This is my first time posting on any of your sites and I just wanted to say that your article on semantic web markup pretty much kickstarted my obsession with blogging!
Hey Chris, really awesome work here. As I dig into the various files, I see how much work has gone into this, and am impressed, and thankful that it is YOU and not me.
I am a WP noob. I hacked it into a RapidWeaver themed site a month ago, and am back to WP, now wanting to run an entire site with WP. So, I have a couple of questions:
* As mentioned previously, how do you add a header image? (Wow, total noob question … yet I just don’t see how. You mention using the custom.css file for customizations, but looking in the styles, and the header.css … I can’t figure it out.)
* How to add pages? I want a Contact page (for example). You say, “If you’d like your navigation menu to consist of your WordPress pages, set the $thesis_use_paged_nav variable to TRUE” … but by default I see an About page linked to on the home page, but no “about.php” page… and I don’t get how to add WordPress pages.
Hmm, I’ll go over to wordpress.com/org to figure out how to add WP pages. However, these would be good things for your tutorial. When writing it, just think, ‘Some of these folks are complete noobs.’
Okay, so I learned something.
To add a page, it is as simple as going to Write – Page. Then add the page title, and whatever you want in the body of it.
Another note: If you still want to leave your $thesis_use_paged_nav variable set to TRUE, but don’t like the order the pages are in … just use the WP Advanced options (in Write – Page, or Manage – Pages). You’ll find the last option of ‘Page Order.’ Just set the number of each page in the sequence you want. And if you don’t want to mess around with reordering all of those numbers later upon needing to add a new page between two others … just number them by tens. (10, 20, 30, …etc.) A trick from my youth, programming BASIC, or Pascal or Fortran or one of those times.
1. Is there code that I can add to custom.css to switch the page layout? (I would like to see what it would look like with the siderbars (including the headers) on the left and the posts on the right.
2. Has anyone made a video header? I haven’t seen any. I would like to know how to do it as I didn’t see any option. Chris?
3. Where could I learn about using the custom file. I want to start using it since Thesis is a work in progress. I just don’t understand how it works. Any links or explanation would help.
I’d love to do a video on the right box, to supplement a specific post
Chris,
Just bought thesis. Thank you, am totally new to WP. Using 2.5, and have upload thesis. It seems to be working. My friend uses Neo Classical, I do not know if I should also went with Neo Classical and customized it. So maybe I am in the wrong place, but I wanted to support what your doing so I bought in. 4 quick questions.
Q1: I want did not see the “Heading 3” from the drop down formating menu. Nor did I see the auto word rap. Under writing post, I selected HTML so does that mean I have to cut and paste your code to make drop caps or did I do something wrong?
Q2: I wanted to shrink the size of the video box to a vertical rectangle one column wide. Is that possible?
Q3: I would like to have a 2 column wide static text box under my header. Can I do that?
Q4: I wanted to download suckerfish drop down menu plugin and wanted to know if that would cause problems?
http://ryanhellyer.net/dropdowns/
thanks
fred
Peter — I have a rough-yet-functional development version of a theme whose primary components are static pages. The idea was that it would be better suited for business sites where the blog is not a priority. The thinking behind this is that even without a well-updated blog, a site based on a solid framework stands a great chance of ranking well over time. Further, because it’s based on WordPress, the site would also be easy to maintain.
Anyway, I realize this is not quite the style you’re talking about, but I’ll probably release that framework before focusing on a “magazine” style, which requires a lot of additional, precise page management from users.
Jake — I haven’t rolled out developer pricing yet, but I plan to do so to accompany this weekend’s pending price increase on the theme. Stay tuned.
Awesome about the semantic markup article… There is much to obsess about on the topic!
Rees — Your inquiry about custom header images was addressed over in the DIY Themes forums, and I see that you knocked out the page thing as well… Nicely done!
Filipe — I’ll try to answer your questions in order:
right_side.phpbefore opening<div class="content_box">inindex.php.Hey Chris,
Can’t get past the first step…
Changing the config.php file to my feedburner details does nothing to my SUBSCRIBE link.
I’ve checked and quadruple checked.
Nothing.
Seth — Are you attempting to edit your
config.phpfile from within the WordPress dashboard? If so, it’s likely that the permissions on your/wp-contentfolder won’t allow for file editing.You should try editing
config.phpwith a text editor, and then upload the modified file to your server with an FTP client.I mean I’m staring at the code. I download via filezilla into a text editor then back up. The code is changed to my feedburner address. Any other suggestions? Thanks
Hi Seth,
I had problems also with the feedburner feed until I took out the double quotes and put in the single quotes. Also the semi-colon needs to be there.
It looks like this in the
config.php:I hope this helps.
Marion
PS. Right now, I just can’t upload my logo using the forum instructions.
There are not enough superlatives in the lexicon to describe this theme. It is SMOKIN’ HOT!
I implemented Suckerfish menus as my application really needed drop downs. Still some style tweaking to do, but it works fine.
Have an interactive home search based on Google maps as the “rotating images”. May switch over to static images just due to speed concerns (that’s a problem with my real estate search site, NOT Thesis).
Put me down as one wanting to be able to tie a specific image/whatever to a specific page/post rather than random rotate. For what I’m doing, it would be ideal for example to have the Tempe, AZ search map always come up on the Tempe page/posts.
What would be *really* wicked is if I could have one set of rotating images for one page, and another set for another page. Then I could have Tempe pics random on the Tempe page and Scottsdale pics random on the Scottsdale page.
Fabulous work Chris!
Seth — When you download the
config.phpfile via Filezilla, are your variables already changed, or do you have to input your feed URL again? If the latter condition is true, then yourconfig.phpfile is not saving properly.The reason I ask is becase when I check the HTML source of your site, it’s clear that the
$thesis_feed_urlvalue is still pointing to the WordPress default feed. Make sure that you aren’t declaring the value of$thesis_feed_urlin line 4 ofconfig.php, and then overwriting it in line 5.Jay — I’ve been keeping up with your mods, and I am really enjoying seeing the creative and different ways you’re using the available space in the layout.
Also, I’m loving your ideas and input about the multimedia space. If you really think about it, categorical control of this area would be a powerful tool for anyone in any niche.
For instance, if I were to do something like this on Pearsonified, I could use the space to display a picture and description of Thesis on every post I have that is in the “WordPress Themes” category. Achieving that kind of focus and and control in a dynamic environment is seriously powerful stuff—definitely keep an eye out for this in version 0.4.
Oh, and to answer your final question, which was:
… Yes, that is totally doable as well, and I’m going to offer it as a pluggable function in an upcoming release. This will be one of many functions that I hope to place into a function repository—a collection of plug-and-play items that you can add to your Thesis install to do just about anything you want!
“Yes, that is totally doable as well, and I’m going to offer it as a pluggable function in an upcoming release. This will be one of many functions that I hope to place into a function repository—a collection of plug-and-play items that you can add to your Thesis install to do just about anything you want!”
I think I just died and went to Wordpress heaven.
Thanks Chris!
Jay — If your current site is any indication, you’ll be the function-writingest person I know once you see how it’s done
Filipe — Here’s a killer implementation of a video header.
Chris,
The fact that you’ve produced such far-reaching quality stuff, yet still sit here helping smucks like me, well… You’ve got a customer for life.
Turns out I had both versions of Thesis in my templates folder. That was causing my problems. It took 5 seconds to fix in the end.
Marion,
I find it exceedingly rare that someone reaches out to help like that. And with such a good tip, too. Many thanks.
Chris,
Is the version number hardcoded in any particular file?
I have uploaded what I thought was version 0.1 as well as the new 0.3 version to my themes folder as /thesis-v01 and /thesis-v03, but regardless of which theme I load they both say “Thesis 0.1 by Chris Pearson.”
Thanks,
Claude
Seth — Awesome, man… Glad you got it working! Good luck with your site (and especially your goals) as well.
Claude — Check your
style.cssfile, where you’ll find the version number on line 5. My v03 here says 0.3 for the version number, so hopefully, your file will match up!Dear Chris,
Here is a little Techsmith/Screencast video that illustrates my question. Hope you can assist.
Dan
Thesis is absolutely incredible. I’m anxious for each and every update. It feels like [insert favorite holiday here] with every update.
1. Can the width of the note and alert classes be modified? If so, how?
2. How can I get these classes to work in the sidebar. Like you done in blue on sidebar 1 above.
Chris, you’re awesome. I have been the type of person to never pay for things you can get on the internet. When you released Thesis, I didn’t hesitate for 1 nano second. Your business strategy/plan is working well. Keep up the great work.
garethjax — This is must-have functionality… Look for it in the next release!
Fred — I’ll try to answer your questions in order:
<h3>tags from within the HTML editor—either way will get the job done.right_side.php, eithersidebar.phporsidebar_2.php, and likelycustom.css. This type of modification is perfect for discussion over in the forums.Hey Chris – I posted this on the forums today, but my posts aren’t showing up (I’m there as ‘toblerone.’)
I uploaded 0.3 today, and everything went smoothly except that new changes in my right_side.php aren’t showing up. It pretty much looks like it did before I updated. Any thoughts?
Simple Mom — For some reason, the forum is only serving cached versions of each thread. In order to see updates, you’ll have to hit refresh on each forum page.
I’m working on getting this issue resolved today… Sorry for the inconvenience in the meantime!
No problem. I actually figured out my issue, so that’s okay! Thanks for all you’re doing.
Chris,
Thanks for your reply. Q1) The “Heading” drop down menu only appears in the WYSIWYG post-editing interface; you were working in the HTML editor, so that option wasn’t visible to you at the time. True.
To clarify I was in the WYSIWYG post-editing interface, I did not realize that you had to toggle the kitchen sink button to see your drop down format options. (v 2.5 )Might want to add to your user docs for beginners like me.
Q2) Ok I will put what I am thinking on the forum
Q3) Chris’s response Static text box under your header? Hmm, do you mean that you’d also like to have a two-column layout in addition to the default 3-column layout?
Answer: Yes to have booth would greatly improve flexibility. I think it would be great to able to float with defined areas between booth. Just as you have your “Read your Manual” box that is fixed I would like to be able to place fixed static boxes on every page. Not the same place as your “Read your Manual” box appears to be.
Q4) Got it. I will try to figure out how to do this.
Great job Chris,
I just have a question for you or who anyone wants to answer it.
What web languages do I need to learn to create blogs like thesis and pro blogger and neoclassical, because I want to start creating some blogs but I don’t want to buy the wrong books?
Fred — Loving the suggestions. The next release of Thesis will contain a more scalable platform for adding things like static boxes, showing/hiding the multimedia box area, etc. Simply put, it will be more flexible, and you’ll have more freedom with your design.
Austin — Fundamentally, you’ll need to have a firm grasp of HTML and CSS before embarking on building a theme. Here are two books that I wholeheartedly recommend as learning tools:
Also, if you really want to produce quality designs, you’ll need to keep an eye on the usability of what you produce. Personally, I recommend Don’t Make Me Think, a fantastic “thinker’s guide” to Web usability by Steve Krug.
Instead of going through all that work creating websites.
Could I make just as much money buying some and making them larger?or what languages should I learn to create sites like user interfaced and cool programs on the web?
I thought I read that the main body post width was 480px, but when I insert images into the body content at that width, they expand further than the intended space. This only seems to happen in Safari. Any ideas? [example]
Erik — In your example picture, the size of the fonts in the post has been reduced to a size that is substantially smaller than the default. My guess is that the
font-sizeof yourbodyelement was modified in some way, because this would, in fact, affect the size of the resulting layout. Keep in mind that Thesis’ sizing is entirely based onems, sofont-sizeediting is something that should take place only on a node level (and not at the root).Further, if you are interested in changing the size of the fonts in your content area, try creating a set of
.customdeclarations for the.format_textclasses that you’ll find instyle.css. And I guess on that note, I ought to release sets of custom.css definitions that can give people larger or smaller font packages on the fly. I’ll see what I can do about thatChris,
Hey I got the sucker fish menu to work thanks to Jay. I tried to edit my header file though and I could not get it right. When I tried it stripped all the codes for the page? Can you tell me what to comment out?
below is my page.
http://www.knowme.net
You
Fred — I can’t tell what’s going on from the look of your page… Just to make sure I’m understanding you here—you’re trying to install suckerfish on a non-Thesis page, correct?
If so, you can likely get some help over in the forums. As things are now, I cannot provide consulting for non-Thesis HTML issues. Good luck!
Chris – it looks like Fred posted the wrong link. He’s got a Thesis blog up at: http://www3.knowme.net
Fred – I think you need to go to the Thesis config.php file and set the $thesis_use_paged_nav variable to FALSE. Then put the php call to Suckerfish in the file nav_menu_items.php.
That should turn off the default menu, and leave your Suckerfish menu intact.
Jay,
thanks again! Your the best. I wanted to place my menu bar under the H1 Title. It seems to have worked which is different from what you did a little bit. (1)Now my Thesis config.php file is set $thesis_use_paged_nav variable to FALSE. (2) Then put the php call to Suckerfish in my header file. (3) I deleted the contents of file nav_menu_items.php.
Chris, at this point I have deviated a little from what jay has done.
I would like to do remove the home, lines, and bring down the feedburner to sit on top of my menu in the same position. This will free up about a 1/2 inch of space so that I can move the h1 title higher on the page. I would also like to move the search code into the empty space to the right of my h1 title, sitting just above my menu bar.
Thanks Chris, I figured it out. My default settings in Safari on my Macbook Pro were different from my default font settings in firefox.
Jay — Thanks, bro… Excellent catch there.
Erik — Excellent, I’m glad you figured it out!
Pre-purchase question: Could you elaborate on why the SEO of thesis is the strongest? I was browsing the user forums and looking at example thesis-based sites and noticed most were not displaying well in Google. For instance, every result for thehatchet dot net only shows the navigation categories under the page title. Same issue with www3.knowme dot net. Is this user error?
Jason — Your sample points out two sites out of over 300… On top of that, if Google sees an exact, uncontested domain match for a particular term, it will return a nested list of additional results for the matching site. For example, if you search for Pearsonified, you’ll see the primary result with the cool list of high-ranking internal pages. The only reason you see such a nice result, though, is because there is no competitive result for the term Pearsonified and because Pearsonified is an exact, uncontested domain match for the query term.
The two sites you’ve mentioned don’t meet this criteria—in fact, they’re not even close. Your first example, The Hatchet, is not only a new site on a .net domain, but it is also a hugely contested term (against the likes of Wikipedia and a well-known novel)! Your second example, KnowMe, does not have Thesis installed at the root, and therefore, the theme cannot affect the site’s indexing at this level. If this were an experiment, we’d have to throw out this result completely.
As far as the theme’s SEO goes, Thesis consists of minimal HTML served up in sensible, semantically-meaningful fashion, a la this article. Naturally, post content is served before sidebar content, and Google et. al. respond favorably to sites that are coded up in this manner.
hello there this is the koolest wordpress theme i’ve ever seen.. excuse me for my english.. please try to understand
is it possible to use your theme on wordpressMU site? I would definitely get the developers license if you would allow to use on wpMu as a default templates, or do you have any plan to create a theme just like this [thesis theme] for wordpressMU? Hope you reply to my email.. thank you so much you did a great job, very beautiful theme..
drdx — Thesis will work on WordPressMU installations, but I have not tested it extensively in that environment. I would love to have someone like you use Thesis with MU, and then perhaps you could give me feedback about things that need to be added for a better Thesis+MU experience.
thanks Chris.. im sorry due to my busy schedule sometime next month I’ll get the license and try it on wordpressMU sure I will give you feedback… keep it up your theme is the best looking theme, second to none when it comes to simplicity and beautifullity…
Hi, I am looking for a good example of where I can change the navigation from on top of the masthead/banner to below it using Thesis. I see there is a thread to this in a DIY thread but you need a username and password to get in along with purchasing thesis (We do have Thesis but I do not have access forums).
Does anybody know where I can find a good example of where this is located in the Word Press php files?
Thanks!!!
Joe
The hooks are listed here.
// Remove default navigation
remove_action(’thesis_hook_before_header’,'thesis_nav_menu’);
remove_action(’thesis_hook_after_header’,'thesis_nav_menu’);
Sorry, the last line should begin with “add_action”
Hi can one use awber autoresponder or forms with Thesis?
Can one change from default theme to Thesis?
Thank you
Andre
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