How to make the World's Most Flexible WordPress Theme "ROCK" for your website!

I am a web marketing guy.

I market PEOPLE, their TALENTS, SERVICES and PRODUCTS.

My customers pop up in my email or on my BlackBerry with a problem for me to solve.  If we have a meeting of the minds, their problem becomes MY problem as we tackle their web marketing project. MY challenge is getting them, or… their talent, or… their service or… their product SEEN by as many targeted demographics of the Web as possible.

I do the preliminary research, study their niche market segments and then design a web marketing plan to make the most of their web challenge.  Once the marketing plan is in place I become a craftsman — a modern-day laborer. I have to change hats from marketing GURU to coding GRUNT. I bury myself behind a bunch of way too cool monitors as I slip into the drudgery and tedium of CODING a site!  Arrgh!

Add a THEME to WordPress - Even with a great web hosting account and a superb WordPress Platform there is still a LOT of frustrating tweaking needed to get the available FREE and PREMIUM Themes into behaving as the marketing and website design plan dictates. Sitting down at 7 am on Monday morning with a whole week of coding in front of me, is like sucking all the oxygen out of the room. It is tedious!

Picking an “Out-of-the-Box”  theme is easier if your website/blog is in a specific “niche” such as: Photography, Art, Newsletter, User Forum, and sometimes even Shopping Cart or Real Estate.  Even then, your choice of a theme can be very narrowly defined and limiting if there are features or design issues that you want to change.

Step onto MY CENTER STAGE Chris Pearson!

Thesis Wordpress Theme – is designed by Wordpress GURU Chris Pearson.

I learned long ago, that Chris has lots of experience designing WordPress Themes.  I first heard of Chris on CopyBlogger where, Chris’ name is clearly on the footer as the custom Theme designer. He is clearly experienced in WordPress, WordPress Themes and obviously expert in HTML, CSS, PHP, and SEO (search engine optimization).

Would it be irreverant to suggest that my Photo Shop version of Chris Pearson reminds me of Matthew Broderick in one of my favorite movies of all time: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off ?

Let me tell you how many hours of frustration Chris Pearson’s THESIS THEME has cleared from MY typical workweek…

A Day in the Life of THIS Web Marketing Dude

So, a typical Day in a Web marketing dude’s life… Me or my customer slips that bad boy VISA card out, then we log onto BlueHost where we grab a hosting account, buy or transfer a domain onto the blank canvas and then purchase and install THESIS!  WOO HOO! That just shaved DAYS of coding and frustration from my week…

• THESIS saves me TIME.
• THESIS therefore saves my clients MONEY.
• Period.
• THESIS ROCKS!
• This review is done!

Okay… okay… Just kidding. Obviously, you have poked around the Internet and you are really getting excited about maybe getting THESIS for yourself and you need some more red meat. Alright! Let’s look at Thesis a little more.  I just know that this post is going to burn up my whole Sunday…

Considering a Premium Theme like THESIS?

First of all, let me say that I have used numerous FREE themes and have purchased so-called Premium Themes for amounts as low as $17, and a few that came really close to $300.00 EACH for past projects. No matter the cost, low or HIGH, I almost ALWAYS felt cheated!  I felt cheated because there were lots of things these OTHER THEMES just did not do. The restrictions were numerous and all over the landscape.

• I often could not control the placement of simple icons, banners, social media links,
• I spent hours attempting to place simple banners on the header, footer or sidebars,
• I would have inexplicable formatting conflicts with Nav Menu customization,
• SEO was iffy, or non-existent and I’d have to load up All in One SEO Pack,
• Insertion of other than YouTube videos was risky business,

At the end of most projects using many themes,  I just wasn’t a satisfied, Happy Camper!

Then, I went and did it! – I purchased THESIS…

Yup… I jumped on that BIG, moving THESIS BUS!  Sure, I jumped on late, but I am so glad that I did. If my doctor was to prescribe the perfect Rx for me, it would have been the Thesis Theme. It’s easy to use, it’s a very clean and sanitary design, it can be set up minimalistic or totally PIMPED OUT with affiliate Ads and Banners oozing from all possible placements (or hooks).

The customization options are numerous, the control over the Look and Feel is simple enough for most end users to learn, and the SEO is coded well enough that no additional coding or 3rd party plugins are needed except for extreme SEO cliff jumpers.

Thesis costs $87 for a personal license or $164 for a developers license.  By splurging on the developers license, you can use Thesis on as many blogs as you own, and there is a reduced rate for those sites not owned by you that you service.

While I have not purchased nor deployed every possible Premium Theme that is available, for me, THESIS is the best “out of the box” WordPress Theme I’ve ever come across, installed, deployed or heard about.

The THESIS Community

When you hit your head against what appears to be a THESIS Brick Wall, don’t PANIC!  Be comforted that there is a huge THESIS COMMUNITY of bloggers, developers (like me), and DIY Thesis Forum members who will help fellow Thesis Users blast a hole through that brick wall without too much time wasted in a search for a specific solution. At the THESIS User Forum there are plenty of answers to your occasional questions. There are also some “regulars” there who are quick to lend a hand if you cannot locate the proper thread about your issue of the moment.

Customization is KING: Custom CSS

With the click of your mouse, you can tick a box that allows you to use either the default css theme or your own custom css file. Thesis allows you to pick and choose which “pages” you display instead of utilizing a code that simply displays every page.

THESIS Custom Banners and Navigation menu

Many of my WordPress / Thesis customers are having me build them their first website that they’ve ever had.  They are excited, nervous, learning new terms, sometimes setting up or re-working their business model too: having stationery and business cards printed, bank accounts opened, etc.  When I suggest they consider having a seasoned graphic artist or designer look into branding, or a website banner, sometimes it is just too much for them to deal with all at once.

Though I’m no NY or LA boutique designer, often I will take pity on some of my new business-owner clients and their feelings of being overwhelmed. So I will break out PhotoShop or Elements and  kludge together a temporary banner for them so that their site has some color and personality.

I have found that my banners will either remain there in perpetuity or might actually inspire a serious branding and design session that will result in some spectacular results. Below is one that, considering the site is for an avocation, seems to be just fine according to my client and her network in the dance world.

BELOW: For a half-hour’s work, this banner (in my mind) beats just the Thesis Navigation Menu hugging the top of my monitor with no people, no, color, no action, no inspiration…

Since the Family-Dance website is running in THESIS, after I make my 900-pixel x 300-pixel banner, placing it above the navigation menu (or anywhere else I choose) – is a simple matter of uploading the banner.jpeg, and allowing THESIS Open-Hook to insert my banner into the theme’s code without me tweaking the code! You may think that many themes are this user friendly, but that is simply not the case. When I am using Thesis (like right now writing this), well, what can I say? Life is Good…

THESIS Nav Menu Flexibility: Pages, Categories and Links!

Thesis standard functionality (out of the box) also allows us to mix and match Pages and Blog Categories and Offsite URL Links ALL together in the website’s Navigation MENU.

Is this a Big Deal? Yes… it is!

Your Home Page Navigation Menu is like the Remote Control to your entire Blog or Website. Why should you have to spend days engineering custom-code or some obscure Plug-In when Thesis just handles all the possibilities? Your Navigation MENU, the Keys-to-the-Kingdom can click effortlessly to:

• Pages of your choosing, and/or
• Blog Categories (with POSTS assigned to the categories), and/or
• Offsite URL Links

This is GOOD STUFF folks! Lately I saved a lot of heartache because Thesis allows us to assign Links tho the Menu (without it being obvious) – until you click it… The ability to seamlessly insert offsite URL Links to outside websites?  OMG! That is flexibility!

THESIS saved me - In one instant just last week, the link in menu option saved me a lot of frustration. I have a TV writer client who has two websites: one for her TV-Writing Business and one for her Dancing Avocation which she takes on the road all over America and Canada. Because she is a performer and does “gigs,” she NEEDS and DEPENDS upon a website calendar that her friends and clients also need to access when they are looking to book her for writing gigs or dancing gigs.

Rather than come up with a complicated calendar solution, or having her maintain two separate calendars (one on each website) requiring duplication of both data and all the time and effort to key the in TWICE, I simply LINKED from her Dance Website via the THESIS NAV MENU to her one and only Calendar that she maintains on her TV-Writing website!

takes you to numerous Posts (via Categories), to specific Pages (just like a static website), and one menu button (SUSAN’S CALENDAR), takes you seamlessly to another website! – See Below:

Thank you Thesis! Problem solved in 120 seconds…

THESIS Multimedia Box

A powerful part of the Thesis theme is the Multimedia Box, which you can change to rotate between pictures, embedded videos or even custom code for all those website owners that want to show advertising in that area.

Oh sure, some themes have areas set aside here and there for ad placements, but what distinguishes THESIS is that I can change what appears in the Multimedia Box on any given page (or not!)… You can have the Multimedia Box show WHERE and WHEN you choose.

In my work, I consider the THESIS Multimedia Box is a MICRO blank canvas within the BIGGER blank canvas that is ALL of the THESIS Theme. In my book, that spells: C O N T R O L …

No Coding, No Programming Skills Required!

Did I mention that all of these neat and nifty aspects of Thesis I am pointing out do not require me to poke around in the code? All this functionality can be accessed via Chris Pearson’s Thesis Control Panels:

• Site Options
• Design Options
• Page Options
• Manage Options

Then when you decide to dig deeper into THESIS, you can use the Plug-In: THESIS Open Hooks, and if you want to play Code GEEK, you can use the included Custom File Editor where you actually can tweak the code in the three most common files:

• custom.css
• layout.css, and
• custom_functions.php

Especially Good For Small Businesses

Most of my clients are small business owners and entrepreneurs who need to get their websites deployed quickly with the prospect of mantaining the site themselves, and providing new content via the CMS functionality of the WordPress + THESIS combination. As I write this THESIS review I am reminded just how valuable this combination.  All Small Businesses should consider the THESIS Theme.

Closing Thought

Last week I was upgraded from Thesis 1.6 to Thesis 1.7. Wow! There’s lots of NEW and GOOD STUFF in this upgrade.  I am really  looking forward to the 2.0 version.

Remember... When you buy your copy of Thesis for $87 you get FREE Upgrades For Life. Not too shabby!