Thesis 1.4.x for Wordpress

There is no such thing as a “perfect” theme for Wordpress. Each of the thousands of themes available for Wordpress are designed to express individual personality, preferences and purpose of a blog.

During more than five years of blogging, I used Typepad in the first year when I didn’t know anything about blog platforms and found the service to be … well, AWFUL, with no tech support. Since then, I have used and loved Wordpress, and have worked with themes created by several developers. I prefer Solostream (Click here to view more details) and, more recently, Thesis (for more details, check the box in the center column). 

I have described Thesis as a theme that is only limited by your own imagination, and I stand by that. Within a custom.css file, that can by easily edited using text editor, all kinds of features can be added to customize Thesis.

What bothers me is that Thesis hype seems to compete with actual performance of the theme, as far as I can determine. I say that because when I reach out for tech support on Thesis features, like “hooks,” I find the explanation incomprehensible. It’s like asking someone what time it is, and they build you a clock. There’s a lack of handy, practical examples … and I hear that complaint often from other bloggers.

Here’s an example of the explanation of “hooks” from the official Thesis support site:

WordPress provides an impressive array of hooks with which you can hook your own actions into, remove default WordPress actions therefrom, or filter the output of posts, comments, and more.

As impressive as the list is, though, they don’t allow you much in the way of modifying your theme. This is where Thesis hooks come into play. This reference should come in handy as you modify your theme.

Thesis Hooks

thesis_hook_before_html
Just after the opening body tag, before anything else.
thesis_hook_after_html
Just before the closing body tag, after everything else.
thesis_hook_before_header
Just before the block which usually contains the site name & tagline.

HUH?! I have no idea what they are trying to say … because I just asked for the time … I just wanted a simple explanation of a hook. What’s missing is that they built a clock. The Thesis folks did not answer the question I asked but rather jumped several steps ahead.

Another example – In the latest build of Thesis 1.4.x (because there may be a new version as I write), there is a really cool feature to show Feature story and Teasers for other stories. Again, you can see it on this blog. Great feature, BUT the Thesis folks also promote adding Thumbnail images to the Teasers or Highlighted stories. That works but the process is time-consuming, convoluted and primitive, involving re-uploading pictures already on the site, and then cut and pasting. It’s a far-cry from automatic, as I interpreted from all the hype.

Despite this, if you are comfortable working with code, and are looking for a scalable theme for Wordpress, Thesis is my recommendation. Just be mindful of all the hype. So, straight-talk … I like Thesis, a lot; I just wish the support included more practical, easy to understand examples.

If, on the other hand, you want a nice theme that works right off the shelf, go with Solostream (Click here to view more details).