11 Bold and Beautiful Thesis Sites

11 bold and beautiful Thesis sites to inspire your creative bone. Each site listed has unique customizations or designs. You can get the same results by taking a peek at their CSS with the Firefox addon Firebug.

Hover and click on the images to visit these sites.

A Nun’s Life

• A great example of a static home page (separate home page that doesn’t change or get updated when new posts are published).
• The blog pages carry on the home page design with the additional of the navigation and sidebar you would expect to see on a blog.
• Lots of extra bells and whistles such as twitter feeds, discussion widgets and video embeds.
• Great use of colors and illustrations – creating a friendly, happy but professional site for the unlikely subject matter of being a nun.

Noelle and Benito

• This couple’s site has several unique pages including the static home page.
• They follow the golden rule of maintaining a common feel throughout the site so the visitor doesn’t think they have left/jumped to another site after clicking a link.
• A few animated gifs and effective hover features for images and other calls to action. Visit and discover what changes when you hover over links and images. Things really do come alive.
• There is humour, lots of it, and a spooky vintage feel to this themed wedding-planner personal website.
• My favourite feature is the navigation – flags – on the home page.

Raffle Dog

• This site uses a transparency effect on the container so the sidebar and nav menu appear to float in the sky.
• Unique logo and header image are also transparent gifs for a consistent feel.
• The design is professional, sharp, yet smooth with all the elements blending in together.
• The footer is unique and sits well at the base of the site – a beach, waves and van.

Eugene Oregon

• Despite having a lot of images and a feature image slider on the front page, this site loads super fast.
• It has a unique background image, header, logo and navigational elements. It blends all of these together with an effective colour scheme that relates well to its subject matter – a winery.
• The content box blends well into the footer – a winery with blue sky with a gradient finish to off-white.
• It has pages that have their own sub-nav tabbed content boxes – very special indeed.

Peko Peko

• A simple but fantastic example of a static home page.
• The vertical nav menu (internal page links) float between the logo and a site with a relevant background image.
• Internal pages carry-on the design with more beautiful background images.
• My favourite page is the About page. It uses a right-hand content column and right-aligned headline with a simple quote in the left-hand sidebar.

Bad Change

• This site is bright and bold. The kick-ass header instantly grabs your attention and keeps visitors beyond the first 3 seconds by getting them to read the bumper stickers.
• Once intrigued by the graphics it’s only natural to scroll down to see the rest of the site and start reading the teasers.
• The teasers are one to a line with a left-aligned large thumbnail and customized download buttons – to get the bumper sticker designs to print yourself.
• Not much content here but the large donate button in the top of the right sidebar is sure to get some use.
• The feature box is used above the content column to provide additional webcopy and instructions.

365 Things to do in Silicon Valley

• I love the contrast between the beautiful background image of a night sky and the soft beige two-tone content box and sidebar.
• The logo stands out really well in the header and is repeated in the sidebar.
• I would like to see some additional links in the nav menu ‘above the fold’. Currently, if you don’t scroll down to see the many categories in the sidebar, you are left to think that the site only has a post or two and visitors may leave before realising that the site has a lot more to offer.
• The site started on 26 February 2010 with #1 (things to do in Silicon Valley) and as at 12 September 2010 it is up to #207.
  • Query: I wonder what will happen when the site hits #365? At this rate the site will peak (or stop publishing new posts?) in about April 2011.
  • Suggestion 1: Perhaps they could start a blog category with posts about each of the things mentioned. For example, the Art and Wine Festival of Sep 2010, followed by the festival in 2011, etc.
  • Suggestion 2: Itould be a great way to elicit advertising for each event if each page is keyword optimised and ranks well in the search engines.

Estes

• Fantastic use of CSS. The right-hand content area is styled using css rather than a large background image. The right column styling fits the content – no matter how many or few words or text are entered. The left hand sidebar is also styled with css.
• If you aren’t using Firefox yet – and you want to DIY or teach yourself how to tweak your css in your Thesis theme to get amazing results – get it now.
• The firefox browser has one of the most useful addons called ‘firebug‘ that lets you peak at the css and html for any element on a page. You can copy it and tweak it for your own site.
• Afterall, there are only so many ways to achieve an effect with css – it can’t be copyrighted. The images can though – so be careful. Use firebug for inspiration and learning – not just swipping people’s talented coding.

Levys

• This site has a transparent container to allow the background colour (light blue) to peep through between elements such as the content box and sidebar widgets.
• The unique header blends in well with the nav menu and the logo uses a similar blue to that of the sidebar accent colour.
• Custom category headlines (archive pages) are accompanied by a logo thumbnail. Teasers display large thumbnails (about 290px by 185 px).
• A slider widget appears at the top of the right-hand sidebar – instead of the usual spot of above the content. This site maxmises the space ‘above the fold’.

Shannon Albert

• This site uses green really well – different shades in the nav menu, for links and as a background color on link hover.
• It has a double layer nav menu that displays feature images depending on what nav item is hovered over. (Go and have a play).
• A coloured sidebar, silouhette trees of different shapes throughout the site and an extra-long footer make this site unique.
• Transparent image links are used well in the sidebar for sidebar headings.
• The Thesis Theme affiliate link promotional box has also been customized – taking on the sites colours away from the standard yellow.

Boho Look

• This site has only a few customizations but they are beautiful.
• It is a living example that a just a few changes – such as a unique header, custom headline colours and sidebar header backgrounds – can transform the Thesis default to a work of art.
• The sharp contrast between black and white mixed with colourful images is very eye catching. There is plenty of space to read the clearly displayed text. The black border to images is a nice touch.
• The unique bullet image (used in the sidebar) is repeated as a favicon – highly recommended.

Baalin

• Another green site with touches of blue, yellow and orange. This colour combination works well. If you are interested in a green colour scheme, check out the hover over effect of the nav menu – especially under “Services” to see all three colours together.
• This site uses an image rotator below the header to display relevant images for each nav menu item – each image using a transparent background to change seamlessly between page loads.
• Transparent sidebar and content header backgrounds let the beautiful background image peek through.