Thesis Theme – still one of the best premium WordPress themes
There are less than 10 premium themes that I would recommend to a blogger who is serious about the look of their website. I keep a look out and I write the occasional article on those that meet my standards.
Skins Versus Child Themes
You can get a theme that gives you the same tired look day in, day out…or you can get a WordPress framework.
Thesis is a framework – so is Genesis – and there’s quite a few others – it’s the new way of developing themes.
A framework basically lets you change the structure and design of your site quickly and easily – whenever you want, without the need to pay a web designer. If you are a designer, customizing the look of a site is even easier. You generally have lots of drop down menus and only a couple of files to modify instead of 5 years ago when you would have to modify nearly every file – sometimes more than 20…and then when the theme got updated you would have to remember what you changed where so you could do it again!
A skin is the same as a child theme – it dresses up the framework to look and act differently but uses the same base files. You can get free and premium skins and child themes. (Premium means you pay for them but they are usually maintained. I’ve written about the Pros and Cons of Free and Premium Themes.
What’s so great about Thesis?
After you buy Thesis you can customize it to make it look like anything you want. There are more than 30 skins /child themes for Thesis and amazing things are planned for the Thesis 2.0 version due to be released in about November 2011.
News & the release of Thesis 2.0
Coming soon
Other Framework Themes…like Genesis by StudioPress
Thesis and Genesis have a lot in common but then there are some big differences as well. I have recently started using Genesis for a new project so I can provide some great insights about the theme, the support and the people behind these two themes. I’ve also had some experience with quite a few other themes – free and premium. I actually wish I hadn’t spent so much money on themes so far. I won a premium theme once as well in a commenting competition – a story for later.
Articles on Thesis, Genesis and other free and premium WordPress themes
Some popular articles…
- FREE or PREMIUM WordPress Theme: What you need to know before you waste your time and money
- FREE and Premium Thesis Skins For Your Thesis Theme Site – A collection of 30 + FREE and Premium Thesis Theme skins.
- 1,000 Thesis Site Gallery Project
I am busy in the background writing more articles – I have tens if not hundreds of drafts and research.
I just need to strap myself down for a few days and publish it all. Stay tuned.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
The Thesis WordPress theme has been developed in order to be able to accommodate a location different from the native. This gives the possibility to create, thanks to the editor poEdit, .mo and .po files, by which it is possible to achieve complete localization in own language. This is great for me, for example,to have Thesis in italian language.
I still believe both thesis and genesis are both good frameworks but cannot decide which is the best.
i like thesis than genesis. i dont know which frameware is best. thanks for share some skin
i really enjoyed reading your article about FREE and Premium WordPress Themes and Skins. Thanks for the information and friendship greetings from Indonesia.
I love the Thesis theme. I used it to design a website for my room mate’s maid service. I think that it turned out pretty nice. The site performs very well for her and has helped bring in a lot of new business. Setup was a breeze.