How Much Does Technical Support & Coding Expertise Cost?
Most of us experience times where we just can’t understand a tutorial, or our attempt at tweaking the code just does not 
work!
If you need help for your Thesis Theme or WordPress, don’t pay for it until you have exhausted the following 2 FREE places for help.
1. Thesis Theme Forum
Help at Thesis Forum is free. You simply post your question or questions and wait for an answer. If somebody has a code solution, you are welcome to copy and paste and see how it goes.
To get the most out of the Thesis Forum, follow these guidelines…
Read through the Thesis Theme Forum FAQs section so you understand how to get the most out of this wonderful free resource.
When you do post a query in the Forum, don’t forget to always include a link to your site. It is very difficult to understand some queries without seeing the site.
- Some of the quickest and most effective solutions are best found by looking into the code behind your pages using various FireFox plugins, simply right clicking to see code or trying to “break your site” by visiting and searching for something to see a particular error message.
If you can’t find a solution to your problem at the Thesis Forum and you would like to explore the option of getting somebody who really knows what they’re doing – to fix it for you – maybe the new WordPress HelpCenter can help.
Read Your Dashboard & Keep Up With The News
I read my dashboard today – something I do occasionally – and checked out some of the links. One link made reference to the WordPress HelpCenter. What are they about?
New WordPress HelpCenter
According to their site …
We’re here to help. We answer your questions, install and troubleshoot plugins, change your theme colors and fonts, and generally help with any WordPress related issues. Think of us as your on-call WordPress experts.
They’re pricing is also listed…
The best part is this…
If WordPress HelpCenter can take care of your needs in under 3 minutes, the call is FREE!
While this service is wonderful for US Locals, it doesn’t help me down in Australia, so I rely heavily on the Thesis Forum or the WordPress Codex pages. So far I haven’t had the need to pay anybody a cent for assistance.
Tell Us About Your Experiences
Please share your experiences with the Thesis Theme Forum and the new WordPress HelpCenter in the comments below.
{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
I read above the Thesis Support Forum being free. No – you have to buy the theme first.
I have a question I want answered before buying because it may mean another theme is more appropriate for me. Now where can I get such questions answered? I’ve tried the Wordpress.org forums but have not had a reply.
I refuse to buy one of the most expensive themes just to ask a question to decide whether I actually want or need it.
Ian @ Feel free to ask any questions here or via the contact form.
I must have missed the contact form before, but for the benefit of anyone else with the question, I’ll ask here. I’ve seen Thesis screencasts and screenshots but none include details of the header options on the current version (v1.5).
I would like to know if I can move everything (menus, sidebar and main content etc.) down so as to give a larger (or smaller) header space? If so, can it be done in the Thesis options or must I go into the stylesheets and header.php?
Thank you.
Ian Mayman’s latest artistic creation..Ian updated his status : I have this morning loaned $200, interest free, to various people across Africa, South America and Asia and I plan to lend more so as to help others.
Ian,
There is a plugin just for Thesis called Thesis OpenHook. I’ve mentioned it a few times already in some other posts. But in essence with the checking of a couple of boxes here and there you can make your navigation bar go above or below your header. You can remove the default header. You have a window into your css style sheet that allows you to insert a header image of whatever height you would like – if you use one.
You can use an image for your header or just text, using a variety of fonts, choosing to include a tag-line or not. There are some great customized sites out there with different headers, backgrounds and mods to the top space. Check out http://thesisgallery.com/ to see what can be done with very little effort. There are only two files to modify to do anything and if you use the Thesis OpenHook plugin you don’t even need to open these files.
The Theme uses ‘hooks’ which are little windows to different parts of the theme, for example – before header, before sidebar, after footer, before html, after header and so many others. Let’s say you want to include something (as a regular feature of your blog, like an image link, badge, social bookmarklets, etc – in a particular place in your theme, you just need to paste the code (basic html or other script you get from whatever site or create yourself) and paste it into the desired location’s window.
Have a look at Thesis Hacker’s tutorial on the multimedia box and see a sample of ‘red boxes’ where he can put an element – using the Thesis OpenHook plugin.
If you would like some screenshots about a particular item or more info, just drop another comment.
Before I buy the Thesis theme, I need to find out how easy it is to do split testing on ALL of the pages (including the landing page, index.php or home.php) and elements (like header, banner ads, etc.).
On the current theme I am using, I discovered that I can only use Google Website Optimizer on all the pages except the normal landing page. For the landing page I would have to hack into the php code..which I don’t want to mess. And of course, the landing page is the most important page to test!
I was also wondering if I had 2 domain names testing the “same website” if I would have to buy the upgraded theme version.
Thanks so much for having a place to answer my question….it took me a while to find this website!
Lena @ From the Thesis Forum – an answer for you…
“Just a comment really – and why I bought this theme…..
If you’re into monetizing leads from your website, i.e. mortgages, car insurance, affiliates, and so on, and don’t want to fart around with useability and split testing, the thesis theme seems like a real easy way to do so.
What I’ve done is installed this theme on my blog (which takes a bunch of long tail search traffic). Then I turned off the code for the rotating pics and inserted my ‘money’ form; the form that converts my visitors into ‘leads’ or sales or whatever. This can all be done through the admin panel with thesis – no code hacking needed.
End result, I’ve got a pro level looking blog – with my money form on every page in the hot spot – above the fold on the right.
Yes, you can do that on a free template by hacking the code. I’ve done so in the past and it’s a pita. The price of admission for this theme was worth it just in the time I’ve saved from hacking code. And since having that conversion form in that spot is so important, I moved up to the developers version so I can use it across all my blog sites. Install, cut and paste code, and boom, a higher converting blog. Next!
If I was buying converting traffic at industry rates, the extra conversions I’ve received have paid for the cost of the template in less than a week.
So if you’re using your blog to convert using a form or an affiliate link or a button or something like that, consider how much it’s worth to have an increase in coversions, and balance that against the price of the theme.”
One more question…does the Featured Content Gallery work with the Thesis theme?
Lena @ Yes, it does. Check out http://www.serradinho.com
Hi,
I too am considering the Thesis theme but have the same question as Lena’s last.
I have a play domain name (a friends old blog he doesn’t use) where I test themes and play around to my hearts content. Then, when I am happy I move it over to my real site.
My question is, if I was to purchase the personal Thesis theme and upload it to my friends blog for tweaking (I have some grand ideas that I don’t know if they are even possible) would I be able to then transfer it to my actual blog without violating the terms?
Thank you so much in advance. I wish the forums were available before purchase.
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I can’t understand why Google would implement a nofollow attribute. They should have thought of other creative ways to pick up on comment spam. The nofollow tag eliminates incentive to share content, and the whole idea of the internet is to benefit from each other, and share ideas and information. It is a shame most blogs these days, and wikis, by default come prepackaged with the nofollow attribute. I wonder how many people actually understand the effects of a nofollow tag, or are aware of its existence.
There should be no issues with Google related to SezWho..SezWho displays the connections between blogs based on comments and commentets on demand…It does not effect the crawling of the site and as such there should be no penalties associated with it.
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About one third of my support issues go unsolved in the Thesis Forum and I have NEVER gotten any replies to any questions I have asked in the Wordprerss.Org support forum. Is there perhaps a third support alternative — as I currently need help on a Thesis header issue? I have been unable to google a resolution to date.
It seems unfair that I have paid the Thesis price financially. but can’t get assistance when needed.
Thanks for reading
I’m sorry to hear that your issues haven’t been resolved. Some parts of the Thesis Forum have been superseded by new sections for each version of Thesis. I hope it is one of these that you put a query. If not, that is disappointing.
There are a lot of great Thesis users who are very clever and willing to help with advice – both in the forum and around the web. If you post your query here I might even be able to help. If not, I will lead you to the best Thesis super user to help you.
I too have had little success with WordPress.org help.
Again, please post your query here or via the contact form and I will do everything to help you as quickly as I can.
Greetings Somone, thanks for all your help. I am most likely buying Thesis, however, just a few questions–
My site will be retail (natural candles and soaps) and I have already some good Google PR on some. Would I be able to keep the same URLs?
What have you learned in your experience about WP Ecommerce Plug In Shopping Cart with Thesis? Whatever I found online seemed to suggest that it works great with Thesis.
And last,
My home page will be a static page. Can I still set up my blog page to another, like I can currently with Wordpress? Some themes won’t let that happen.
Thank you very much,
Don
I see your site is html. A lot of your pages will be automatically generated with WordPress, e.g. site map plugin that the search engines love. You will be crawled daily most of the time if you update your blog every now and again. The urls can be the same or you may want to use a simple tweak to make the urls more SEO friendly and use permanent redirects. There are a few different ways to swap from an htmll site to WP and beyond the scope of a comment.
The WP ecommerce plugin works just fine with Thesis. There are examples found in the introduce yourself thread in the Thesis Theme forum. Thesis just gives you the ability to make the appearance whatever you want it to be. You can easily use a static page for the home page – even an html page.
There are plenty of forum instructions on changing from another theme or even from a pure html site to a wordpress site. Setting up different pages is a breeze. You can even put links to html pages in your navigation menu. All of your queries are easy peasy lemon squeezy so to speak.
My PR jumped to 4 in about 3 months with Thesis, from scratch! Cracking 5 is harder of course.
I have a client using Thesis and here is the current issue. When a post goes into Archive status it loses its formatting. If you look at the actual post you will see these three words are bold (French, revolting, little) http://www.anklebitingterrier.com/daily/your-amazing-brain-at-work/ but when you look at the archived version http://www.anklebitingterrier.com/2009/12/ the formatting has been lost. Can anyone shed some light on why this is happening and a possible solution?
Thank you very much in advance.
Archives as teasers lose their formatting unless you add an excerpt and add formatting. I use the Tiny MCE plugin so that I can copy and paste the first few lines (or something else) into my excerpt (at the bottom of the post/page editor in your post) and retain the formatting such as bold, links, etc.
Thank you very much for your quick advice. I installed the Tiny MCE Advanced plug-in which seems to do the trick like you said.
Glad I could help.
Hi Somone,
I’m trying to do some really simple things like shift the nav bar below my header, and add a Facebook and Tweetmeme… and no matter what I do, the custom_functions.php doesn’t want to know about it, nor does the custom.css
I can’t possibly be a complete idiot, can I? I’m following step-by-by the tutorials, using the Fourblogger customization tutes & codes but nothing happens. I’ve just spent an hour trawling thru other tutes and following their instructions. When I modify my custom_functions.php file in CPanel it makes my entire site go blank! If I modify it thru the wordpress custom_functions.php screen, nothing happens. I have no idea what I’m doing wrong. :(
I think I need an expert to sit down with me so I can:
1. relocate the nav bar
2. Add the social media buttons to the sidebar
3. Add Amazon affiliates
4. Preserve my sanity
If anyone would like to help -bear in mind that I live in Australia- drop me a line at rhuna9 ((-@-))gmail|dot|com
Amanda´s last blog ..Library Loot February 18-25
Hey, I just read your comment. I love the header and background design – very swish indeed. I hope you sorted things out. The file editor in the wordpress dashboard to change css and custom-functions is very temperamental. I often have to go to my cpanel and alter files there. Notepad is your best friend to copy and paste your original code so when it fails you can delete your dodgy code and replace what worked before…and then try again. Let me know if there is something still eluding you. Use the contact form and flick me an email. I’m in Canberra so time zones are alike.