I have been working with the Thesis theme for Wordpress for almost a year now, and I am going on the record right now to say that I think it’s the best, most flexible, most customizable, most kickass theme for Wordpress around.

I use Thesis for all of my personal and business websites (and that’s a lot of websites), and I also use it to create websites for my clients, unless they’ve requested something different.

Here are the top five reasons I love Thesis

As a web designer AND web developer (I code the websites I design, and deploy them on the web), Thesis has been a powerful tool for me to use. Yes, I can code everything by hand, but I would be silly to skip using a fantastic tool just because I CAN do it by hand.

REASON NUMBER ONE: Thesis is version-upgrade-safe

I can’t tell you what an awesome, awesome thing this is, unless you have had the experience of upgrading Wordpress and breaking your theme. EVEN IF you backed up your database, your entries and categories, and your entire website – one upgrade snafu and you’re back to the drawing board. Ugh.

Not only is Thesis safe from Wordpress upgrades, it’s safe from its own upgrades. Thesis regularly comes out with new versions that include even better options, and you can upgrade without fear – because all your custom work has its own folder that isn’t overwritten by the update. It’s incredibly smart planning.

REASON NUMBER TWO: Thesis users who are non-tech-savvy can change things around

This is especially awesome for my clients, most of whom don’t need to carry around the knowledge of how to write custom CSS in their heads. If they would rather have two columns instead of one, they can do that by themselves. If they don’t like the color of the background anymore, they can change it by themselves. If they’d prefer a different body copy font, or the sidebar headings just aren’t making them feel happy, they can change all that themselves.

My clients not needing my help all the time = awesome (and less expensive for them).
My time being spent on other projects = awesome (and more productive for me).

REASON NUMBER THREE: SEO awesomeness in every copy of Thesis

Thesis comes with numerous options (which show up in your Wordpress dashboard) for configuring your meta keywords and meta description. You know, the stuff that Google sees when it looks at your website – which is the stuff that (hopefully) your target market is looking for online.

Not only that, but the way that Thesis’ native layout works is a beautiful thing, and search engines love it because it makes sense to them. They don’t see the pretty design – they see the bones of the site, and Thesis has beautiful, logical bones. (I am a huge fan of logic, which is probably an additional reason I love Thesis so much.)

REASON NUMBER FOUR: Thesis makes menu creation ridiculously fun

Normally, when you have multiple pages in your Wordpress website – but you don’t want every single page showing up in your menu navigation – it takes some time and custom php to call the right pages (or exclude the ones you don’t want).

Thesis makes this damn easy by letting you not only checkbox which pages to include in your navigation, but also letting you rename them or drag them into a different order. (Yes, I’m swearing now, because Thesis is JUST THAT AWESOME.)

REASON NUMBER FIVE: a huge Thesis user community means tons of great tutorials

Thesis has a giant forum dedicated to the installation, implementation, and customization of the Thesis theme – and even if you never post a question, you will more than likely find the solution to whatever technical problem you have.

I have used so many of the Thesis community’s tutorials for different things: that’s how I learned how to switch the navigation placement, how to widgetize the footer, and how to make custom templates that work with Thesis, for starters.

What are you waiting for? You need a copy of Thesis.

You can get a personal license or a developer’s license (you can guess which one I use, heh), depending on what you need. And if you’re a client of mine – I can include your copy in the project cost, and it’ll be cheaper that way too.

Happy coding!

One of my favorite people in the whole entire internet asked me to design his Twitter background, and also needed tweaks made to his existing Thesis design. (As if I would tell him no, haha.)

Charlie Gilkey of Productive Flourishing has a very simple yet meaningful design aesthetic, and it is translated very well into all the areas of his online life. His website sports a lovely and understated design based on Thesis, and his planners (which I love and use near-religiously) are a perfect example of something being simple, yet able to handle complication without being confusing.

(In case you can’t tell from my description, Charlie is one of those people who is very picky about what he wants, because he KNOWS what he wants – but is very zen about the process of having someone else create it for him. For me, this is the perfect kind of client to have.)

Charlie Gilkey’s Twitter background

Twitter background for @charliegilkey

Charlie uses the colors green, brown and orange to signify his personal blend of growth, change, and grounding. It’s all very organic, and it was a joy to work with vibrant colors like that. (I’m a color junkie!)

Tweaks to his existing Thesis theme

The next thing I did for Charlie was create a customized post gutter (similar to Copyblogger’s post gutter and Illuminated Mind’s post gutter), that includes related posts, bookmark and feed links, and the TweetMeme button.

post gutter @ ProductiveFlourishing.com

As you can see, it is understated, yet full of great, relevant information. This way, any of Charlie’s readers can share or save the post link, subscribe to his blog feed if they haven’t already, or keep scrolling and leave a comment. A post gutter like this invites more interactivity, without jumping into the reader’s face with lots of loud colors, spinning graphics, and sparkly purple unicorns (okay, that last one was just silly).

Oh, and that post in the screenshot? It’s the one he posted on Martin Luther King Jr. day this year, called The Change-Maker’s Creed. I recommend you give it a read, because it’s completely awesome and bears reflection.

I’ll bet you need some design work too.

If you need a Twitter background design, Wordpress work, or Thesis work – you can leave a comment here and I’ll reply. I’d love to have your business. :)

I just finished up a recent project, which was taking Martin Whitmore’s website theme and creating it all over again using Thesis.

Martin’s awesome and lovely webmistress, Megan (the Idea Blueprint Girl), hired me to recreate Martin’s theme in Thesis because, well, their Wordpress installation was from way back in the dark ages, and they were getting spammy code and horribleness as a result. If they upgraded Wordpress, it would break the theme; and if they just put in Thesis as-is, the site wouldn’t look nearly as awesome as it was supposed to.

Several days ago, Megan and I teamed up in an emergency fix-this-crap-right-now session, and I upgraded Wordpress, uploaded a shiny new copy of Thesis, and made all the custom CSS changes in less than two hours. Woo!

A few minor tweaks later, the site is all done! Now, I can’t really show you a ‘before’ picture, because it looked almost exactly like it does now. For real.

Here’s the site:

martinwhitmore.com

And if you don’t know Martin’s fantastically NSFW zombie comic stylings? You’re so completely missing out. Plus, dude, you can buy tshirts.

One of my recent clients, who was a total joy to work with, is the lovely and talented Kim Wood. She launched her new website, Unconventionalist, at the end of September this year, and I was fortunate to be her designer!

I created a new logo, and a website design based on Thesis:

A spiffy Twitter background:

And fantastic double-sided business cards:

Kim lives in a totally different time zone than I do, but we were able to communicate very effectively through email for the entire process. You should visit her website and find out how to manage your business without losing your soul.