There are no affiliate links here. Thesis Ain’t Perfect, but if you ain’t making $1,000 a day, you can use it to do so.
I was an early adopter to the Thesisphere last year. I bought the developer’s license thing in May or June of 2008, and deployed it on my sites. (Here, http://guerrilla.me, http://ftherapybook.com, And–right now–it’s the easiest way to make money for yourself on the Internet. I’ll get to that in just a second. The design framework comes from Chris Pearson, who is responsible for some of the very best themes in the WPress-o-sphere. (Cutline, PressRow). He partnered up with Copyblogger’s Brian Clark to shill this thing, and it’s ubiquitous. If you read blogs, you have come across Thesis.
The Thesis Theme For Wordpress Is For The lazy sales guy.
I’m not yet perfect, but look, if you can’t sell thesis sites, then give up on selling anything. I can make sites that look like mine, or that look like Bakingasametaphor.com I can put stuff anywhere I want it, and with 1.5, I can make any width I think looks good….without limitations that are preset. Thesis creates css code for me.
My workflow is simple. I follow keywords on twitter. (Blog redesign, fix my blog, many others that I ain’t sayin’). I call ‘em up (if they have anything in their profile) and tell them my team can whip out a blog in a day, and it costs, $1,000 bucks. You’ll have a little work in it, you make videos on http://screencast-o-matic.com to tell ‘em how to work it, and you’ll be coming in chepaer than anyone else, delivering a better experience, and you’ll pocket 800-1k per.
I send out a paypal link, I do a brief, recorded design interview. I have someone cool like Kasey Kelly bang out a design for them. I install WP on their server or mine with whatever plugins it needs, and give ‘em access to it. The whole thing can be in and out in a day, and clients are happy with the results. It’s cheaper for them. It’s FAST, and it’s GOOD. And since I’ve made a ton of WordPress how tos, it’s easy to support. Brian and Chris get $40 per deplpoyment. I pay $100-200 in design, and that cost is trending down because I’m building a library of cool friggin’ looks.
A client can have a killer blog in a day and a half that doesn’t HAVE to look like other blogs. And then we retain the desing shells, the custom.css theme to deploy in other colors elsewhere. At the end of the day, I’m the one that delivered a killer, custom blog in a day for just a grand…not some jackass that sold them a crappy website that is fixed.
The Thesis Theme For WordPress Is Flexible & The Support Kicks Ass.
Look at all these thesis blogs. Couple hundo per deployment because it’s one custom.css file. They don’t have to look very much alike at all.
The support? I generally haven’t needed much, and what I’ve needed is in the forums on their website, or I can, since I’m lazy, @pearsonified on twitter. The forums have stuff–and another semiscocial community space to waste time with random bragging (my random bragging goes here on the blog).
The Bad Stuff
Keith Baker had gotten me used to using Headspace2, and headspace2 doesn’t seem to work with Thesis, not right, at least. I also have to, from time to time, edit and modify code a little bit for this plugin or that thing. And, there seem to be upgrades about 3 times a week, so you may have to upgrade more than you like (although, in fairness, You also need to, once you buy a developers license, pay $40/pop to put it on someone else’s site.) Also, when you do want to legalize your licenses, their cart doesn’t let you edit quantities, so you can’t buy 10 at a time. It’s not clear to me when All-In-One SEO works and when Thesis’s stuff (SEO details and additional Style) work. It also needs to have some more clear instructions to get custom pages, and a better/saner uploader.
There are also minor peculiarities on install, and times you need to save, and the normal stuff where widgets can pass code to the whole theme if you dont close an <iframe> tag or whatever. Nothing that’s not learnable by a sane person in 3-4 times and fixable easily.
If you’re SUPER lazy, you run the risk of all your blogs looking alike. That’s happening on the net and we’re a couple beats away from Thesis being a brand that people avoid (I don’t-want-a-thesis-blog). Hopefully Chris will whip out something new. Clients won’t notice, but when you lower your standards, it’s F#@%ing slippery slope.
Finally: I’d sell blogs and make cash with or without thesis. Seriously. But it’s a framework for a sales guy like me to be able to rapidly deliver a quality experience.
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I think this is one of your best, or at least one of your most relevant, posts yet…thanks Chris!
Yo Dude. Pop this in your header in place of the current title tag setup and Headspace will work with Thesis? Or were you referring to some other Headspace-Thesis glitch that’s out there?
Oops…forgot this:
We use Thesis and appreciated it’s flexibility. Also, love the support and tutorials available. Our only concern is the frequency of updates. I would prefer packaging the updates and releasing a version reflecting 5-10 updates.
Damn Right I Use Thesis!
It’s the easiest to use, delivers the best results, and is totally customizable from an SEO and Design perspective.