There are 3 main reasons I love Thesis and why I use it for my blog;
- SEO
- Awesome Layout
- It’s constantly being optimized
I guess what originally hooked me was the fact that most of the blogs I was reading by professionals within my industry were already on the Thesis theme. You’ve got Chris Brogan (who wrote about it here), Darren Rowse (who wrote about it here), Brian Clark (who wrote about i here), Matt Cutts and more.
So now a little about what makes it so great.
Matt Cutts recently spoke at WordCamp San Francisco 2009 where he discussed WordPress’s ability to satisfy 90% of your websites SEO. WordPress itself takes care of the obvious things like pretty URLs, syndication, interlinking pages, hiding duplicate content, etc. However, one thing WordPress does not control is the layout of the theme you are using. This is where Thesis comes in and satisfies several immediate needs:
- Cleanly laid out HTML for easy indexing by search engines
- Extra fields that allow editing of header meta on a page to page basis
- Clean, easy to read typography
But if everyone had the same theme, wouldn’t that get kind of dull?
Sure, if everyone was using the same settings. Thesis comes with two new settings pages under the appearance tab of your admin panel. You can move sidebars around, change major content area, and control all your fonts across the entire site.
Now while every other theme out there may eventually become outdated, I know I’m safe with Thesis because they are consistently releasing new versions. Their unique method for customizing the theme allows for easy upgrades and a lot more control. They have even added several new wordpress hooks that developers have already begun integrating into their plugins for easy one-step setup.
But I like it for the cutting edge look and feel
This was probably the culprit for the themes instant appeal in my eyes. Out of the box, the home page of the theme allows you to display excerpts in a slick boxlike fashion. You also get a dynamic content area in your sidebar that you can change on a post to post basis, great for promoting services relevant to the content your readers are viewing. Finally, they’ve added options to your posts and pages that allow you to display images in your posts that are automatically resized for the excerpts on the home page.
I’ve never promoted a product on my blog because I feel money can dilute an honest review by making it slightly more biased in any one direction. However, with Thesis I will make an exception. Ever since I’ve started using it I’ve been able to focus a lot more on content creation and less about SEO and blog maintenance. I very much look forward to future releases and hope you can too.
Disclaimer: All links to Thesis from this blog are an affiliate link. If you purchase the theme through one of these links I will receive a percentage as commission. This is the first (and probably only) product I would ever endorse for money.