First thing first – I am no big fan of the Thesis WordPress theme. But that doesn’t mean I reject Thesis as one of the best themes around.
It’s been more than an year since I started using WordPress blog publishing platform and I believe it’s the best thing to have happened for the blogging world. There has been a lot of discussion happening about how ethical it is to have Premium WordPress Themes. But then, it is left to the choice of the individual to either buy the theme or look for a Free alternative.
Here is where I have problems with Thesis. Go to Google and search for ‘Thesis WordPress Theme Review‘ and go through each review article and you will find every review will have the affiliate link embedded multiple times (either cloaked or uncloaked)!
Yes! You get paid for selling Thesis WordPress theme and most of the people who review Thesis use it as a mean to make money.
Few days back Brian Clark, the co-founder of DIYThemes, published a post on his blog – “what’s the big deal about the thesis theme for WordPress anyway?” where he gave the example of all the bloggers that are using this ever so famous theme. He can surely brag about this fact that Thesis has turned out to be one of the most popular WordPress themes ever and is now $2 million business.
Mayank, who is a popular WordPress theme designer has this to say in his recent article -
… there are few things that are just over hyped with Thesis theme and then there are two famous names associated with it. Thesis theme is a very good theme, however is it good enough to be called a framework?…
He goes to say -
I recently spoke to one of my friend (I will not mention the name here), who recently purchased Thesis theme and was going bonkers over all of its positives and that how many options it gave to him. Then I showed the options page of Atahualpa theme to him and the very next moment he felt cheated.
It is not just Atahualpa theme, have a look at the options page of ISOTherm News Magazine theme which is incidentally a FREE WordPress magazine based theme.
Again, I would like to clarify that Thesis is a beautifully designed theme with clean code, good SEO and typography and has a HUGE brand value associated with it. This huge brand value is due to the efforts of Chris Pearson and Brian Clark in marketing Thesis in a way no one else had done anytime before.
Thesis might be worth every penny you pay ($87 for single user license and $164 for a developer license), since you can write your own review praising it and cloaking your affiliate links in-between and get back more than what you had paid for!
Update: Just to make it clear – I am not suggesting that the free themes mentioned above to be better than Thesis or as an alternative to Thesis. These free themes do not have everything which Thesis offer, but in individual aspects (like tweaking options, admin panel etc) they match up (or sometime better) Thesis.
Image Credits: Berchman
Must Read: 27 Stunning Yet Free Premium WordPress Magazine & News Themes
Raju PP is the founder-editor of Technically Personal, which is one of the most widely read technology blogs on the web. He holds an Engineering degree in Electronics & Communication, and has previously worked as a Technical Specialist in Banking Software domain.
SEO capabilities of Thesis are over-hyped. WordPress by itself provides good enough SEO capabilities. Any betterment of the default, can be easily done manually. Paying for a theme just for the SEO is senseless.
Very Nice Site With fast time loading and very informative provided
I’ve been a long time fan/user of Atahualpa, in fact I have it on over 14 websites currently. I was excited to see the magazine one that you mentioned, because I’m not very happy with the mag theme I’m using on other sites. Thanks so much for sharing this, I wondered what they hype was and I suspected as .much. have a great day
Hi Raju, I know this is kinda late but I’d like to thank you for including my review for the Isotherm theme. Appreciate the link love as well. More power to you and your blog!
I’ve been looking at Thesis for some time now and debating about whether or not to purchase a license. I’m happy to hear there are other sites out there that are comparable in terms of features. Like many of the others here, I’d love to hear, and see, examples of other themes.
I am not considering Thesis because of all the SEO hype though…because, the fact of the matter is, SEO isn’t a turn-key “feature”. You need to know “how to SEO” in order for SEO to work…if that makes sense. Basically, you need to know what keywords people are searching on (among other factors) to make your site search friendly.
Ian, I seriously suggest that you look at flexsqueeze. I use it on 8 out of 9 of my blogs, the other one uses Thesis. Because of the theme’s flexibility and ease of use, every blog has a unique appearance.
I tried purchasing Thesis and had a total nightmare. Payment didn’t get processed, there were no support email addresses published, getting anybody to respond took days.
In the end I purchased Headway and am glad I did. Between Headway (look, no affiliate link) and Atahualpa I can do everything I need to do.
You are completely off base about Thesis. Sorry, but it’s true. It’s not just the panel that is great about Thesis. It is a professionally made theme that continually strives for excellence and can effectively bring you to page one rankings even if you are just a beginner in SEO and keywords. I have 2 sites that have free themes and 10 that are thesis. All of my thesis themes enjoy excellent traffic and page rankings for certain keyword phrases.
@Robinana,
You are completely free to disagree with me but SEO aspect of Thesis is way too much hyped. With a bare minimum knowledge about Title and header structures ANYONE can convert their theme to be SEO friendly. My current theme is not Thesis and it is as much SEO friendly as Thesis (if not more)
Hi,
I too was, in fact, am still planning to buy Thesis Theme. And frankly speaking my decision to buy is solely based on the reviews i have read. However, personally speaking lately my thought, of buying it, have started to wander. The reason being
1. Cost (I consider it to be too high)
2. No trial
Also, as Raju said above in the comments, wordpress is itself search engine optimized. I dont think spending 80 $ ( approx. 3200 Rs. ) is a good decision !
I purchased thesis theme recently and I am very happy with it. As well, the MAIN selling point is man the customer service is awesome. Every question I have had has been answered very quickly. I still have a new blog and I am still learning things but I will get there and with help
I havenot used thesis theme , while browsing a found a theme called themematic and like thesis it is also a frame work does this 2 theme have any similarity ?
Awesomeness, I was about to buy Thesis utlil I read your post and knew about Atahualpa. Amazing it is!
Thank you
Pretty nice article Raju. ISOTherm News Magazine theme you mentioned above is simply awesome. In fact i would say that it is the best free WordPress theme i’ve ever seen.
I was just planning to buy thesis but your post changed my mind. CAn you tell me one thing is Obox-Designer Press theme is SEO Optimized as Thesis.
From a wordpress theme developers point of view, thesis isnt that great, but from a client point of view its a godsend.
I admit, I used to say Thesis is great to sell it. I made something like $500 selling this theme.
But the truth is that Thesis is not bad, but it have nothing wonderful. The Thematic theme is free and similar to Thesis.
People definitely says Thesis is great mostly for the affiliate program.
Can’t thank you enough for a post like this. I’m constantly scouring the web for beautiful, functional themes – as a marketer, not a designer – and I’ve always wondered about the marketing hype surrounding Thesis. I, too, realize that it is very good in many ways but I want the steak, not the sizzle.
It’d be much appreciated, Raju, if you could update your latest recommenations. For example, ISOTherm News IS great, and their latest PAY themes seem incredible, but I’m wondering what your latest thoughts are.
Thanks again,
Sam
@Jean,
I am glad to see your comment, now my post/views carries much more weight
@Sam,
I would love to have a relook, but it’s been a while since I analyzed WordPress themes, would do that soon
Thanks for your info about other themes that may be as feature rich as Thesis. I’m going to try the two you mentioned.
My experience with many of the free themes is this: ultimately you run into some problem or if you want to tweak it you find there is little or no documentation and it is difficult find help or support. You really have to be a hacker (I’m not) to tweak wordpress and/or the themes. If a theme is not regular updated, it eventually breaks and with these free themes…the publishers often quit…and then you’re stuck…unless you are a geek.
I like free but free usually has its own price.
With Thesis, I’ve found there is a large community of users and it is easy to get answers to questions, how to’s or problems. There is ever more documentation and the product gets regularly updated.
For those who can afford and can not afford thesis, there is a free alternative theme ( SWIFT ) for thesis.It’s actually better than thesis
http://swiftthemes.com/2010/01/wordpress-themes/swift-version-5-0-is-now-available/
Completely agree with the article, I have been using the theme Atahualpa and it has so many customization options ( Roughly around 250) , after I started using the Atahualpa theme , I have seen huge boost in my traffic from search engines.
well isotherm might be great. I dont know since their site is so slow I grew old and died before I could find out.
Ken
Thanks for this but i personally like thesis theme a lot and recently bought the latest version of this theme and i’m currently happy with the performance of this theme
Why don’t you have a Thesis affiliate link in your article? I think you would still make money through it
I have just made my decision which theme to use and since I want others to make their decisions freely I am not going to tell you what I have decided to get. But I will tell you what helped me to decide.
I have checked several sites with the W3C’s CSS validator (http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/). If you believe that clean code will help you with compatibility, performance, and SEO, then I suggest you do the same test.
I am never gonna spend money on premium themes when you have hell lot of themes available for free which any given day beat the layout and features of a premium themes.
Great post, I was curious about some of the features of thesis and this pretty much answers all my questions. The amount of comments reenforces your article which is awesome. Going to be checking out Atahualpa and Thematic now. Thanks.
I was infact planning to buy a thesis theme for my site Raju, but Atahualpa looks promising