WordPress Thesis theme review – unbiased why to use and why not to

I have been using thesis theme for wordpress for quite a while now, serves it’s purpose very well probably, but honesty speaking, NOT satisfied . . . (this is not in favor or anti thesis review – just my point of view about the theme)

I was going through various site’s giving thesis reviews and almost all of them were declaring it as the most powerful theme ever created on the planet! No doubt it is some efficient coded piece of work, but definitely not the perfect.

Here are a few points regarding the thesis theme for wordpress after which I’ll list out the reasons why to use thesis and then why not to:

You can create as many child themes / skins as you want for thesis framework

They say, if you know programming, you can create as many skins or child themes to thesis framework as you want. Wait! what did you just say? OH! don’t you think if some one knew enough programming, he wouldn’t need to buy the theme in the first place. And instead of creating child themes/skins for his wordpress blog, why not create the main theme of his choice? a clean and less server intense one?

You can do whatever you want with thesis them – if you knew what you’re doing

Very rightly said, but, can’t you do whatever you do with only wordpress or any theme out there “if you knew what you’re doing” so this one is really not compelling one for me atleast!

You don’t need many extra plugins – most needed seo and other plugins are in theme itself

we don’t need to have “free” plugins, rather we can pay some dollars to have it inside the theme? hmmm . . . which we can’t uninstall and delete when we want? and have to let it use the resources of our server all the time? Oh wait! you can remove them if you don’t need them, IF you knew programming . . . right?

you can move theme functions / plugins data to compatible theme frameworks

what if I don’t want to shift to a compatible theme? what if I code my own one now and use it? how do I import my custom meta and other data to it? I lose it ofcourse! contrary to that, if I use plugin, it don’t matter which theme I use, the data is always same.

So now we move on to why to use and why not to.

Why and when to use thesis theme for WordPress

Thesis is really a good framework and theme for some situation! so here we list out some situations which I can think of right now for which the theme is pretty much useful

  1. It is clean and decent looking – yes it is! and that’s the reason I started using it on my blog too along with the next one
  2. It is stated to have ultimate seo for wordpress blogs – still looking for this topic, so stay tuned if it really is or not, but it is good seo atleast
  3. alot of built-in functions – if you plan to use thesis for a long period of time, or probably forever, you can simply use alot of good features pre-incorporated in the theme framework
  4. child themes / skins – you can change your theme’s looks without changing any of the content or theme main data by just creating custom skins for your thesis framework.
  5. It’s popular – well it’s becoming popular, so if someone finds you’re using thesis, they think you are very professional :p
  6. thesis hooks – hooks help alot in minor coding and random changes stuff to heavy coding to the theme, without changing the core

Why not to use thesis theme for WordPress

I am using thesis on my blog while righting this review too, but for some reasons I always feel like changing it to something else. Those reasons plus a few others are stated below:

  1. Un-necessary php – well yes, I don’t use alot of options and code of thesis framework, and their builtin seo and other plugins, and they drive me crazy sometimes, I seriously want to reduce the load time of my pages and want to have a minimum code not only on front end, but also to be processed by the server. It seriously makes me feel that my server response time is slower than a clean theme
  2. hard to customize – not only we have to learn the hooks and frame work to start customizing it, but like, if I urgently want to modify something in the theme due to any reason, I can’t do it from the theme admin panel directly, I have to login to the control panel of my server or use ftp and then edit files, and it seriously sucks (and it needs knowledge of the framework and hooks too)
  3. errors , bugs and missing features – well there are a few which I have come along atleast!
  4. Not free – ya it sucks :D

I am not including links to any alternate theme or to affiliate with this review, because it isn’t meant for that purpose.

However, while writing this review, I just remembered I was planning to give away a theme with similar design and minimum coding (php) a few months ago but forgot it! I hope I can do it soon and give away for a few . . . prayers and thanks – and donations :p

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