Thesis WP Theme - What's with the hype?

I really didn't think I'd have to make a thread to have this question answered... but i was quite surprised that, despite searching here and google, i couldn't find any concrete facts about WHY this Thesis theme is so good!

The best i can get is that it, "OFFERS GREAT SEO BENEFITS!!"
...and that Gxogle apparently will have sex with your site if you put WP and Thesis together..

So uh, anyone that's used it... what's the big deal? What are these "uber seo benefits" that Thesis provides, which another add-on (or even I) can't?

Cheers,

chocko

I've actually been wondering about this myself.

Ok, my sites are on Thesis. The Plus Points are that there are extra options given to your Posts, like Custom Title Tag, Meta Description and Meta Tags and plus all the Thumbnail images and Post Images that you can use.

All these if you use all your keywords properly and also play around with the Thesis Options (like what caronical urls, etc, etc), your posts get to have higher rankings in Google Search Engines.

You will not really see a sharp spike in traffic unless you can blog like those Big Blogger but if you want to get noticed in the Organic Search Engine results, you have to try Thesis.

Plus its fun to customize it...

I personally like that:

- code runs fast and clean
- hooks make it easier to edit than PHP (only 3 files to mess around with, not as much editing, I haven't created a white page death as of yet (knock on wood))
- mostly looks good
- quick edits of design without having to mess with the code
- seo is really not too much different than all in one seo (in my opinion)
- 1 theme to manage across all thesis sites(ie where you insert ad manager code, etc.) instead of 1 theme per site

I'm good enough to follow directions to play around in php, not good enough to edit on my own.

I've been able to do quite a few edits in thesis, and can keep regular edits (ie ad placement, etc.) in the same spot in thesis

good tool for the right application, a bit more geared to the "enhancing the conversation" crowd than the bhw crow, however I've managed to use it for quite a few bh projects

chockomonkey said:

So uh, anyone that's used it... what's the big deal? What are these "uber seo benefits" that Thesis provides, which another add-on (or even I) can't?

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Of course you (or a plugin) can do the same things Thesis does.

Thesis just makes it a lot easier.

G-Man

Thesis actually rocks !!

The reason why I am saying this is because I have tried many wordpress themes since past 1.5 years

But the load time of my blog page with a lot of images in it has been the fastest (Almost 2 seconds) with thesis. With my all other themes, It was at least 5 seconds !!

The look is completely the same as it was earlier, but man, thesis loads the page very quickly.

I have not seen much changes in SEO through thesis though, will tell you guys once I see any improvement.

What I find interesting on thesis is the hook. You can actually add anything with the hooks.

Well crap I didn't realize that there was a version in the [GET] section, or I could have just checked it out myself.

Anyway, thanks for all the feedback. Cheers!

It's very versatile and fast loading.

Rajthepositivelife said:

Thesis actually rocks !!

The reason why I am saying this is because I have tried many wordpress themes since past 1.5 years

But the load time of my blog page with a lot of images in it has been the fastest (Almost 2 seconds) with thesis. With my all other themes, It was at least 5 seconds !!

The look is completely the same as it was earlier, but man, thesis loads the page very quickly.

I have not seen much changes in SEO through thesis though, will tell you guys once I see any improvement.

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Umm this depends entirely on the type of host your using.

I run all my wordpress sites on a lighttpd server with no other sites on it but my own. They fly because its hosted on lighttpd not apache. Big difference. Granted thesis is lighter in weight but there are many other factors involved.

So far everything talked about is pretty much the same deal you would get with any theme that isn't heavy on graphics, and an seo plugin to take care of these SEO functions.

I have used Thesis on a number of occasions for various projects since it was first introduced. I actually found it hampered my SEO efforts because I wanted to do more advanced stuff and not have to manually set my SEO options for every page that Thesis needs.

The bottom line guidelines to picking a good theme includes:

- Clean & easy to nav for users
- Lite on the graphics
- Integrates easily with other plugins

Then you just take any one of the half dozen or so SEO plugins available for free, and you have a site that will operate just as well as Thesis.

The reason people rave about it is 2/3 repeats of the sales page telling them how awesome it is and 1/3 it make things easier for them. Though you will never have anybody show you any evidence that a thesis theme has any impact on SEO ranking over another site that is similarly optimized the way I have stated above.

Don't get caught up on it.

Thesis is basically a very canned up wordpress theme for noobs that want to change colors and things without actually having to go into the .php files and the stylesheet.

It's really nothing to marvel at.

The SEO isn't that revolutionary. Just get the ALL IN ONE SEO and edit your permalinks and you are good.

Like MisterGemini said; SEO plugins are for free and can operate on any kind of theme.

But I do like that "BIGASS SAVE BUTTON" that they have in there; very comical lol

If you were to compare Thesis and the other big boy of the custom theme world Headway, Headway pisses all over Thesis and runs away with it. The visual editor on Headway puts Thesis to shame, you can see pretty much everything happening right in front of you, plus Headway is also very good for SEO.

honeyandthemoon said:

If you were to compare Thesis and the other big boy of the custom theme world Headway, Headway pisses all over Thesis and runs away with it. The visual editor on Headway puts Thesis to shame, you can see pretty much everything happening right in front of you, plus Headway is also very good for SEO.

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Wow nice find honeyandthemoon. I like what I see here as far as an easy to edit theme goes. The showcase shows a lot more variety over the Thesis brand. Their control panel looks a lot more advanced too.