Comments on: Why the Thesis theme stinks

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 22:41:23 +0000

What exactly crashed with Atahualpa? Might be fixable…

I’m not saying Thesis is a terrible theme, but the marketing they do is pretty hyped, and BS in my opinion. There’s no way it can just “do” SEO, and it’s certainly not easy to customize. If it were, everyone who uses it might have different designs. But they don’t. Good luck on your search for a new theme.

By: Donna

Donna — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 22:04:40 +0000

Thanks for this article. I’m using Atahualpa right now and something just crashed. I was seriously considering purchasing Thesis until I read this post. Going to do some more research first now. I’ve been blogging for almost 3 years and I’ve heard a lot of negativity about Thesis, but I also know a lot of the big bloggers use it. I’m just not sure yet so I think I’ll keep looking around. Thanks a bunch for your opinion.

By: rakesh kumar

rakesh kumar — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 17:42:48 +0000

Some how you are right, thesis is a framework and it needs a lots of customization, if you want to run it according to you needs, when ever we add codes to customize it, it does not loads as fast as it claims. so i stop working with thesis and developed a new theme which is much more faster when loaded and this now support a lots of things.

One more point it does not support 100% valid css and xhtml. if i am anywhere wrong. please correct me

By: Kristy

Kristy — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 20:52:22 +0000

Thanks for the heads up.. I’ve been reading their marketing material and wondering what makes it so hot and although I couldn’t put my finger on it, I have to admit I was slowly getting sucked into their sales pitch. Good to have been able to read the experience of others and side step it.

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 18:30:11 +0000

Hi Valerie,

I agree it’s not garbage, but feel they market the theme under a lot of false promises. As you said, it’s not easy to customize without sufficient knowledge of hooks and functions. I’ve heard a lot of great things about the headway theme though, and will have to check it out more thoroughly.

By: Valerie

Valerie — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 12:28:28 +0000

Hi Mike,

I’m neither a coder or designer, just a casual blogger who wants a blog that I can make changes without contacting a web designer. I bought Thesis about two years ago and was disappointed that it did not live up to the hype for me. Since I don’t work on the back end and don’t know hooks, changes I could make were very limited.

I recently changed to Headway Themes and I am pleased. I don’t think Thesis is garbage, it just didn’t work for me.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 16:00:17 +0000

Yea, I think it’s a big misconception that its an easy theme to modify the appearance of. Just check the forums and look how many people are asking how to do something simple like replace a header image.

From a designer standpoint, I’d much rather start with a blank white canvas when creating a new site. Normally I’d choose Sandbox, but if I wanted something like Thesis, there are free options, like Thematic.

By: Sire

Sire — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 02:38:11 +0000

I originally bought Thesis because of all the hype and I admit it wasn’t what I expected of it. Imagine my surprise when I discovered I had to learn ‘hooks’ to get it to do anything half decent. Still I paid for it so I use it for my loadofbullshit.com blog rather than let the money go to waste.

I’ve found another them which I am much happier about and I use that theme on all my other blogs.

By: Adam Pieniazek

Adam Pieniazek — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 14:46:47 +0000

One of my first clients wanted to use Thesis and I already had bought a copy to see what all the hype was about. Then a couple more clients went with Thesis and I quickly became really proficient in Thesis.

Over the past few months I got a bit sick n tired of hitting various walls with Thesis…or well, not walls but cases where what I was doing would’ve been much easier in a non-Thesis theme. I started playing around with Hybrid, knowing Justin was top-notch and haven’t looked back since. Now I’ve done a few site with Hybrid and love it so much I’m recommending some of my previous Thesis clients to move on over. And so far they love it too, I’m able to give them more in a much cleaner interface without all the random Thesis stuff cluttering things up.

Anyway, in the end I think Thesis is OK for people with very small budgets who want to tinker with their design without doing any coding, but it’s not the bees knees by any means and once you have someone develop on top of Thesis you’re losing a lot of the pros of Thesis. I don’t think Thesis is total garbage, but there are better options out there for most of the market.