Download quality Thesis skins
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From the category archives:
It’s been a little over a year now and were excited to have the amount of quality Thesis skins grow by leaps and bounds.
We have some great skins in various stages of development, but we really wanted to take a step back and ask you what you need in a skin?
This can be general such as different support options, different features etc or you can lay out your full blown idea for a skin you would love to see launched here.
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
Read MoreFor those following WordPress and Thesis on Twitter you’ve probably noticed that the fragile stand off between Thesis (DIYThemes) and Automattic ended with a verbal assault from Matt Mullenweg today (see here and here)
If you’re just being introduced to the situation basically Automattic (the company behind WordPress) doesn’t like the fact that the Thesis theme is not released with a GPL licence like WordPress. Automattic believes everything related to WordPress should be GPL’d while DIYThemes believes there is no legal reason why they have to fall in line with that theory.
I’m not going to get into choosing a GPL winner because my Law 101 course doesn’t near qualify me to chime in (hint yours doesn’t either)
However, what I will state is how this public mud flinging is only hurting the WordPress community, not strengthening it.
A corner stone of any great society is freedom – the freedom to do and say what you want as long as you don’t harm others. The best thing going for WordPress is it’s amazing secondary development community that releases free and paid themes / plugins on a regular basis and one of those products is Thesis.
Automattic from it’s actions has turned this debate into a religious crusade against Thesis. Where if you dare speak up for Thesis you are exiled from the WordPress world and may never return. This exiling has increased in recent months and innocent, good people are gunned down in the cross fire.
There in lies the hypocrisy – Automattic via it’s actions is no longer supporting freedom of choice. They are trying to control WordPress users by implementing punishments for those that don’t believe the same thing they do.
Be a good little sheep or find another flock.
Not free as in zero cost, free as in uncontrolled and unregulated. In a free market the best products rise to the top and crap will fade away. If users decided that GPL is important to them then they will pick products that are GPL, if GPL is not on their requirements list then that won’t matter to them (98% of users fall in this bracket)
Do these non-GPL products mean the end of the WordPress development community? Not at all, there will always be people that will develop for both groups, if it makes sense to do so – that’s how the free market works.
Is that so wrong? Should all non-GPL’ers be prosecuted and threatened to fall in line with a particular ideology?
I first found Thesis about a year and half ago and decided to give it a go. Before that when I wanted to start a new project I’d search the repository and various theme sites for something that fit my vision and go from there. However, in the early days I had to wade through a ton of poorly coded, out-dated themes to find ones that worked reliably.
I just wanted one solid, flexible theme that I knew I could count on to be consistently supported and would grow with me.
Now a year and half later we’ve been able to do great things with Thesis. We’ve designed some great looking Thesis sites for happy clients, we’ve released many free and paid child-skins enjoyed by thousands and we’ve had a great time doing it.
Could this all of been done with another GPL compliant framework? Probably, but I freely choose Thesis because it fit my requirements just like I freely choose WordPress. If Automattic has a problem they shouldn’t resort to publicly splitting the community but rather handle it behind the scenes and resolve it for good or get over it.
DIYThemes believes that being non-GPL is right and good for business and they should have that freedom, until the courts say different they have every legal authority to do so. They’ve built a great product and they’ve picked a license that they feel better protects their investment and makes sense for their business.
I make no apologies for supporting Thesis, if you feel the need to attack my choice because it doesn’t fit your ideology, then I’m saddened. I hate that this has grown to the point where I feel I can’t publicly support a software I love without the threat of being shunned from the WordPress community.
Thesis is great and WordPress is great, don’t base your decision on politics, choose a software that works for you and feel comfortable in knowing you made you’re choice based on your real-world needs.
At the core we are all just WordPress users trying to do what’s best for us and our clients, I wish we could all just get along.
Read MoreWith Thesis 1.7 right around the corner I’m wondering what percentage of people keep their Thesis sites up to date?
How long do you usually wait to upgrade your sites when there is a new release of Thesis?
I like to think that when code falls down and breaks its hip it radiates sound waves that are similar to a falling bomb – a haunting techno-ghost whistle that rattles the air as it plumes downwards and zigs through headwinds as it zooms towards the top of your head.
I also think it’s reasonable to believe that when code breaks it’s like an unwitting raspberry pie wrapped in a tin foil shell that’s been placed in the microwave – it’s own elemental properties will work against it and bounce those heat-producing waves right back into the magnetron’s core, causing universal culinary meltdown followed by septic shock and electrical system failure.
I guess what I’m saying is that you better have house insurance.
If you run a website or blog, house insurance comes in the form of a dedicated web developer/site master/internet guru that is well-versed in the art of super glue and duct tape as they pertain to websites.
But these people cost money, and if you just don’t have the budget this year to hire a specialist to surgically revive your code from the operating table, then guess what, it’s up to you to become your own specialist.
Sure, it can be scary to be confronted with all that code staring you in the face like a dog watches the mailman, but if you follow these tips, you’ll be well on your way to fixing your own problems.
Start with Syntax
I have lots of clients who fully understand the principle of copy and paste. So they copy code that someone wrote in a tutorial and paste it into their own file. In the perfect world, that would work fine. But in reality, doing so can cause a lot of problem.
Missing syntax is often to blame, so the first thing I do when I either have a problem of my own or get referred to one via a client is dig into the syntax. I start with the obvious: is everything in the correct format i.e. for CSS selector { property: value; }. Other things to look for include missing apostrophes or quotes, broken links and misspelled words (it happen pretty oftne).
For Thesis theme users, I see a lot of new users have trouble understanding how to write functions into their custom_functions.php file , especially since the line: add_action(‘thesis_hook_whatever’, ‘function_name’); is syntax-heavy and most users’ eyes glaze over all those apostrophes.
Now that your syntax is solid, what if your site still doesn’t show up as you’d like?
Follow Your Own Path
Take a look at your image sources and make sure that they’re all working. You should be able to copy the image source into your browser and see an full size view of your image. If that doesn’t happen, then you’ll need to correct the path.
What’s Next?
With the basics covered, if your site is still not showing up properly then it could involve a myriad of issues. You could try to toss a few emails back and forth with website fixers, but that can be and often is very time consuming. The time you’ll waste trying to determine the problem could take up to a week, and in the mean time all of your customers will be faced with an off-looking site. Yikes. If that’s not a scary thought to a web-based business then I don’t know what is. Your best bet is to…
Get Help
If you’ve gone through your syntax and carefully covered your code, you’ve probably spend a big chunk of time working on code that you could have spent more productively growing your business. There comes a point when you have to decide if it’s better to keep working on it yourself or call in a professional. When time is an issue, hire a professional who can jump in and get the job done. Sure, it will cost a bit, but you will be able to free up your time to work on your specialty – growing your business, and that is priceless.
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