Thesis Made Easy

I'm a big fan of the Thesis theme for WordPress. I use it on the School of Podcasting, Logical Weight Loss, Jillian Michaels Podcast (and will be implementing here soon). However, when I found the Builder theme I thought I had found a Thesis killer. It is very flexible. I found (and still find) that the whole “hook” and “Filters” world of Thesis a bit confusing.

I am getting ready to start a new Podcast called Feeding my Faith, and I had to decide which theme to use. I originally designed my own using Artisteer, but I wanted a little more pizzazz. When I logged into my account at diythemes.com (makers of Thesis) I realized I was much further out of date (version 1.2) on thesis (Currently 1.8).

When I installed the latest update I found more features, and a new Users Guide. When I went to use the new feature of adding your own header it didn't work. It turns out that my WordPress install went a little bizarre (thanks to my tech support at Host Gator I was up and running in about 6 minutes – no .htaccess file – weird).

I will admit I was somewhat disappointed as I head to learn a new way of editing. Then I found the Thesis Open Hook plugin. This makes all of those items like changing the footer, etc that used to be a snap (but now were frustrating) back to being a snap. Woo – hoo!

The open hook plugin lets you customize and add content before and after just about anything. You could make a post of (for example) icons for social media (twitter, facebook, linked in, etc) and switch to the html mode and copys that code. then paste that into the “before post” section and your icons will appear before evey post. Want to ask for support? Add it to the “After post” and it magically appears after every post. This is great for those with advertisers. You can put the advertisement in one spot and populate your entire blog. Then when a new advertiser comes along, you change the “hook” and BOOM your entire web is updated.

Then I intalled it on this webiste. I ended up with an error “You do not have sufficient permissions to access this page.” I googled it. I had a few thigns to try and none of them worked. Huh? A problem that google can't solve. I headed over to the support area of dithemes.com and I had a solution (that involved some deep diving into the WordPress table – not a thesis issue). I was up and running thanks to a very knowledgeable, very helpful Thesis comunity.

If you're really looking to know Thesis inside and out you can check out the Build Your Own Website memberhsip site which has 60 Free videos and 340 Premium videos ($95 for 6 months).