I said I’d mention the technology. Well for those that really care, this site is built within (or on) the excellent blog and CMS platform called WordPress.
Couple this with a great theme you have winning combination. For me the theme is not so much the look and feel, there are hundreds if not thousands out there, many free and many commercial; but the way it enhances and extends the functionality of WordPress itself.
This site, at the time of writing, is the basic out of the box Thesis theme by Chris Pearson. Simple, clean and functional. Thesis has a heap of layout possibilities, colour and font adjustment available just from its own control panel, without knowing a stitch of html or css. Thesis is a commercial theme but worth every cent and I’ll tell you why I think so later.
Because most of my clients are not after a blog (at the beginning) – I often set their sites up with the main focus on the static pages and utilise the blog posts as latest news or testimonials. Changing the site to a blog, if required, is then just a simple progression.
The beauty of using WordPress as the basis of a website is the multitude of plugins that can extend and embellish and make it even more useful. These include photo galleries, lightbox functionality, subscribers, mailing lists, RSS feeds, e-commerce and social networking interaction etc. You can write your own plugins if coding’s your thing. The possibilities are endless.
Quickly, Thesis as a theme does a couple of things that I haven’t seen in other themes, (not that I’ve used a lot).
- It’s simple, neat, usable and very configurable straight out of the box.
- Its extends the ability to easily customise your WordPress site a heap.
- It is itself easily customised.
- All of those customisations are stored in custom functions which ‘hook’ into the theme and in custom style sheets. You don’t touch the theme files themselves at all.
- These customisations and associated image files live in a folder named, you guessed it, “custom”. So, when the theme is upgraded, you just grab the “custom” folder and drop it into the new versions folder. Viola! 5 minutes NOT 5 hours.
So that’s the basis for most of the sites I’ve developed for clients over nearly the last year or so.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
The only thing you don’t mention about Thesis (which I agree is a good functional theme) is that it’s not GPL, and is in violation of the WordPress GPL license. If Thesis were GPL, it would be worth every cent.
http://wordpress.org/development/2009/07/themes-are-gpl-too/
Thanks for the comment Jane;
I didn’t mention it because I didn’t realise. I guess I could be forgiven for assuming, when such handy theme, well supported and with a great following, fits the bill so nicely. So where does the buck stop? From a layman’s (legal) point of view, and after following a few threads this morning I’m only more confused.
Where do people stand that have used a non-GPL-compliant theme, I would assume there are many, many more out there?
Tim, Jane works for Automattic, and her remarks about the GPL are completely and wholly false. There is no true “legal” issue at stake here, and no judge has ever ruled that Thesis is in violation of anything (because it is decidedly not).
I am dedicated to writing software that makes the web easier and more accessible for everyone, and in theory, WordPress’ mission is identical. Why they feel the need to troll good people’s sites and stir up trouble based on their cultish ideals is beyond me.
Thanks Chris, for the feedback.
I have a fair investment of time spent understanding the way Thesis works so that I can produce sites that achieve my clients goals. I’ve always (more than 10years) been attracted to the idea of open-source and using open-source, even if (sometimes) it isn’t as slick and glossy as the closed offerings. But legal debate is a real turn off, no matter where you strike it.
As for the flavours of open-source and whether ‘this is allowed’ or ‘that is technically incorrect’, spare me! Making a guinea pig hutch this weekend for my kids is much more attractive (and important).
I’ve always been happy to pay my way and often donate to plugin developers for their efforts because it’s worth it to me. Many people don’t , but I, like you (At least from the point of view of getting people and businesses online that otherwise wouldn’t be) Plenty of people end up discouraged because they got a professional developer to build a site that is attractive but otherwise static, unmanageable, ineffective and/or one that might’ve cost many times as much as it need.
I like Thesis and what I can do with it, thanks and cheers!