The other day, Chris Pearson kindly upgraded my site to WordPress 2.7. I asked him to do so because I wasn’t sure if his customized Thesis theme had any weird hooks, and partly because I had a bad experience moving from WP 2.6.3 to 2.6.5 earlier in 2008. Well let me tell you, this time, everything worked like a charm, and I’m so happy.
The new dashboard design is so publisher friendly. I love the look and feel of it, especially the drag-and-reorder feature that lets me put things where I want them to be. I love the automatic plugin upgrades (one push install-and-upgrades of most plugins) that have been around for a while, but seem to work better in 2.7 (is that just me?).
I like how everything tucks nicely into the dashboard, so that if I’m looking to work within the plugins, those features unfurl, and when I’m looking to tweak my design, that box opens. It’s very simple, and makes it even more user friendly for bloggers.
It feels at once like everything in WordPress 2.7 is optional, and yet, I don’t feel like I have a huge menu of choices to go through. Simplicity at the top and complexity underneath, if that makes sense.
Thesis and WordPress 2.7
I’m a proud advocate for Thesis, the custom WordPress system and theme designed by Chris Pearson. (I wrote about my love for Thesis already.) I’m even more thrilled to have it for the WordPress 2.7 upgrade because I feel it ties the platform together even more solidly.
Thesis costs $87 USD, and I find it completely worth it. When I was researching what theme to put on my site next, I new that I’d spring for a premium theme (And the reason why is that it gives the site a little bit more distinction when coming to it), so I evaluated a lot of them. Another that I liked was Revolution, and I think it’s a nice looking theme.
What sold me on Thesis as the premium WordPress theme for me was that it’s got a lot more integration parts. Here are a few pictures to explain that better:
You can see how the design elements are tucked in nicely, and that they’re easy to work with, and in plain English. That’s probably one of the reasons why I push the theme so much. It’s just so powerful, so customizable, and so simple, all wrapped into one.
The Power of Publish Later
Other Resources
If you’re already a Thesis user, be sure to check out SugarRae.com. Her Thesis tutorials are just awesome. I learn something new every time.
ProBlogDesign has 10 Things to Do After Installing WordPress
Want to see another site dressed in Thesis? Here’s Catskill Cottage Seed.
One little trick: people ask me how I seem to post all the time and many times a day. I don’t always write all my posts when they come out. I use the publish later button quite often. Never noticed it? It’s here:
Your Ideas
What do you think? Are you on 2.7 already? What have you found about it? If you’re not using WordPress, what do you want to know about it, or what do you like about your platform that you don’t think exists here?
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ChrisBrogan.com runs on the Thesis Theme for WordPress
Thesis is the search engine optimized WordPress theme of choice for serious online publishers. If you’re a blogger who doesn’t understand a lot of PHP, Thesis will give a ton of functionality without having to alter any code. For the advanced, Thesis has incredible customization possibilities via Thesis hooks.
With so many design options, you can use the template over and over and never have it look like the same site. The theme is robust and flexible enough not only to accommodate a site like ChrisBrogan.com, but also to enable the site to run far more efficiently than it ever has before.
- Go on a guided video tour of Thesis and see the amazing things you can do with this theme! Seriously, you’ll love it.
- Check out the Thesis demo site
- See more Thesis-based sites in the gallery showcase
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