Well I’ve just past the 24 hour mark using the Thesis Framework here on my blog. As you can see I really haven’t done a huge amount of customization at this point, this was due to some custom.css problems I was having, however I have made a few little custom.css entries to change up the the body text, link colour, heading colours, etc.

I mentioned I had a custom.css error, well basically when I set the permissions of the /custom directory something didn’t take correctly and after hours and hours of frustration trying to ‘hack the css’ I tracked back through the entire installation process and worked out where the problem was. Soon as the problem was rectified everything worked straight away.

So what do I think? Thesis is pretty awesome. Straight out of the box, the layout and design options in the WordPress Appearance menu are pretty fantastic. There’s so many different options on how to layout the theme, how your website will handle search bots, how your posts are viewed, how your images are included in posts, and a myriad of other options. The possibilities are pretty well endless…..and this is before you even look at the custom.css.

Thesis resources are a plenty! One of the big things with taking on a framework change like this is the support that the developers and community provide, in fact I think these days in the social web we live in that community support can speak volumes for a developer. Good community support generally means solid developer support, of course there are cases where the community support is king because the dev team sucks…not in this case, sorry to lead you on like that.

First up lets talk about the Thesis ‘official’ support. It’s all here in the Thesis Theme User’s Guide, the guide pretty well covers all you need to know about implementing Thesis for the majority of ‘blog like’ installations. All the custom.css bits are covered, as are the hooks that Thesis is well known for, as well as plenty of info about WordPress plugins and even some styling tips to get your blog looking all sexxy like. There’s also a support forum where you can search for answers, and if you can’t find them you can always ask in the forum.

The Unofficial Thesis support, ie. community support, is probably one of the things that makes the Thesis Framework so appealing to so many people. If you Google ‘thesis theme support’ or ‘thesis theme customization’ there is no shortage of results, it would take me a whole lot of time to take you through them all…so let me highlight two people who’s Thesis Framework tutorials, hints, tips, etc. were indispensable for me.

Kristarella.com – Kristen, aka Kristarella, was probably the first person to suggest Thesis to me…..6-7 months ago, talk about taking time to sink in. Now that I’ve taken the plunge her tips, tutorials, screencasts, etc. have been my first port of call any time a question has come up, I’ve also bugged her on Twitter more than once..haha..

SugarRae.com – a quick search for ‘thesis‘ on SugarRae’s website will give you copious quantities of information on a wide variety of ways to customize and optimize your Thesis install. Pay close attention to her Thesis SEO advice, it’s rock solid.

So there you have it, the Thesis Framework is rock solid and definitely worth consideration if you’re looking to move away from the freebie WordPress themes that are almost everywhere you look now. Check it out, pay attention to the install guide, and check out Kristarella and SugarRae for some excellent tips, hacks and everything else Thesis related.