9 BLOGS TO HELP YOU MASTER THE THESIS WORDPRESS THEME

So you just picked up a copy of the wonderful Thesis WordPress theme framework, installed it, and don’t quite know where to begin. Sure you can read some basic tutorials and instructions and get a simple site going, but we all know Thesis is more powerful than that. That’s why I’ve compiled this list of 9 awesome blogs to read and subscribe to that will be sure to make you a Thesis master in no time.

Note: You should always have a solid WordPress foundation before working on a specialized framework, so make sure to check out some WordPress development blogsbefore you dive into these.

DIY Themes Blog

Sometimes the best place for information is the source. Luckily, the DIY Themes crew have been hard at work pumping out tutorials and tips, and you can find them here. This site is rather recent, but has a great selection of awesome tutorials already. If you want beefy, in-depth tutorials, the official site is the place to be.

How to Set up Tracking Scripts with Thesis
How to Use the Robots Meta Tags in Thesis
How to Generate Affiliate Links to Any Page on DIYThemes

DIY Themes Answers

The DIY Themes Answers site has a tonne of quick tutorials and snippets. If you need to do something quick and just aren’t sure how, you’ll find the answers here a lot of the time.

Bill Erickson

Bill Erickson is a great designer who blogs and teaches about WordPress. He has released an 18 part tutorial on Thesis, which will teach you everything from the basics to the really advanced. His other WordPress articles are great to read too!

Thesis Tip #18: Full Width Navigation
Thesis Tip #17: Adding Content Between Posts
Thesis Tip #16: Redirect Pages

Matt Hodder

Matt Hodder is one half of the Thesis Themes team (who are my friends, as I sell my skin,Thesis Magazine, through them). Very talented at Thesis coding with a great eye for design, Matt’s blog shows you how he does some of the things he does for Thesis Themes.

Recent posts:
Change Your Thesis Site to a Fluid Layout
Enable WordPress 3.0 Features for the Thesis Theme
Starter PSD and Custom Files

Kristarella

Kristarella has some of the most read and classic Thesis posts around. She writes about a variety of things but check out her Thesis archives to see a variety of in-depth guides. Her posts are less tutorials and walk-throughs, and more general articles to teach you how to do your own thing. Very useful.

Recent posts:
WordPress 3.0 Custom Post Types, Taxonomies & Thesis
Position Your Thesis Nav
Mod Timthumb for WPMU and Thesis

Art of Blog

Not only is Art of Blog one of the most impressive Thesis-based sites I’ve seen to date, but it’s filled with all sorts of blogging advice, including tips on creating websites using the Thesis Theme. Their Thesis archives are filled with goodies and easy to follow tutorials, and while you’re there you can check out other how-tos and tips to take your designing and blogging to the next level.

Recent posts:
Creating Date Based Design Elements in Thesis
How to Use Thesis Custom Body Classes
301 Redirect Any Thesis Page

Greg Rickaby

Greg Rickaby is a web developer who has really taken a shine to the Thesis theme (and now the Genesis framework as well). You’ll find some more advanced tutorials and in-depth how-tos here, and it’s a great place to go when you want to do something really fancy with the framework.

Recent posts:

How to Use jQuery Lazy Load in Thesis 1.7
Thesis 1.8 Header Image
How to Create a Sub-Loop in Thesis

Matt Flies

I almost didn’t include Matt Flies, as it’s under construction right now and the posts are unavailable. That being said, when they are available, they’re excellent. Bookmark it or sign up to his newsletter because he puts out very easy to follow tutorials that teach you how to make Thesis do some really cool things.

Theme Thesis

I know, I know, shameless. But I like to think that Theme Thesis is indeed one of the best Thesis resources available right now. Not only will you find tutorials for Thesis, but you’ll also find tutorials for regular WordPress templates, so you can see what’s different and what makes Thesis unique.