The next version of the WordPress theme Thesis is coming soon. The beta was recently released, but due to some issues was pulled out of beta due to some issues people where having. Fortunately, I didn’t have any of those problems and the site you are looking at right now is running on Thesis 1.5 (Don’t believe me? Do a view source and look at the wp-theme meta tag in the header).
Curious as to what Thesis 1.5 will include? Here’s the run down:
User specified widths
Widths for the content and sidebars can now be specified through the Thesis Design Options page. You are no longer restricted to the default sizes built into theme nor do you have to add CSS code to the custom.css file. You can now make your column widths any size you want. Also, if you want to display sidebar 2 first instead, no problem there is a setting for that too. With Thesis 1.5, you can now specify the widths of all 3 columns quickly and easily.
Style sheet engine rewrite
With current versions of Thesis, a bunch of style sheets are generated “on the fly” when visitors surf your site. With Thesis 1.5, out file is generated – layout.css – and it’s generated when you save your Thesis design options. Why should you care? Performance. Your site should now render faster and their are less files for the browser to download to render your site.
To be honest, I never saw any performance issues before, so this should make your Thesis based blog really fast.
Comments engine overhaul
One of the big complaints over in the DIYThemes support forums where that Thesis didn’t support all of the new WordPress 2.7 comments functionality. Well, not more complaints! The Thesis comments engine has been given a complete overhaul and now supports those new features, including nested comments, pagination, etc.
Internationalization
Thesis now supports multiple languages through the use of the thesis.po file. The thesis.po file allows you to add foreign language mappings for all of the various Thesis messages that the theme uses.
Single Column Multimedia Box
Prior to Thesis 1.5, when you made Thesis a single column you lost the multimedia box. Thesis 1.5 fixes this and when you switch to a single column, the Multimedia box is still displayed. I’m not a fan of single column sites, but if you are, then this will be an exciting enhancement for you.
This is just a few of the many new features. I’ve come across some new options, changes to the Thesis options pages, and even read that there are some hooks as well (I’ll write up a seperate article on these).
What? You don’t own or use Thesis yet? Are you crazy??? Seriously, the Thesis theme for WordPress is hands down the most flexible and customizable WordPress theme availble. To be honest, I don’t particularly like calling it a theme, I prefer framework. Thesis significantly changes the way you customize and theme your blog. Thesis provides out of the box SEO, easy to navigate and use options, and an active and friendly support forum. The best part? If you buy it now, all future versions are free. So if you’re holding out waiting of that one killer feature, there isn’t any need. Join the rest of us Thesis addicts today!
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