For those following WordPress and Thesis on Twitter you’ve probably noticed that the fragile stand off between Thesis (DIYThemes) and Automattic ended with a verbal assault from Matt Mullenweg today (see here and here)

If you’re just being introduced to the situation basically Automattic (the company behind WordPress) doesn’t like the fact that the Thesis theme is not released with a GPL licence like WordPress. Automattic believes everything related to WordPress should be GPL’d while DIYThemes believes there is no legal reason why they have to fall in line with that theory.

I’m not going to get into choosing a GPL winner because my Law 101 course doesn’t near qualify me to chime in (hint yours doesn’t either)

However, what I will state is how this public mud flinging is only hurting the WordPress community, not strengthening it.

GPL is about Freedom

A corner stone of any great society is freedom – the freedom to do and say what you want as long as you don’t harm others. The best thing going for WordPress is it’s amazing secondary development community that releases free and paid themes / plugins on a regular basis and one of those products is Thesis.

Automattic from it’s actions has turned this debate into a religious crusade against Thesis. Where if you dare speak up for Thesis you are exiled from the WordPress world and may never return. This exiling has increased in recent months and innocent, good people are gunned down in the cross fire.

There in lies the hypocrisy – Automattic via it’s actions is no longer supporting freedom of choice. They are trying to control WordPress users by implementing punishments for those that don’t believe the same thing they do.

Be a good little sheep or find another flock.

Let the FREE Market Decide

Not free as in zero cost, free as in uncontrolled and unregulated. In a free market the best products rise to the top and crap will fade away. If users decided that GPL is important to them then they will pick products that are GPL, if GPL is not on their requirements list then that won’t matter to them (98% of users fall in this bracket)

Do these non-GPL products mean the end of the WordPress development community? Not at all, there will always be people that will develop for both groups, if it makes sense to do so – that’s how the free market works.

Is that so wrong? Should all non-GPL’ers be prosecuted and threatened to fall in line with a particular ideology?

Why I Personally Support Thesis

I first found Thesis about a year and half ago and decided to give it a go. Before that when I wanted to start a new project I’d search the repository and various theme sites for something that fit my vision and go from there. However, in the early days I had to wade through a ton of poorly coded, out-dated themes to find ones that worked reliably.

I just wanted one solid, flexible theme that I knew I could count on to be consistently supported and would grow with me.

Now a year and half later we’ve been able to do great things with Thesis. We’ve designed some great looking Thesis sites for happy clients, we’ve released many free and paid child-skins enjoyed by thousands and we’ve had a great time doing it.

Could this all of been done with another GPL compliant framework? Probably, but I freely choose Thesis because it fit my requirements just like I freely choose WordPress. If Automattic has a problem they shouldn’t resort to publicly splitting the community but rather handle it behind the scenes and resolve it for good or get over it.

DIYThemes believes that being non-GPL is right and good for business and they should have that freedom, until the courts say different they have every legal authority to do so. They’ve built a great product and they’ve picked a license that they feel better protects their investment and makes sense for their business.

I make no apologies for supporting Thesis, if you feel the need to attack my choice because it doesn’t fit your ideology, then I’m saddened. I hate that this has grown to the point where I feel I can’t publicly support a software I love without the threat of being shunned from the WordPress community.

Thesis is great and WordPress is great, don’t base your decision on politics, choose a software that works for you and feel comfortable in knowing you made you’re choice based on your real-world needs.

At the core we are all just WordPress users trying to do what’s best for us and our clients, I wish we could all just get along.

It’s that time again and another version of Thesis is about to go into beta testing. In most cases our skins work fine with new upgrades but we would like to remind everyone that using beta software on a production site is at you’re own risk.

If changes are needed we will, as always, have updated versions of our skins shortly after the final version of 1.8 is released . Follow us at @thesisthemes for more updates as they happen!

New Look

ThesisThemes has kicked it up a notch with a bad ass new design for it’s site. We haven’t messed with the layout too much- just turned the design up. We’ve also fleshed things out and provided more information, ease, and flow to our pages. Navigation, login, and account areas are also cleaner and easier to get around.

The front page has been totally re-done to provide new users a better look at who we are and what we do. Of course we also threw in some neat jQuery and CSS stuff for those of you who use the latest browsers.

And yes, we’re still running this all on Thesis (although it doesn’t look like it) as a testament to how much Thesis can really do. Let us know what you think in the comments!

New Thesis Skin: ThesisFolio

We’re proud to announce our latest Thesis skin, ThesisFolio. Brought to you by Matt Hodder (creator of ThesisPlay), ThesisFolio brings a whole lot to the table. The new skin comes standard with new templates for both a custom homepage and custom portfolio pages, which allows you to create a great site in a matter of minutes. The new featured area provides the ability to showcase your portfolio items or blog posts along a big “sell” area for your services/products. The design is also rock solid and very appealing. Twelve themes and a colour picker give you unlimited options for design.

There’s so much more, just check out the full skin info here or go straight to the demo here. Read about the coupon below before buying!

New Deals

We couldn’t release a new skin without some sort of deal, right? So use coupon code 3B8606FF03 and get $10 off ThesisFolio! It’s only good for the first 15 people, so make sure to snatch it quick.

Also, Blogussion, is on sale for $45. Blogussion has been a long time favorite and I’m sure this deal is music to people’s ears. Check it out here and cash in on the sweet deal.

Easy Thesis has been updated to 1.3 with some great new WordPress 3.0 integrations! You can now use the built in WordPress 3.0 header, background and nav menu options with Easy Thesis!

Customizing your site is now even easier, check out the goodness below!

-> WordPress 3 & Easy Thesis in action, click here to watch the video

Don’t have Easy Thesis yet? Learn more by clicking here.

We have seen no issues with our skins / Thesis 1.7 and the WordPress 3.0 upgrade. However, to be safe always be sure to follow the recommended steps before upgrading – but you all do that anyways right?

http://codex.wordpress.org/Updating_WordPress

Update: Don Gilbert let us know that there is an issue with the Thesis custom file editor and WP 3.0 – if you need that feature you may want to wait until diythemes.com releases a fix.

We’re proud to be publicly announcing our Thesis Skin Manager add-on for Thesis 1.7+ that allows Thesis developers to package their skins in a very easy to install format.

Best of all we’re releasing it for free and we’re encouraging other Thesis developers to use it with their own skins and client customizations.

The majority of the skins here already support this new install method with more to come in the near future.

To get an idea of how it works watch the short video by clicking the image below:

Although the obvious use of this tool is for skin developers to release their free / paid skins it’s also a great way for Thesis developers to deliver their Thesis customizations to their clients at the end of a project!

To learn more and to download the skin manager click here.

With Thesis 1.7 right around the corner I’m wondering what percentage of people keep their Thesis sites up to date?

How long do you usually wait to upgrade your sites when there is a new release of Thesis?

Note: This upgrade is geared more towards new users, those users already running one of our skins do not necessarily need to upgrade. Read the considerations below if you still want to upgrade.

We’ve just revamped our entire skin line-up to incorporate the great new plugin from 3DogMedia This plugin drastically cuts down on the install steps for all our skins to a 3 step process:

1. Install and activate the Thesis Import / Export plugin (you should go to the plugins control panel at this point to make a backup of all your current Thesis settings in case you need them)
2. Upload the skin files to your Thesis custom folder
3. Use the Thesis Import / Export plugin to automatically set all the correct Thesis options!

It’s really that simple!

Also this new install process allows our custom Thesis skins to be customized using the new color control panels in Thesis 1.6+ – so it’s even easier to mod our skins with your own unique flare – this means less mucking around with CSS code!

Some important considerations:

• Note to those upgrading, or installing our skins on an already running Thesis install. All your Thesis options will be reset to the default options needed for the skin, any option you’ve changed in the Thesis option screens will be gone, make sure you backup before beginning!
• Our skins will only work with Thesis 1.6+
• When you install our skins it will overwrite your navigation settings in Thesis, so you will have to re-add the pages you want to show in your navigation menu after you install the skin
• If you have the Straight Shooter Pro pack, and you upgrade your Straight Shooter install – please re-download the pro pack from your account and re-upload it to your site, there is an updated version to work with the updated Straight Shooter skin

Enjoy!

ThesisThemes has updated the major skins to be compatible with the just released Thesis 1.6. Skins updated include:

• Thesis Grunge
• Thesis Bold
• Fresh Company
• Straight Shooter
• Simple Life
• Wasabi

What’s new?

We haven’t made any changes to the appearance or front-end usability of the skins themselves. We had to a fix a few bugs that popped up with the 1.6 update, mainly regarding the navigation menu. Since 1.6 includes automatic drop down menus, we also made sure that they were styled to fit in with each theme.

We also added back-end support for a planned future update (however, nothing is changed at the moment).

How to Update:

Updating is fairly straight forward:

• Backup everything in your Thesis custom folder!
• Update to Thesis 1.6
• Download the new files by following the links above.
• Locate your new thesis directory, find the custom-sample folder and rename it to custom.
• Extract the contents of the ThesisThemes zip folder into the custom folder, overwriting any files prompted.
• Login and make sure everything is working!

Note: You will find the ‘Edit Skin‘ menu under the new Thesis Options drop-down on the WordPress dashboard sidebar.

Support:

As always, if you run into any issues, catch any minor bugs, or have any concerns please use the Support Forums for help.

If you need professional help on updating to 1.6 with our skins (or even without) contact us and we’ll get right back to you.

Thesis is what you make it

Lately I have been witnessing more and more complex and beautiful designs throughout the community. Thesis is really what you make it. I’ve found I can work away at a design mock up in Photoshop, and no matter what I come up with, I can replicate it in Thesis. Of course, as designs get more complex so does the development. Thesis can’t do everything right out of the box.

How to stick your Thesis footer to the bottom of the page

On it’s own, with no custom tweaks, the Thesis footer looks and feels great. It’s exactly where one would expect it to be in terms of placement. However, while designs get more complex and more elements are thrown into the mix things tend to not sit as well. Below is a shot of the standard out of the box design of Thesis. I’ve deliberately included a small amount of content and a tiny set of widgets for the example.

As you can see everything looks and feels great. But what if we wanted to mix things up and add a light grey background to the footer? Well let’s try exactly that and see what happens:

Now the placement of that footer isn’t working so well. We would expect the footer to be shot to the bottom of the page no matter the content and window size, or at least have anything below the footer the same colour. Of course, if we had more content we would get the desired effect- however that’s not always the case. So what now? Alas, Thesis can’t be at two places at once, so we are going to have to leave the defaults, and tweak our custom files.

The CSS

I’ve based the CSS off one of the most widely used sticky footer solutions in web design, The CSS Sticky Footer by Ryan Fait. Taking his original CSS we are going to work it into our thesis site. First, open up the custom.css file located in the custom folder (found in the Thesis theme directory). If it’s named custom-sample, simply rename it to custom and proceed. Make sure you back up anything in that folder before continuing.

Once you have custom.css open, pop this code into the file:

html, .custom {
 height: 100%;
}
.custom .wrapper {
 min-height: 100%;
 height: auto !important;
 height: 100%;
 margin: 0 auto -100px; /* the bottom margin is the negative value of the footer's height */
}
.custom #footer_area, .custom .push {
 height: 100px; /* .push must be the same height as .footer */
}

Thankfully, that small bit of code is all you need in terms of CSS. Obviously you can change the height of the footer to your preference. Make sure if you change the height, to also change the .custom .wrapper margin as well (as shown in the comments). Right now you won’t get anything if you tried to refresh your Thesis page- as we haven’t created the wrapper or push containers that are referenced in the CSS.

The PHP

In that same custom folder you should find a separate file called custom_functions.php. Open that up and paste the code below:

add_action('thesis_hook_after_content_area', 'div_push');
add_action('thesis_hook_before_html', 'div_wrapper_start');
add_action('thesis_hook_after_content_area', 'div_wrapper_close');

function div_push() {
 ?>
 <div class="push"></div>
 <?php
}

function div_wrapper_start() {
 ?>
 <div class="wrapper">
 <?php
}

function div_wrapper_close() {
 ?>
 </div>
 <?php
}

Basically this code is creating some new layout containers for the site. The header and content area will now be wrapped in a wrapper container, with a push container placed inside. Our CSS now has it’s elements to call on and have something to “push” to the bottom of the page.

We’re Done!

Yep, that’s it. If you have a very content lacking site you now have no need to worry. If you refresh your site, you should have something that looks like this no matter the window size:

The only thing you may want to change, like I said before, is the height. Other then that, you’re good to launch your site and see your changes. This technique should work in all major browsers and even IE6. If you have any questions, fire them in the comments section below.