We have three (yes three) amazing Thesis skins to announce for your viewing pleasure!

First up is Thesify Business, which was launched about a month ago and has been a big hit. It was built from the ground up to support the latest advancements in Thesis 1.8 and WordPress 3. With 2 jQuery post sliders and a robust custom options panel – you can be rockin a professional site with all the benefits of Thesis in no time. If you haven’t seen this one yet, you need to check it out, click here to learn more.

Just launched from the same author is Thesify Social – a clean, typographic Thesis Skin with 2 navigation bars and inbuilt support for MailChimp, Feedburner, Twitter subscribe forms and counters! This skin is perfect for bloggers and sites looking for a clean design and a focus on content. To learn more about this skin click here.

Finally we have Feedpop, the newest master piece from our very own Matt Hodder. Feedpop provides a new and exciting way to show off your Thesis site. The skin boasts a static widget-enabled sidebar on the left with a content-focused posts area on the right. Have all of your important links and information readily available on the sidebar while your users can easily sift through posts. This one is not to be missed, click here to learn more!

Check us out on Twitter for a very limited 25% off code that can be used for any of these skins – while you’re there make sure to follow us for the latest news and coupon codes!

Ink Factory recently grabbed ThesisFolio to launch their informational site on printer cartridge recycling. Using a great Thesis skin they were able to launch quickly and on budget with minimal customizations. Here’s what they had to say about the process:

InkFactory.org is intended as a point of referral for the hundreds of enquiries we receive every week about printer cartridge recycling; because the message is simple we wanted to present it in a basic way without looking low-budget.

Customers are impressed, and my colleagues couldn’t believe we could build such an awesome looking site for $60! Your themes are incredibly well designed, your attention to detail is second-to-none and the usability of the theme when installed with your Skin Manager left us in awe.

Keep up the great work, this is the best theme we’ve ever used.
–
Thanks for making such an awesome theme. It really made our lives easier. I’ll be back for more on future projects. – Tim.

This is a perfect example of how to work with a pre-designed skin and a great framework to get your site up and running quickly – so you can focus on what’s important, building your business, not mucking around in code!

Pick up your copy of ThesisFolio here and make your life easier today!

It’s been a little over a year now and were excited to have the amount of quality Thesis skins grow by leaps and bounds.

We have some great skins in various stages of development, but we really wanted to take a step back and ask you what you need in a skin?

This can be general such as different support options, different features etc or you can lay out your full blown idea for a skin you would love to see launched here.

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

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?

[polldaddy poll=2960973]

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