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Thesis 1.6 and Why You Should be Using It

October 31, 2009 By James View Comments

thesis-260x125When I began blogging back in 1999, I may not have had the tools at my disposal that I have today, but one thing I was as certain of then as I am today is the power of blogging. There has been no other tool in the history of mankind that has given voice to so many, for so little, in such a short period of time.

I believe that history will look back on this era, this dawn of social media, and pay homage to those who played a part in arming the masses during this wondrous time. It is my personal opinion, and I believe that history will bear this out, that Matt Mullenweg (Wikipedia) will be one of the people that will go down in history as having given voice to so many who may otherwise have felt marginalized and silenced their entire lives.

Of course there are many thousands of others who have played a part and I’m not saying Matt is the most important, nor the least, I am saying that for him to remain adamant about keeping WordPress Open Source even while it demolishes competitors in the market, is something very special.

Bet you weren’t thinking I was going to get so deep on why you should be using Thesis huh? Well, if you’re still reading this then I’ll assume you have a WordPress powered site, or are at least some marginal interest in starting one up. Once you’re up and running you’re going to want to customize the look and feel of your site. Depending on your level of experience and your budget this may be relatively easy or damn near impossible.
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Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: Blogging, themes, thesis, tools, WordPress Tips

Thesis 1.6 Upgrading Tips

October 21, 2009 By James View Comments

Total credit goes to Kristarella for figuring out these two bits of code that were stumping me. If you are upgrading to Thesis 1.6 and you have a customized nav and a custom header background there are three bits of code you’ll have to tweak in order to get them to work.

When I first upgraded I followed the instructions on the Thesis site but something was still not quite right. The site looked like this:

James Poling — Blogger. New Media Strategist._v1

For the most part everything worked flawlessly with the obvious exception of the nav and the header background. So, if you’ve upgraded to Thesis 1.6 and you’re site looks something like this don’t fret. You’re a few quick changes away from getting your site back to where it needs to be.

All of these changes will need to be made in your custom stylesheet. All can easily be accomplished with a few quick search/replace.

In Thesis 1.6 a few div ids and classes have changed

#tabs are now .menu

Current page item has been trimmed down to just current.

.current_page_item to just .current

This step wasn’t necessary in previous versions but in 1.6 you’ll need to proactively add a transparent background to the “page” class

#header_area .page {background:transparent;}

If you’re having trouble upgrading to Thesis 1.6 and keeping your current design, try these three steps and 9 out of 10 times your issue will be resolved.

Filed Under: Blogging, Tips Tagged With: code, thesis, Tips, WordPress Tips