Thesis theme framework is one of the famous and flexible framework which gives you full control over skin designing. Thesis framework made it easy for programmers. Making a unique theme that represents your brand is essential part of blogger. You might have noticed that I redressed my blog with new skin that is unique one and beautiful. I am very fond of developing new skins for thesis theme.
I have developed this skin myself and feeling much happy of this achievement. Now at the moment, I have two thesis skins that are based on thesis framework and coded by myself. I was in need of a theme that is light and beautiful. Without using heavy image files and with help of CSS I made this happen.
Google is also considering the website speed in Page Ranking, so developing a light weight skin was unavoidable. Current theme has all these features,
- Light weight theme,
- Used CSS for theme design,
- Used only two image files; one for background and second for button and navigation bar effects. Size of files is just 20KB in total. Awesome,
- Logo file is just 17KB size,
- Super clean CSS file having size of only 13.1 KB now,
- Most amazingly, I have custom function file of 9.41 KB, having all necessary code for my customized use and to reduce the need of plugins.
- Built in Breadcrumbs
- Built in Second navigation and widgetized footers with three columns.
- Custom short code feature to add Google AdSense at any time in your post by just entering AdSense keywords,
- Added ad in header,
- Added code for Lazyload (Currently disabled due to problem with sidebar ads that are below fold, trying to fix it with some other event trigger or some other solution)
- New skin is specially optimized for Google AdSense integration,
- No use of skin admin or options panel to reduce need for PHP coding. This setting made my site faster and lighter, as there are no additional SQL queries and PHP calls.
- Due to reduced SQL queries and PHP function (like bloginfo function), server resources are less utilized.
- Rotating side bar ads without any plugin
- My new skin is 100% HTML validated and passed after strict tests.
Site Validation Result
After adjusting all these settings and freeing thesis skin from control panel, just have a look at improvement in site loading speed as per Google Labs option in Web Master tools,
Site Speed Performance
Another test conducted through pingdom tools showed that almost 1.084 Mb data loading in just 5.7 seconds, thats awesome.
I am increasing my thesis learning curve and soon will offer a free skin based on thesis framework to three thesis users who contact me in person. Actually I am starting thesis skinning service that will be tailor made according to requirements and will be much lighter. One sample of my work is live in shape of my site.
Let me polish the second skin and then I will offer it to three persons. My aim is to test how much efforts it will need to properly make it live on customers’ site and providing after sale service.
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Hi,
That is an awesome job, What do I need to learn before customizing thesis. I just accidentally entered into this world 3 years back with no computer background. I am not good in coding, as my expertise is in Internet marketing, SEO and blogging. Any recommendations for self learning customization and designing or do I have to join some PHP, CSS, html classes?
Well Ahmed, it basically depends on your programming knowledge. If you have some know how, you will pick the things easier or you have to first go through the PHP & CSS languages.
Check out Mixergy’s interview with the founder of Wordpress and Chris, founder of Thesis theme.. they go head to head discussing if Thesis theme should be free or not since it’s on wordpress’s free license structure..
hi! i’m a fan of thesis framework too. your theme look nice and minimalistic. keep it up!
Thanks Fazreen for liking my theme. I am trying to switch to freeware theme frame work, due to their GPL license. One can use them in their unlimited projects hence causes reduction in cost.
Imran,
Great work! You should consider selling your Thesis skin. I’ll take a look at the ones in your recent post. Hey, how do you change the author profile box to include the number of posts each author has contributed? One of my sites is a multi-author blog and it would be a great touch to add.
(I moved your comment to this post)
Hmm, Jarret I will not be selling this skin as it is a step towards brand making. For author post count, this code will do the trick
I like Thesis Theme Framework too. You got nice design Imran! Looks very proffessional.
Hi Imran, I really liked your skin for thesis.
I actually want to ask you does thesis or other framework helps in boosting seo or speed comparing to applying premium themes?
Well, I believe they do help seo and ranking.
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