Is Thesis WordPress theme over Hyped
Firstly, I do not mean to say that Thesis is not a great theme, I am sure it is one of the best themes released for WordPress ever. But WordPress itself being one of the most Search Engine friendly CMS with the power of some great SEO plugins, I want to know how thesis could still make a difference.
Thesis WordPress theme is considered to be one of the best themes ever developed for WordPress till date by many top webmasters and experts. Personally I haven’t tried out Thesis theme and as always I want some proof to believe what others claim.
There are many webmasters who use and promote the Thesis WordPress theme and they could have their own reasons. But as a responsible webmaster, I want to make sure I try and test before I recommend the same to my blog readers. To understand and drill down to the root of the “Thesis Success” I am taking this up as my next case study.
Reasons to believe it could be over hyped
Huge Revenue Share: The main reason any product could spread like wild fire on the internet could be the affiliate commission that the theme developer offers its affiliate partners on each successful sale. Thesis shares a great affiliate commission to its affiliates and that is 50% of each sales. This could be one reason that Thesis is over hyped and often recommended.
Success Share: Using Thesis frame work claims to do wonders to your website traffic with its powerful search engine friendly development. I am not sure what the share of Thesis theme to this success is while WordPress itself is search engine friendly.
Big Names Associated: Thesis has some big names like Chris Pearson and Brian Clark associated with them and many other big time bloggers who recommend Thesis as the best, this could add to their success.
Reasons to believe it is NOT Hyped and Thesis is Awesome
Great Features: Thesis is a very clean and well developed theme with awesome set of customization features. The theme is said to be totally in love with SEO and usage of hooks can do wonders.
Top sites using Thesis: Action does speak louder than words! There are many top websites that use thesis themselves and recommend the theme to do wonders to your search engine traffic. This is one of the major reasons that I decided to tear this apart and do a review.
Details of the Case study planned
As this is going to be a case study that will test the success rate of using Thesis theme, I want it to be carried out with utmost perfection. I would be purchasing a full version of Thesis WordPress theme today and implement it on one of my 2 years old blog to measure the success rate.
Details of the Statistics before I start the case study that will last for 1 Month after implementing Thesis are as below:
Time Period
- Thesis case study start date: 13th May 2011
- Thesis case study end date: 13th June 2011
Website Stats Today
- Website URL: www.colorflys.com
- Monthly Pageviews: 32,230
- Unique visitors: 6,657
- Pages per visit: 4.84
- Bounce Rate: 50.86%
- Average Time on site: 6.95 Minutes
- New visits: 64.40%
- Search Engine Traffic: 37,18%
- Direct Traffic: 19.41%
Click to Zoom and view the complete dashboard
Above are few screenshots that will give you the statistical proof at the start of the Case study and I will proceed to publish the final stats at the completion of the case study. Stay tuned to find is Thesis WordPress theme over Hyped
Josh,
Very Impressive!
Great choice for your next case study. Am sure this one is gonna be welcomed.
I personally would love to know more about how the results are going to look like.
Cheers, Bob
Hey Josh,
Would wait to see the result of this one for sure! Good initiative..
Chirs
Latest Update:
I have purchased the Thesis 1.8 Themes license from DIYthemes.com and now playing around with the install.
First Look:
The control panel looks very feature rich while the front end and look / feel wise is poor. Stay tuned for more.
Cheers
Josh
Latest Update:
Installed a simple Thesis Skin for the Theme and imported all AIOSEOP plugin data to the Thesis theme settings.
Cheers
Josh
Latest Update:
The Thesis theme has been configured for the website and I must say even though Thesis is often criticized for poor look and feel – They have a Splendid interface to tweak your theme to look simply great! Stay tuned..
Cheers
Josh
I think it's probably overhyped for advanced users but it provides some good functionality for someone that just wants to focus on their site or blogging.
Hey Jared,
Point taken! It is true that if the theme itself is SEO optimized and clean it really reduces your efforts into manually using other techniques to publicize and SEO your blog. This initiative is to dig deeper and to this point I am impressed with the user friendliness of Thesis. Stay tuned.
Cheers, Josh
Update: Observation: Website loading speed has improved, mainly because of the cleaner code. But early to comment on the SEO effects. Stay tuned.
Hello Admin..
Am really impressed by this blog – Superb content!
I appreciate your approach towards publishing each of your posts and comparing each newer posts, its getting bigger.
Subscribed to your Feed, Looking fwd for more!
Cherios
Ben