I’ve been pretty busy lately, working on my network of sites based around the Thesis Theme and have even done a couple of client designs as well.   If you’d like to see one of my implementations go check out Brookmont Construction Services a premier Kansas City construction, maintenance, and building remodel company.  That site was a lot of fun to put together and I had a really good time building it for them.

This past week after much anticipation the beta version of Thesis 1.6 was released and I just had the chance to implement it here on this site.  I’ve not had a chance to full customize this site out the way I want yet, but so far I’m extremely impressed with the new features that 1.6 offers.  I can only image what’s coming when 2.0 comes out!

Quick Overview of Thesis 1.6 Features

• Design & Color Option Changes – That’s right now instead of taking the time to edit the color of a font or a background by editing your custom.css file, now you can do it directly from your design panel in Thesis.  There is also an option to automatically throw a cool shadow effect on the body of your theme just by simply checking a box!

• Integration of Dropdown Menus – This has always been a big request of Thesis and now it’s finally here.  I’ve not had a chance to experiment much with it yet, but you can now create your CSS only dropdown navigation from within the Thesis design panel.  Another feature is the fact that you have to full ability to edit the anchor text of all your links in the menu and also easily change colors and fonts.

• Custom File Editor – Thesis now also has a built in custom file editor with syntax highlighting so that you can now custom edit your files right in the admin area without having to change a file and then upload it to your site.

• Other Changes – The IE only specific styles are now cache friendly where they haven’t been in the past.  The frames around post images and thumbnails have been fixed so that they actually work. Finally the image rotator folder has been moved from the root of Thesis directly into the custom folder.

Those are pretty much the big changes that have occurred with this beta release of Thesis 1.6.  Overall I think it’s a fantastic release and I’m especially excited about the drop-down menus and the overall ability to quickly edit styles and colors that’s now available.  After seeing this version, as I said before I can’t wait to see what 2.0 has in store for us.

One final thing to mention regarding 1.6 is the fact that you’re only eligible to get it if you’ve purchased the developers version of Thesis.   I purchased the developer’s version a little over a year ago and it’s been one of the best investments I’ve made in a long time and I run on over 20 different sites that I’ve got running right now.  So what are you waiting for get your copy of Thesis today and check our everything 1.6 has to offer!

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The newest version of the Thesis theme was just release and I just downloaded my copy a few minutes ago.  I’ve not had a chance to put it into action yet but I’m pretty excited about some of the new features that come with this version of Thesis.

One of the big things I see in this update is the ability to use even more layouts with the theme.   It now has a 3 column option where you can choose from a variety of different 3 column layouts within the layout constructor in the admin panel.  One of the coolest things that I like about this is the ability to choose a 3 column layout with a sidebar on each side and the content in the middle.  I’ve been wanting to change some of my Thesis installations to this for awhile now so I’m excited to see how easy it is to make this change now.

Some of the other enhancements also include an html framework option that you can use to select a full width framework or page framework to help suit your custom designs more efficiently.  Also, the hook feature that was released in Thesis 1.2 has also been improved and now includes 31 different hooks that you can use for customizations to the theme.

So far I’m a huge fan of using hooks with Thesis because it makes life so much easier when it comes to upgrading.  I’m looking forward to getting even better at using them to make my customizations to Thesis even more unique.  I hope to work with this new version of Thesis this weekend and hopefully I’ll have some time to post any experiences that I’ve had with this new version.

In the meantime go check out Thesis for yourself and see what I’m talking about.

I’m a big fan of the Thesis theme for wordpress so I decided to build a quick site based on my experiences with this theme.  I purchased the theme myself about a month ago and I’ve currently got it running on about 3 different sites.

As I get deeper and deeper into the theme I’m always impressed by the functionality and overall scalability that it can offer to it’s publishers.  One of the great things about it is the fact that even if you’re not a web developer you can still have great control of your site through the administrative control panel that’s built into Thesis.

In my opinion though the real power lies with customizations that you can make via the custom style sheet option and the usage of hooks via the custom functions.  If you don’t know much about CSS then I suggest you to grab a great CSS book from Amazon and learn a little and you’ll be amazed at some of the additional things you’ll be able to do with Thesis as a result.

In the near future I’m going to try write an extensive review of my thoughts of Thesis up to this point and possibly some features that could make it even better.  In addition to that I’ll also share some of the ways that I’m using Thesis and some of the success that I’ve see with it.  One thing that I’m sure of is the fact that Thesis will continue to get even better and I look forward to sharing some of my experiences and tips regarding it with you.  In the meantime I suggest that you go check out everything that the Thesis theme has to offer yourself.  If you currently using the theme then I’d love to hear your thoughts as well.