Thesis WordPress Theme Review: Our Experience and Thesis in 2026
Thinking about the Thesis WordPress theme? In April 2010 we switched QuickOnlineTips to Thesis by DIYthemes after finding our site was slower than 94% of sites online, and wrote this review after the first days of use. Thesis has changed completely since then. It is no longer sold as a standalone theme; it now lives inside DIYthemes’ Focus product. Here is our original experience and what you need to know in 2026.
Quick answer: Thesis was one of the most popular premium WordPress theme frameworks around 2010, loved for its SEO options and hooks. Today Thesis is a template and design system from DIYthemes that you get only by buying its Focus skin. For most new sites, a free modern theme like Kadence, GeneratePress or Astra is a simpler choice.
Table of Contents
Our Thesis review from 2010
It cost $87
Thesis was not cheap at $87 for one site, but it came with free lifetime upgrades and was still far cheaper than hiring a designer. We had followed designer Chris Pearson since his famous Cutline theme, and Copyblogger’s Brian Clark pointed out that Danny Sullivan, Matt Cutts, Chris Brogan and Robert Scoble all used Thesis. That was enough for us.
Powerful options
Installation was easy, apart from making a few files writable by FTP. The options panel let us change colours, fonts, sizes and layouts from one to three columns with a click, choose exactly which pages appeared in the navigation bar, and add a multimedia box for rotating images, ads or custom code. Header and footer script boxes made adding analytics simple.
Hooks instead of template files
The tricky part: there was no single.php, header.php or sidebar.php to edit. Everything went through Thesis hooks in custom_functions.php. One small PHP mistake could take the whole site down, which happened to us twice. Custom styles went in custom.css, which survived theme upgrades.
SEO options
Thesis included detailed SEO controls for titles, meta descriptions and noindex settings, which was a big selling point before SEO plugins matured.
Thesis in 2026
- What it is now: Thesis is described by DIYthemes as a modular template and design system for WordPress. Themes built on it are called Skins.
- How to get it: Thesis is no longer sold on its own. It comes with Focus, the DIYthemes flagship skin.
- Who it suits: existing Thesis users and people who like DIYthemes’ focused, minimalist approach.
What we use now
We later moved from Thesis to our own QuickPress theme, then to the Genesis Framework, and today QOT runs on a Kadence child theme. The lessons from Thesis still apply: keep customisations separate from the theme so upgrades never wipe them, and keep your code light for speed.
Thesis alternatives
- Kadence – free theme with a visual header and footer builder.
- GeneratePress – very lightweight, with hooks for developers.
- Astra – popular free theme with many starter sites.
- Block themes like the default Twenty Twenty-Five theme for full site editing.
Pair any of them with an SEO plugin, and use a child theme for code changes. See how we add custom CSS to the WordPress editor.
What Thesis got right
Looking back, Thesis was ahead of its time in three ways. It separated design settings from code, so non-developers could restyle a site safely. It treated SEO as part of the theme, years before most themes cared. And its sidebar widgets and teaser layouts showed us how powerful widget-ready themes could be. Modern themes have absorbed all of these ideas, which is one reason Thesis no longer stands out the way it did in 2010.
FAQ
Is Thesis still available?
Yes, but only as part of DIYthemes’ Focus product, not as a standalone theme.
Is Thesis good for SEO?
It was a leader in theme-based SEO options. Today most sites rely on SEO plugins and fast, clean themes instead.
Can I still use an old Thesis 1.x site?
Very old versions may not work with current PHP and WordPress. Plan a move to a maintained theme and test on a staging site.
Makes me really want to move to WordPress
We switched back to our wordpress theme, since it allowed more flexibility to change (and break!) any code of the theme we liked.
Thesis is no doubt an excellent theme and has all the features anyone needs. But for the curious web designer in me, constantly editing code at every level, our current theme is easier to tweak.
@QuickOnlineTips why did you change back your theme from thesis? Any specific reasons ?
is it because you did not noticed much increase in traffic or configuration issue.
I have changed my theme to thesis, but I’m wondering if the theme really helps in increasing the traffic, my traffic is still the same just like before. How long did you wait to see the progress?
We also have noticed not much increase in traffic, probably because our earlier theme was also well optimized for SEO. But the site definitely does load faster.
Also there is no subscribe to comments option when commenting ;)
Added the subscribe to comments option as well. Thanks.
Good move! Fix your drop down menu, it goes below the logo image. Need to change the z-index
Was wondering how to fix that.
I can’t see that anymore. Anyways a lower z-index means a higher one will be displayed over it. So setting a higher z-index for menu links or a lower one for logo will do the job.
I just changed the nav bar to my original non-thesis concept. Thanks for the explanation.
QOT you will never regret your decision for moving to Thesis. I moved long time back and now I’n using it on all of my blogs and Personally i can see a great traffic increase more over at this point my bounce rate is 34% :)
I’m sure you will love to share your stats after some time using Thesis…
Do let me know if you need any help with Thesis Customization.. Will love to help you for free..Since I love your blog :)
I am still experimenting with Thesis. Thanks for all your help.
Meanwhile 1 question: Why are you using Postrank? Any benefit? If it is because it shows random posts? I believe any random posts plugin will be better as it will give you internal linking advantage..
Postrank is helping us get our most socially active posts together. They are not random posts.
Atahualpa is waaay better. I’m not saying Thesis is bad, but Atahualpa is better and free!
Hope you guys do customize it a little better, it looks like every other Thesis themed site.
Good luck
Trying to make it look less thesis. I think the navbar looks very Thesis-y.
Last week, I also made up my mind to go for thesis. However I just searched for an alternate of thesis before making a payment, and I found a free Atahualpa and I decided to give it a test. At the moment result is pretty impressive. Daily PG doubled just within 2 days of installing Atahualpa. Now will test my page load time also after a week time for a better comparison.
I didn’t know about Atahualpa theme, but I will surely give it a try sometime.
woooo gr8. I recommend to change the font style of this theme … Verdana will do fine .. What do you say ?
Yes, we made it Verdana font now. Looks much better.
But Georgia will look more better and comfortable than Verdana I believe.. most of the thesis powered blogs use it.. :)
Verdana is a more readable font online. Of course Georgia looks more elegant than Verdana. Thesis also offers a lot many cool fonts to choose from, but they are not web safe.
Congrats, you’ll not regret on your decision to use Thesis. Though, you need to optimize it more for some good looks. Use Thesis Open hook plugin which makes customizing thesis a piece of cake.
I will try the Open Hook Plugin. From the intro it look like it will make custom changes real easy. Thanks.