Over the last few months, we have had an ongoing debate as to whether StudioPress or Thesis is the best WordPress template for all marketers or anyone wanting to launch an online business.
Update December 2013: All StudioPress WP Themes Have Now Been Updated And Are Completely Mobile Responsive, Some Older Themes Will Not Be Updated.
If you have spent any time at all on our site you would already know our preference which is StudioPress, however many of my associates that are full-time bloggers still say that Thesis is the best, we have our doubts.
The Studiopress Genesis Framework has been called the “Best Of The Best” by Mashable with more than 80,000 bloggers trusting Genesis to help them build a solid foundation for their online businesses.
This is the reason why this post has been written so the readers of this site can make the final decision as to what you think is the best WordPress theme to use. We want to hear from you so that we can put this issue to bed once and for all. So read on, and you decide which of these WordPress themes is best Thesis or StudioPress.
Why We Use And Recommend StudioPress Themes
Firstly let’s talk about StudioPress and its many professional designs starting with the Genesis Framework and currently 44 child themes as well as the newly created Marketplace which displays and sells WordPress themes that have been built on the Genesis Framework by existing StudioPress users.
For me, and please remember this is my opinion from experience with the StudioPress Themes. Firstly StudioPress Themes for me is much easier to use and customise so much so that virtually anyone new to the internet can download one of the many themes and have a brand new blog launched by the end of the day.
Everything is in the dashboard under the Genesis settings tab which is point and click when setting up which it makes it very easy to understand and use whether you are an experienced WordPress user or Novice (Newbie to WordPress).
You also have a setting where you can go into the theme settings and add your Google Feed and decide on the type of navigation and even select the colour of the temple. Many of the StudioPress themes come with the option to change colour from what we have seen you can have up to eight different colours to select from for your Child theme.
If you do encounter any issues with the WP theme, you merely need to make changes to the child theme code rather than messing around with the parent theme being the Genesis Framework which can lead to breaking your site.
StudioPress themes also offer a State-Of-The-Art support forum where you can have your questions and concerns answered very fast which is a big plus for anyone building a WordPress site.
Click Here To Download The Genesis Guide For Absolute Beginners (PDF – 1.4 MB)
What We Think About The Thesis Theme
I have had the pleasure to log into a few different Thesis WordPress blogs and what I initially found was very confusing with all these buttons that do all kinds of different things on the site. Especially the “BIG ASS SAVE BUTTON”.
This might be great for a programmer, but for me, I felt intimidated merely because I had many options and did not know where to start.
As you can see from the screenshot above, there are a lot of options for you to set up your Thesis WordPress blog, but for me, the problem was how to do it all.
Another concern that we have with the Thesis theme is when one of my associates breaks some element in the theme like the header section or incorrectly placing code into a widget area and then asks me to take a look. I have repaired these issues in the past but only after having to go into the PHP code of the site.
If you look around on the internet at many of the most influential bloggers you will notice one thing, many are changing over to the StudioPress Genesis Framework, and those who have not and still have Thesis themes are usually broken in some way or another. We are not saying that the Thesis theme itself causes this but the end-user by not having a complete understanding of how it all works or even how to edit the Thesis settings.
Such things as sidebars no longer aligning correctly or header images not displaying correctly. Many times we have had to repair things in Thesis which has always had to do with incorrect header code being entered or entered into the text widgets.
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What we have found with Thesis themes is that professional bloggers with some background in code have little to no trouble using the Thesis WordPress templates however your everyday blogger can stumble and make mistakes when using this theme.
So What Do You Think, Which Theme Is The Best?
So we have laid out some of the features and issues for both of these WordPress themes, it’s now time for you to decide what the best WordPress Theme, StudioPress Or Thesis tell us what your preferences are and whether or not you use StudioPress or Thesis as your preferred blogging platform.
I prefer Thesis theme for an affiliate site. It’s simple and has a faster load.
Thesis theme is very unique, it’s easy to customise and has SEO builtin that can carry your site to a different higher position, thanks to Thesis theme creator.
Hi Adam,
Everything you spoke about is also available in the Studiopress themes all SEO and full control of your widgets sidebars and more. The information you actually get for building a blog from Studiopress is priceless.
I’ve been using Thesis theme more than three months now.I like their user community .If you learn bit of CSS and Php you’ll be able to build any site from Thesis.
Hi Pubudu
This is why we really like Studiopress as there is no need to learn CSS all you need to do is ask a question in the forum and you will get the answers that you need very fast.
Clients find Studiopress easy-to-use compared to Thesis. I also prefer Genesis Framework as it is easier to customize. Thesis has a sharp learning curve.
Hi Frank
Yes I would have to agree I find Studiopress easier to use over Thesis and as you said you need to have much more knowledge to use Thesis. I also like the support system provided by Studiopress with a huge community of other WordPress users all helping each other solve any issues they encounter.
They also have a great collection of mobile responsive themes to chose from now without needing to add any additional code to the theme they are good to go out of the box.