As I mentioned yesterday, the brand spankin’ new look around here at The Curbside Marketer is all thanks to a great WordPress theme called Thesis. Initially, I was torn between going with Thesis or Headway, another great WordPress theme. I had Matt Cheuvront talking in one ear about Thesis and Danny Brown in the other telling me how great Headway was. In the end, after watching some videos and learning about each, I decided to go with Thesis. So, here is your in depth review of Thesis 1.6.

MY WEB DESIGN BACKGROUND

It’s important to first tell you my experience in web design and such, just so you can determine whether you’ll have a head start on me or maybe are even more clueless than I was. Basically, I took a class back in high school (5 years ago) and learned the very basics of html, sort of learning how the language works, and made a few basic web pages. From that, I probably remember less than 50% of it. So, I probably know the first three or four chapters of an HTML for dummies book.

THESIS OVERVIEW

Right off the bat I’ll summarize what the rest of this will go into so that those of you who aren’t interested can tune out. Basically, if you’re okay with taking the time to learn some of the more complex aspects of Thesis, it’s a very powerful theme. However, If you want something that’s just quick and easy, you may want to seriously consider some other themes.

With that out of the way, let’s move on to the specifics.

INSTALLATION

I’ll keep this short and sweet and say that installation was a piece of cake, just follow the directions Thesis provides to the tee. I would also suggest installing the “Theme Tester” plugin for WordPress, as it will allow you to make changes to your blog while keeping your old skin visible to your visitors. This is ideal for those who already have a blog and are looking for a design upgrade.

BASIC EDITING

As mentioned above, editing things like the font, font color, background color, sidebars, et cetera are all as simple as choosing options from drop down menus and checking boxes. Something as simple as adding a sidebar would take a long time to do, especially for a beginner like me, so these options are life savers that help you save a ton of time.

THESIS HOOKS

This is where Thesis can get a little tricky. The best explanation of hooks that I came across was from Sugarrae, who somehow got the concept of hooks to click in my head. Basically, instead of you going in and editing the actual Thesis files, you edit only two files, the custom.css file and the custom_functions.php file (this is where hooks come into play).

In the custom_functions.php file, you pretty much create a “function,” which is the html element you want to insert in your blog and then, using a “hook” you tell Thesis where you want to put it (for example, in the footer or before the sidebar). That’s how I’ve created the custom footer you see below and the custom subscribe widget at the top of the sidebar.

The custom.css file basically allows you to change the styling of elements that already exist (so you’re not actually creating anything here, technically). This is how I did things like adding the custom header image and changing the titles of the sidebar items to custom images.

As I mentioned, this is where the bulk of the learning curve is, and once you get the hang of it, it all becomes a heckuva lot easier.

FINDING HELP

One of the cool things about Thesis is the vast forums it has available to its members. 99% of the time I had a question, I was able to find an answer on the message boards and I was amazed at the helpfulness of some of the members on there. Unfortunately, Thesis has created only a few basic “how-to” resources, making the forums insanely valuable. Basically, think of it as if you have a question, someone has almost definitely had the same question before.

FIREBUG

Weather you end up using Thesis, Headway, or a free theme, Firebug is a really, really cool tool that will both save you time and help you learn about HTML. All it is is a Firefox plug-in that allows you to not only see the HTML and CSS of any web page, but to actually make changes to it to play around with different looks. Believe me when I say I learned many things about some of the blogs I read by using Firebug to check out their inner workings.

SO SHOULD I BUY THESIS?

Well, I’d actually argue that Thesis is NOT for everyone. It takes someone with patience and the willingness to learn to be able to master Thesis, so if that’s not you, I suggest you run the other way. I will note, however, that the word on the street is that Thesis 2.0 is in the near future (next 6 months or so), and it is sure to have some exciting new features. I’ve also heard that when 2.0 is released there may be an increase in price for first time buyers (Thesis is a ONE time fee, so once you buy it,  you have it forever). So, if you think you do want Thesis, now may be the time to make the move.

SUMMARY

So that’s the quick rundown. You can put together a pretty basic blog quickly with Thesis, but if you want something real fancy-like, you’re going to have to take the time to do a little learning.

If you have any questions about Thesis, please leave me a comment below or even shoot me an email, I’d be more than happy to answer them!

If you think this whole blog design thing is a little complex, but still want a great looking design, I’d suggest checking out my blog consulting page. I’d love to be able to help you put together your perfect blog design!

Also, if you do decide to go with Thesis, and want to throw me a bone, I’d appreciate it if you’d consider using my affiliate link when purchasing. However, if you’d rather not, here is the non-affiliate link to their site.

Finally, if you have any questions about the Headway theme, I’m sure that Danny Brown would be more than happy to answer them for you.

Last Thursday everyone’s Blackberry’s went crazy. Twitter also started acting funky. Well, in the midst of the apocalypse of the technology world, I had my own little crisis here at The Curb.

I was fiddling around with the blog and trying to update it to the latest version and, all of a sudden, BAM! Before I knew it, The Curbside Marketer had been lost in the abyss. All my posts and my theme, were gone. I sort of freaked out for a second. Then, I turned to Twitter for some help. After a few quick words of advice from Andrew Norcross I called the tech support line for my hosting provider, BlueHost.

After less than five minutes on the phone with a tech support dude, my blog was back, in all of it’s glory, and I only had to upload my Holiday Wish List post.

So, why do you care?

Well, for starters, it’s close to Christmas and I didn’t really have time (or energy) to write a full fledged post (just being honest!) But more importantly, this first showed me that your “tribe” of people that you’ve built on Twitter really can help you out in a sticky situation. I knew this was probably the case, but this was the first time it had actually happened.

Secondly, if you’re a blogger, I hope you can learn from my mistake without having to go through it yourself. Back up your data on a regular basis. If you use WordPress, get the DB Manager plug-in and back up your entire blog through your server on a regular basis.

Finally, I love highlighting companies who just do a great job in marketing, customer service, etc. and BlueHost definitely did that in this situation. I didn’t even have to touch my computer for my problem to be solved. I explained what happened, they told me what we could do (and the risk of losing the content), they did it, and I was all set. I don’t know how other hosting providers are with customer support, but BlueHost definitely earned my praise, which is why I have their banner in my sidebar (it is an affiliate link, just so ya know).

Anyways, that’s all I got for ya today. Don’t be afraid to ask your tribe for help, back up your data, and use BlueHost.

The end.

Image from Flickr user star5112

You, like this vacuum, are a sucker when it comes to associative conditioning.

Last week I read a post at Copyblogger where Johnny B. Truant talked about how his son loves Spongebob macaroni and cheese. The thing about this mac n’ cheese it that it probably tastes like it was actually made in a pineapple under the sea! However, because Spongebob is the shiz, that makes the mac n’ cheese even more awesome. Oh, children, they’re so naive, right? These silly associative conditioning tactics will only work with people who have underdeveloped minds, right? You’d never fall for that trick, would you?

You would. And you do.

Exhibit A: Associative Conditioning on Blogs

In the past week alone, I’ve read at least three blog posts that used associative conditioning. I wrote one myself about Fight Club and Facebook Connect. Matt Cheuvront wrote one about Captain Planet. Katie Wall wrote one on Lauren Fernandez’s blog about Always Sunny in Philadelphia. To the best of my knowledge, every one of these blog posts received a tremendous amount of traffic. It didn’t matter what any of these posts said or the points they tried to teach us, we’d love them no matter what. They could have said marketing is stupid because Captain Planet and Tyler Durden said so, and we’d eat it up.

Why?

Usually when we read a blog post, we’re searching for something that will stimulate us intellectually. If it’s good, we’ll comment, re-tweet it, and love it. If it’s bad, we may not finish reading it.

However, instead of playing to our intellectual senses, these manage to stimulate us emotionally. Whether it causes us to remember something from childhood when we watched Captain Planet, or brings out our fan-dom for one of our favorite television show. Either way, this emotional tug replaces the intellectual desire that we initially wanted.

I’m not saying this isn’t a smart strategy or that the content of these were lacking, I’m just stating the facts: it worked.

Exhibit B: Associative Conditioning in Products

So, naturally, blogs aren’t the only place this happens. Not too long ago, Brooks Brothers introduced a line of suits inspired by Mad Men and used Don Draper himself to help market them. I have no clue how successful these have been, but when you take a show that’s known for it’s 60s style, it has to draw some eyes.

Basically, as the blog posts inhibited the logical side of our brain and stimulated the emotional side, this associative conditioning did the same thing. It makes us not care that Spongebob noodles taste like dirt or that the Mad Men suits cost $200 extra. It’s like a kryptonite that inhibits our powers to sense a deal that makes sense.

Now, although this tactic obviously still works, I’d be very hesitant to use it extensively. Don’t write every blog post and rely on the draw of another cartoon character and don’t base your entire product line on the success of a show or movie.

But hey, you have to admit, we’re all suckers when it comes down to it.

When was the last time you were suckered into buying something or reading something because of associative conditioning?

Image from Flickr user: mollyjolly