How DIYThemes.com Uses Bullshit SEO to Sell Bullshit WordPress Themes

I would have appreciated bigger screenshots but I did have a look at the sites you mention (krispy noms etc) and I see what you mean. I must admit I have never performed such a thorough audit of a wp theme, mainly because I work in-house and we don’t use a blogging platform on your main site. Plus it’s recommended by big names in the industry, but you are right when you say that, at the end of the day, they are simply affiliates (duh)

the next comments duplicate issue is quite bad

I don’t quite get the dl markup, can you make an example? You mean they use definition lists where there is no definition list at all?

anyway it doesn’t really seem worth the price I guess :s

The BS level of Thesis doesn’t even start with SEO BS… and that Krispy Kreme site is a prime example. Thesis is not just loading multiple separate .js files… it’s loading them before the CSS… and while they’re at it, they’re loading more than a dozen stylesheets. Footer.css, headlines.css, thatthingonthesidebar.css…

Is that madness *all* Thesis’ fault? No. Just most of it.

Not that “site speed” would ever hurt anyone’s rankings…  not that pages rendering super slowly in a browser could ever hurt your conversion rate or anything. Go Thesis, go.

Well, dammit, Darren! I just bought Thesis, and I’m still learning its ins & outs. Where the hell were you last week, huh?

A lot of these issues can be overcome with a bit of editing, of course. But it pisses me off to be automatically opted-in to something… more so when that something is self-serving bullshit.

For a free theme, it’s somewhat understandable that the developer would seek some push for his product. Most that I’ve seen, though, have the class to either offer an easy opt-out box or at least make their link unobtrusive. For the price of Thesis, I’d call their actions just plain tacky.

About time there were articles like this, seems every premium WordPress theme released these days includes SEO features that aren’t SEO features!

I’m the developer of the Stallion WordPress SEO theme, http://www.stallion-theme.com/ it’s primarily an SEO theme (I’m an SEO consultant not a theme developer per se, really struggle with the PHP coding) and I challenge anyone to find a WordPress SEO theme with all Stallion’s SEO features plus one more. That confident it’s the best WordPress SEO theme I’ll pay $1,000 to the person who finds a better SEO theme.

As much of a risk as it is to ask a person who just trashed Thesis to review the Stallion theme, I’d love to see it reviewed! See http://wordpress-seo-themes.co.uk/stallion-wordpress-seo-ad-theme-promotion-via-clickbank-affiliates for a way to try Stallion for free to review it. If you need more time for a review (there’s about 9 days left on the temporary Stallion ID above) drop me a comment on one of the sites above.

David

Stallion indirectly promotes MFA-style sites and caters to exactly the type of “marketers” that I can’t stand. I’m tempted to download it, crack the DRM, reroute the license check to a server I control, post the modified theme on all the free file sharing networks, and then remotely skullfuck everyone who installs it.

I can’t thank you enough Darren. I quit using Thesis about 2 years ago, and still to this day people are so worked up over it, and “must” use it.

During the beginning, I used to read DIYTheme’s posts & articles, but I knew they were shit, and I was just an amateur.
I also love the last link posted. You see all of those people just tripping over Derek and the info, and then go offer those crap ideas and techniques to their clients.

Good read, nice to see you moving and shaking.

 Ouch :-) Cracking the DRM and messing with the sites of those who use the cracked version wouldn’t bother me. Those who use cracked software, deserve all they get. Would be interested to see if you can crack the DRM (in a reasonable period of time, no DRM is uncrackable), my eldest son (computer programmer) wrote it and I’m sure he’d enjoy the challenge of hardening the DRM if you find a relatively easy way around it.

To some degree you are right about the MFA sites, it’s so easy to setup it’s used a lot by autobloggers, even added features for them in the latest version (supplying what customers want). However, it was originally (previous version was called Talian 3, 4 and 5) created for my use and I don’t do MFA’s, if I did I’d own a hell of a lot more sites.

Did you install it on a test site, what did you think of the SEO features? Always interested in feedback from actual SEO consultants (so many call themselves SEO’s, but 90% haven’t a clue).

Stallion

I haven’t looked at it, but I can almost guarantee there’s an easy workaround for the DRM (assuming you have the right tools). That’s just the nature of a scripted language like PHP; the functions that check for a valid license key can be found by stepping through the code in a PHP IDE/debugger. Then you just delete them. “Hardening” the DRM for open source PHP applications usually just means obfuscating the code to make this discovery/delete process more difficult.

Some PHP developers go as far as to encrypt their source code, but WordPress Theme consumers expect the ability to edit their own themes. Plus, since WordPress Themes are inherently GPLed, you would be obligated to provide unencrypted source code upon request.

I haven’t looked at it, but I can almost guarantee there’s an easy workaround for the DRM (assuming you have the right tools). That’s just the nature of a scripted language like PHP; the functions that check for a valid license key can be found by stepping through the code in a PHP IDE/debugger. Then you just delete them. “Hardening” the DRM for open source PHP applications usually just means obfuscating the code to make this discovery/delete process more difficult.

Some PHP developers go as far as to encrypt their source code, but WordPress Theme consumers expect the ability to edit their own themes. Plus, since WordPress Themes are inherently GPLed, you would be obligated to provide unencrypted source code upon request.

I’ve got to be honest, I usually like your posts quite a bit but this seems like a bit of a stretch. Yes, Thesis does somethings that I wish it didn’t (almost all of the nofollow stuff) but if that’s the biggest problem you have with the theme, its a hell of a theme.

I don’t care for the Thesis News thing that was added in 1.8.2 but again, that has no impact on SEO.

The SEO advice given on their blog, I’ll admit isn’t useful for me, but again, it has no impact on my SEO.

I use Thesis on all of my sites, plenty of which rank quite well. Chris Pearson is very accommodating to feature/change requests, and I expect only better things from Thesis 2.0. Haters gonna hate, as the saying goes, but I’ve not found a better WordPress theme out there and I’ve tried a TON.

A part of this post seems like misdirected vitriol, particularly in the section “Examples of SEO Bullshit in the Thesis WordPress Theme”. A lot of these issues pertain to WP in general rather than to Thesis:
1. “Post Authors’ links in comments are nofollowed” – Standard WP functionality. If you are talking about links by post authors in comment content, WP hooks a function called ‘wp_rel_nofollow’ to ‘pre_comment_content’, which is applied while building out the comment information. The ‘wp_rel_nofollow’ function adds nofollow attributes to all links. If you are talking about the link to the Post Author’s URL, then WP’s native code adds “external nofollow” in the call to ‘get_comment_author_link’.2. “Next/Previous links point to unrelated content (i.e., posts that are
related chronologically but do not share the same category)” – Standard WP functionality. The native WP functions previous_post_link and next_post_link are category / taxonomy agnostic.3. “Cross-linked posts generate nofollowed internal links as trackbacks” – Again, comments and trackbacks are treated similarly by WP as far as content parsing is concerned, so the links come up with nofollow.

I have never been a Thesis user, but here is some general information about WP extensions in the market today regarding errors:

1. Almost all premium themes explode if you have WP_DEBUG set to true. If you don’t believe me, feel free to install something from Woo or Genesis. Most of the themes in the WP.org repository don’t choke on the debug flag, but some notable ones like Hybrid do. The WPTRT does a pretty good job of gatekeeping by catching these errors upfront, hence the low incidence of such errors there.

2. Pick any popular plugin – AIO SEO, NextGEN, anything. Activate it with WP_DEBUG and you will see tonnes of errors. In fact even if you try activating BuddyPress you will have the same results.

I am not denying any of the points you have made against Thesis. It being a really pricey premium theme that claims to have “airtight SEO” should ideally work on ironing out the kinks in WP. After all, most of the nofollows are added to the links by means of filters. For a full-fledged company building just one theme it should be very easy to have the hooks removed. The fact that they haven’t is just sloppy coding on their part.

However your post seems to imply that these are issues that apply only to Thesis, and that is an obfuscation of the real issue, intentional or otherwise. If you were to direct your post at WP, the powers that be could potentially pay more attention to SEO and make the core of WP more SEO-friendly. That way any theme author would be building themes on good SEO practices without really knowing what they were doing. The way things stand today, every theme built off standard WP functionality will suffer from almost the same SEO issues you are referring to.

What seems like a stretch? The points I was trying to make are:

1. DIYThemes makes false claims about Thesis’s SEO capabilities.
2. DIYThemes publishes bullshit SEO information.
3. DIYThemes uses bullshit SEO (see #1 and #2 above) to generate sales of Thesis.

I went out of my way to provide examples to support my claims, because I want people to realize that this isn’t just another “mofo rant.” These problems are real.

I can appreciate that you disagree with the overall tone of this post, but I don’t think that makes it “a stretch.”

Asked my programmer son how hard it would be to crack his DRM and he says if you are very good possibly a few hours. So it would depend on how good you are at cracking software and what you consider easy.

Still would be very interested in your feedback on Stallion, if you used Stallion it would fix some of the inherent SEO mistakes built into WordPress core and most WordPress themes. For example the theme on this site has the following SEO mistakes.

1. Uses rel=”nofollow” on comment author links and body of comment links. Stallion has the option to turn off the ability for commenter’s to add their URL + the author links are not links, Stallion uses post forms for author links. There’s also an option that turns off WordPress core function that turns a URL into a clickable link with a rel=”nofollow” link, leaves the link as text (no link benefit deleting nofollow links).

I’m assuming you know nofollow links deletes link benefit.

2. Home page link with anchor text Home.

3. Uses H2 headers for menu headings like “Search the Site”, “Other Shit” etc… which wastes headers. Stallion doesn’t use headers for the menu headings.

4. The ads on your sidebar uses rel=”nofollow” (as above). Stallion has built in link cloaking, could serve those links using javascript.

Not an SEO issue, but a potential security issue, there’s 2 sets of wp_generator, one must be hard coded into the theme, the other core WordPress. Stallion has an option to disable wp_generator plus many other functions loaded by wp_head.

Did you know you have four text links (home, Twitter etc…) that have no anchor text? Looks like they are using CSS to make background images clickable, but with no anchor text that’s not a good SEO idea.

David

nofollow deletes link benefit, any WordPress theme (or plugin) that adds more nofollow links is not an SEO theme/plugin.

David

First of all, I’d like to defer the rebuttal of your arguments to Thesis’s mother:

“If all the other themes jumped off a bridge, would you do that too?”

Second of all, you downplayed a very significant piece of information, which is: the themes from the WordPress.org repository are quality-checked by a team of volunteer WordPress contributors, and therefore, the repository themes generate fewer errors (all newly-submitted themes are required to produce 0 error notices).

So let’s take a step back and compare Thesis to TwentyEleven (the default theme in WP 3.2).

Thesis:

$164
Proprietary license restrictions (client sites require extra licenses)
Generates hundreds of PHP and WP error notices
Forces an RSS feed of crappy information into your Dashboard
Struggles to maintain compatibility with WordPress core
Doesn’t support newest WP features
Totally ignores basic WordPress best practices
No quality check
Poorly-documented code

TwentyEleven:

$0
Unlimited use
No error notices
RSS feed in Dashboard is optional and configurable
Impeccable compatibility with WordPress core (obviously)
Supports full range of newest WordPress features
Follows basic WordPress best practices
Quality checked by team of WP developers
Extensive code documentation

With this comparison as a starting point, do you really think it’s too much to ask for Thesis to have “airtight SEO”? Even if they didn’t make the SEO claims…what the fuck am I paying $164 for? Chris Pearson’s car payment?

Here are some additional thoughts to consider:

1. According to Chris Pearson himself, Thesis is an independent software platform that does not inherit from WordPress core. It’s stated in his Mixergy interview. By his own words and actions, Chris Pearson has effectively disqualified Thesis from the “that’s just a WordPress problem” excuse. Therefore, my vitriol has been correctly and fairly channeled exclusively towards DIYThemes in this post.

2. Thesis does not follow WordPress Theme conventions. Theme template files do not exist. Index.php acts as an entry point for all page requests, and everything else is handled internally by unconventional functions and include files. Unlike most themes, Thesis ignores many of the WP core functions, opting instead to use copy+pasted+modified+renamed versions. In other words, a theme that ignores WP protocol and implements a proprietary mechanism to replace core functionality…has nothing to blame but itself when that proprietary mechanism breaks.

Second of all, you downplayed a very significant piece of information, which is: the themes from the WordPress.org
repository are quality-checked by a team of volunteer WordPress
contributors, and therefore, the repository themes generate fewer errors
(all newly-submitted themes are required to produce 0 error notices).

I didn’t downplay it at all. I did state that the WPTRT does pretty good
gate-keeping to keep the repository hosted themes clean. Maybe I should
have said it louder, or written it bolder.

Proprietary license restrictions (client sites require extra licenses)

Thesis’ PHP is released under GPL. There is nothing that prevents an enterprising developer from using all of Thesis’ PHP, cleaning up the notices, using it with home-grown CSS. It is a lot of work, but I am guessing a developer’s license is normally bought by someone who isn’t afraid to muck around in code a bit.

With this comparison as a starting point, do you really think it’s too
much to ask for Thesis to have “airtight SEO”? Even if they didn’t make
the SEO claims…what the fuck am I paying $164 for? Chris Pearson’s car
payment?

Umm… I thought Thesis has a pretty good options panel – isn’t that what people are mostly paying for? Of course, there are free themes that do more extensive options panels (e.g. Weaver, Suffusion) and paid ones too (Headway, Frugal), but wasn’t Thesis one of the first to tackle options head-on? And aren’t people also paying for support? Again, I am challenged here by my lack of intimate familiarity with Thesis’ ecosystem so I will defer to you, but I thought that is what its USP was and that the SEO and typography are incidental “benefits”.

But you seem to be sidestepping my point here. Try *any* premium theme. I am confident that all of them will generate hundreds of notices (okay, some will generate fewer notices, but they will have much fewer options). Even if you pay as much as you do for Thesis for another premium theme you will end up with loads of cruft in your logs. Does this mean that none of these themes have any quality control? I doubt it. Most developers don’t even look at the WP theme review guidelines until they submit their theme. And there have been several battles on the reviewers’ list fought by indignant developers about standards and methods being shoved down developers’ throats (I believe you have been at the centre of one of them yourself). So it is quite natural for the premium theme market that doesn’t release themes through the repository to completely bypass the guidelines.

It’s stated in his Mixergy interview. By his own words and actions,
Chris Pearson has effectively disqualified Thesis from the “that’s just a
WordPress problem” excuse.

That Mixergy interview is more than a year old. After that a lot of water has flown under the bridge, including the GPL’ing of Thesis’ PHP. The GPL’ing has essentially made Pearson accept (albeit not explicitly) that Thesis is a derivative work of WP and it gives him every right to complain about this being a WordPress problem.

And I am pretty sure the other big-name non-GPL premium themes that use the same standard WP calls that Thesis (and every other GPL/non-GPL free/premium WP theme on the planet) does will fall into the same SEO traps if they aren’t cautious about unhooking the filters.

So, to summarize:

1. Almost all repository-hosted themes have most of the SEO shortcomings you listed, because as I have pointed out, each of them has to adhere to standard WP calls and the calls themselves produce sub-optimal SEO code.

2. Several premium themes have the same SEO shortcomings – they try to piggyback on standard WP code and if they overlook WP’s nofollow hooks.

3. Almost all (if not all) premium themes will blow up on a debug trace.

Issues 1 and 2 above can be fixed by WP simply providing a handful of options in their Settings → Privacy section. That is why this is more of a core WP issue than anything else.

Issue 3 is a malaise that is just out there among premium themes.

So wouldn’t it seem that you are biased against Thesis?

Thanks for the flat-out lie about the Hybrid theme.  Hybrid generates zero debug errors.  It’s kind of a requirement for being on the WordPress.org theme repository.  In the off chance that it does generate a debug message, it’s an extremely rare case and hasn’t been caught by myself, any of my users, or the theme review team.

I didn’t downplay it at all. I did state that the WPTRT does pretty good gate-keeping to keep the repository hosted themes clean. Maybe I should have said it louder, or written it bolder.

After rereading it…yeah, I originally read it through opinionated eyes. I concede.

Thesis’ PHP is released under GPL. There is nothing that prevents an enterprising developer from using all of Thesis’ PHP, cleaning up the notices, using it with home-grown CSS. It is a lot of work, but I am guessing a developer’s license is normally bought by someone who isn’t afraid to muck around in code a bit.

I really don’t want to open the GPL can of worms unless I have to. What you’ve said is true, however it doesn’t change my point: in terms of licensing, WP.org themes are better, because they are 100% GPLed without any extra work required.

Umm… I thought Thesis has a pretty good options panel – isn’t that what people are mostly paying for? Of course, there are free themes that do more extensive options panels (e.g. Weaver, Suffusion) and paid ones too (Headway, Frugal), but wasn’t Thesis one of the first to tackle options head-on?

People are paying for a bunch of empty promises. Also, 33% goes to the used-car salesman who closed the sale. But seriously…the options panels are so poorly designed that it actually takes less time to learn PHP and change it by hand.

And aren’t people also paying for support?

Yes. Thesis does offer support, and I’m sure many people consider that a selling point. However, consider this angle: by relying heavily on non-standard PHP code and WP file structures, Thesis basically cuts off its users from the general WordPress community. If you have a problem with Twenty Eleven, there are thousands of people who will help you solve it for free. If you have a problem with Thesis, there’s only a few people who even have the necessary knowledge to help you. Basically, for all practical purposes, Twenty Eleven and Thesis both come with free support.

But you seem to be sidestepping my point here. Try *any* premium theme. I am confident that all of them will generate hundreds of notices (okay, some will generate fewer notices, but they will have much fewer options).

That’s not a point, that’s a distraction…and Thesis’s mother already addressed it. Even if it were a valid point, it still wouldn’t counter mine, which was: in terms of PHP and WP error notices, WP.org themes are better. If all the other themes on the market sold me on bullshit, I’d flame them too. Until then…irrelevant.

Even if you pay as much as you do for Thesis for another premium theme you will end up with loads of cruft in your logs. Does this mean that none of these themes have any quality control? I doubt it. Most developers don’t even look at the WP theme review guidelines until they submit their theme.

More irrelevant distractions.

And there have been several battles on the reviewers’ list fought by indignant developers about standards and methods being shoved down developers’ throats (I believe you have been at the centre of one of them yourself).

Irrelevant, but I’ll address it. My “battle” with the WPTRT mailing list wasn’t related to errors, code quality, or standards and methods. It was (or at least started as) a debate over whether or not output buffering has any legitimate purpose in a WP Theme. Strangely, at no point in that debate did anyone try to argue that PHP errors enhance the user experience.

So it is quite natural for the premium theme market that doesn’t release themes through the repository to completely bypass the guidelines.

Sure, and it’s quite natural for people to loot during riots and roll through stop signs when no one’s looking. So what? Are you implying that it’s okay for premium WordPress themes to be low-quality because no one enforces the WP Theme guidelines?

That Mixergy interview is more than a year old. After that a lot of water has flown under the bridge, including the GPL’ing of Thesis’ PHP. The GPL’ing has essentially made Pearson accept (albeit not explicitly) that Thesis is a derivative work of WP and it gives him every right to complain about this being a WordPress problem.

LOL! Seriously? You’re a DIYThemes employee, aren’t you? That interview represents a mentality that obviously doesn’t change overnight, and even if it did, how does that have any effect on the code? Are you saying Chris Pearson–in the last year–adopted the GPL, embraced the WordPress philosophy, and rewrote Thesis from the ground up to make it compatible with the WP conventions? (HINT: extremely unlikely, especially considering Thesis hasn’t had any feature releases during that year). If you’re just here to drop an affiliate link or something, then just do it, but please don’t waste my readers’ time with nonsense like this.

And I am pretty sure the other big-name non-GPL premium themes that use the same standard WP calls that Thesis (and every other GPL/non-GPL free/premium WP theme on the planet) does will fall into the same SEO traps if they aren’t cautious about unhooking the filters.

Um…maybe you missed this part of my response earlier:

2. Thesis does not follow WordPress Theme conventions. Theme template files do not exist. Index.php acts as an entry point for all page requests, and everything else is handled internally by unconventional functions and include files. Unlike most themes, Thesis ignores many of the WP core functions, opting instead to use copy+pasted+modified+renamed versions. In other words, a theme that ignores WP protocol and implements a proprietary mechanism to replace core functionality…has nothing to blame but itself when that proprietary mechanism breaks.

So, to summarize:

1. Almost all repository-hosted themes have most of the SEO shortcomings you listed, because as I have pointed out, each of them has to adhere to standard WP calls and the calls themselves produce sub-optimal SEO code.

Again…irrelevant. WP.org themes could fuckin’ cause cancer for all I care. That still wouldn’t make DIYThemes’s SEO advice valid, it wouldn’t fix the shitty code in my websites, and it wouldn’t put the $164 back in my bank account.

2. Several premium themes have the same SEO shortcomings – they try to piggyback on standard WP code and if they overlook WP’s nofollow hooks.

[bzzz]

“Darren…”

“What is…an irrelevant sentence fragment?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll take ‘Bullshit Arguments’ for 800, please…”

3. Almost all (if not all) premium themes will blow up on a debug trace.

Ohhhh! Well then shit…I take it all back. I <3 Thesis foar evar!

Issues 1 and 2 above can be fixed by WP simply providing a handful of options in their Settings → Privacy section. That is why this is more of a core WP issue than anything else.

You have amazing insight on this…considering you haven’t seen Thesis’s code.

Issue 3 is a malaise that is just out there among premium themes.

So wouldn’t it seem that you are biased against Thesis?

I *AM* BIASED AGAINST THESIS! That’s the reason why I wrote this post! If any of the other premium themes want a “fair share” of this rant, they can take a Thesis-sized shit on my website and charge me $164 for it!

I guess accusing me of a “flat-out lie” is one way of asking me to report bugs. Being a developer myself I do sympathize with the impulse to jump at a person who simply shoves a claim saying “You have bugs” without proof to back it up – I normally do the same to anyone making a statement of this sort about code I have written.

My original comment stemmed from lingering memories of Hybrid 0.8. That version was approved by the WPTRT in July 2010 in spite of having quite a few debug errors. It stayed as the live version for close to 8 months,  much to my chagrin, because it seemed like a blot on what was a perfectly good framework.

Version 0.9 rectified all those issues, so yes, it was inappropriate of me to say that Hybrid chokes on WP_DEBUG, and I retract my statement.

However, the errors are quite easy to reproduce, a “flat-out lie” my statement isn’t. I simply did the following:

1. Downloaded the current version from the repository (0.9) and activated it.

2. My widget areas were all blank. So I added each of these widgets that come with the theme: Bookmarks, Nav Menu, Search, Authors, Pages, Categories, Tags and Archives. I just added the widgets without saving any of them individually.

3. I then reloaded my page and each of these gave me an error. Mind you, the errors do go away if you save the widgets, so this might classify as what you call an “extremely rare case”, but the fact is that the standard WP widgets (which you replace with yours) don’t need any saving: you can add the widgets, then reload your front-end and all the widgets display correctly. In Hybrid they don’t.

This is probably an oversight given the quality of your code. Each widget produces the right output, but prefixed with a deluge of errors. Of course, the WPTRT wouldn’t catch these errors because I don’t believe
custom widgets are a part of its testing protocol (though they should
be).

If there is a later version of the theme that fixes this issue, I am not aware of it (nor do I care) because that version is not repository-hosted.

Nonetheless, I consider Hybrid to be the best framework available and I do find myself activating the theme now and then to see how you have implemented certain features. So it is a bit surprising that this whole batch of errors I found have never been reported by users on your forum or caught by you.

Since I’m not a blogger (not frequent, anyways), an SEO, or a marketer, I’ll only speak strictly from a developer’s standpoint. I am a full time WP developer, and I use Thesis extensively. I’ll be as concise as possible:

1. The 1.8.2 update coinciding with WP 3.2

Adding something like custom post types, background changers, etc have nothing to do with 3.2. In fact, CPTs were introduced in 3.0 and backgrounds are a function / CSS issue. CPTs are intended to be specialized, so including them at the theme level wouldn’t make any sense. However, the version of jQuery that came bundled in WP went from 1.4.4 in v 3.1 to 1.6.1 in v 3.2. That’s the compatibility issue that was addressed, since certain jQuery functions had to be changed. This applied to any and all themes / plugins, WP hosted or not.

2. Dashboard widget

I hate it. I hate all of them, in fact. I usually code client sites to remove anything unnecessary, whether it’s from a plugin, theme, or WP core. However, the widget itself is pulling from the DIY Themes RSS feed (line 111 of admin/admin.php) so that would be updated as new posts are published. Not that I give a shit about the posts myself, but that’s a matter of taste. And hiding any of them is a matter of opening the Screen Options tab on the main dashboard.

3.  Inclusion in WP.org repository

The theme repo (which those guys do an excellent job) is for free themes only. So you won’t find any of the “premium” themes in there (yes, there is a commercial section, but it’s a separate listing are to my knowledge aren’t reviewed other than for GPL compliance.). Yes, I wish there was an auto-upgrade feature from the dashboard, and my understanding is that will be included in the next release.

4. URL structure

Using Matt’s site as an example, the home link doesn’t contain the trailing slash, however, all the other links do. And depending on how he put the menu together (since it’s a WP feature, not a Thesis-specific featured, also introduced in WP 3.0) it could be Matt’s oversight / indifference.

5. Next / Previous Links

That’s a core WP function, nothing Thesis specific about it at all. There are filters if a user wants to modify that to be category-specific, or remove them all together.

6. Sidebar heading type

The markup for all widgets is standardized in the function call. Thesis uses H3, Genesis uses H4, Headway uses some weird “leaf” setup that makes absolutely no sense to me (widget titles are wrapped in span classes within LI classes). But when creating the widget area in any theme function, you have to decide how to wrap both the entire widget itself and the title therein.

As for the other things you’ve brought up, I’m not an SEO so I don’t know how / why any of that shit matters. I know many of the follow / nofollow setups are options within the Thesis settings panel itself.

If you’re concerned about their marketing or how some of their affiliates handle themselves, there is an argument to be made. But many of the code-related things you’ve outlined aren’t in any way related to that argument. Genesis (a 100% GPL framework that I use as well, $300 framework + child theme license) has their own custom non-core WP functions. Headway ($164 dev license) seems to do everything sideways that, while not my preferred method, people seem to like. So what’s the real beef here? They have a 30 day money back guarantee. Get a refund and move the fuck on.

Maybe I need to make my point a different way:

“Internal links point to non-canonical URLs.” – extremely little SEO impact given that Thesis also implements canonical tags on each page. Admittedly something that could be improved upon though.

“Comment Permalinks (e.g., /category/post.html#comment-1234) are nofollowed.” – annoying and not what I would prefer, but again, very little SEO impact.

“Also, note how the Next Comments link is a normal (i.e., followed) link, despite the fact that it links to a duplicate of the entire post (only the comments are different).” – this is standard WordPress behavior and is also solved by the canonical tags.

“Post Authors’ links in comments are nofollowed.” – Another annoyance that I would prefer be changed but minor if any SEO impact.

“Next/Previous links point to unrelated content (i.e., posts that are
related chronologically but do not share the same category).” – once again, standard WordPress behavior and is actually quite useful for you know, users.

“Sidebars arbitrarily use h3 tags to mark up headings.” – no SEO impact”Comments arbitrarily use definition list markup (e.g., dl, dt, dd tags).” – minor if any SEO impact.

“Cross-linked posts generate nofollowed internal links as trackbacks.” an annoyance yes, but again this is standard WordPress (not Thesis) behavior and you can simply delete the trackbacks if you want.

Out of your 8 SEO related criticisms, not a single one has major SEO impact, and by my count at least 3 are actually critiques of WordPresss itself that you seem to be faulting Thesis for not correcting.

So to your three points above, #1 is false unless you have other examples not covered in this post. #2 is irrelevant to the theme’s performance, so even if I were to agree (there are definitely some useless posts IMO) it doesn’t impact MY sites running Thesis. #3 relies on #1 (which I deem false) and therefore is also false.

That’s just an ignorant blanket statement. And since you’re apparently a theme developer yourself, trying to get attention for your theme by participating in this discussion, I would avoid making those kinds of remarks.

Obligatory disclaimer: You consider yourself an SEO guru and I don’t consider myself one, so I fully accept your assertions about Thesis’ blog having BS advice on SEO. No arguments. I also assume that all points you have made regarding SEO failures in Thesis’ code are accurate.

The rest of my comment deals mainly with Thesis implementation, not its blog.

I *AM* BIASED AGAINST THESIS! That’s the reason why I wrote this post!
If any of the other premium themes want a “fair share” of this rant,
they can take a Thesis-sized shit on my website and charge me $164 for
it!

Ah, sorry – I didn’t realize this post was meant to be a harangue on Thesis that brooks no moderation. Based on your post on the WPTRT mailing list claiming The post addresses real issues with a well-known commercial theme, and I
think at least a few people on this list will find it very interesting, but I was mistaken in the intent of your invitation. I thought it might be prudent to point out aspects that are core WP issues in general, but I guess it wasn’t something you wanted to know or you wanted your readers to know. As another user on the mailing list pointed out to you, your post might have been relevant or even helpful if you had taken the initiative to illustrate how to fix these issues. But judging from your response I now understand that this was indeed intended to be a barf-fest, nothing else.

Otherwise, given that the WPTRT folks know that the repository themes are better coded, whatever was the point of self-promotion on that list at the cost of trashing a commercial theme? It is not like people adhering to standards would have gained any insights from your post. The best you could have got was, “Let’s pat our backs, because Darren Slatten thinks Thesis sucks at SEO and we don’t use Thesis.” Oh wait, I guess you already sent a reply to someone who told you to buzz off, saying If you’re not interested, don’t read it. Simple as that.

In any case, I did grab a copy of Thesis’ PHP code and I see what you mean about Thesis duplicating a WP environment. For comments it does this:

    function text($comment) {
        $approved = ($comment['comment']->comment_approved == ’0′) ? ” . __(‘Your comment is awaiting moderation.’, ‘thesis’) . “n” : ”;
        return $approved . apply_filters(‘thesis_comment_text’, get_comment_text()); #filter
    }

add_filter(‘thesis_comment_text’, ‘wptexturize’);
add_filter(‘thesis_comment_text’, ‘convert_chars’);
add_filter(‘thesis_comment_text’, ‘make_clickable’, 9);
add_filter(‘thesis_comment_text’, ‘force_balance_tags’, 25);
add_filter(‘thesis_comment_text’, ‘convert_smilies’, 20);
add_filter(‘thesis_comment_text’, ‘wpautop’, 30);

That is essentially the same set of filters that WP applies to a comment, except that WP applies it using the ‘comment_text’ hook, whereas Thesis decided that the wheel wasn’t round enough, so it painted the old wheel red and said that they reinvented it.

LOL! Seriously? You’re a DIYThemes employee, aren’t you? That interview
represents a mentality that obviously doesn’t change overnight, and even
if it did, how does that have any effect on the code? Are you saying
Chris Pearson–in the last year–adopted the GPL, embraced the WordPress
philosophy, and rewrote Thesis from the ground up to make it compatible
with the WP conventions? (HINT: extremely unlikely, especially
considering Thesis hasn’t had any feature releases during that year). If
you’re just here to drop an affiliate link or something, then just do
it, but please don’t waste my readers’ time with nonsense like this.

Seriously? Grow up. After all the bitching on your part the best you can come up with is that I am a DIYThemes employee? Is that the limit of your rational discussion skills? Quite simply, if you have the right to rant as a Thesis customer and then invite people on an open-source forum to read your rant, I have the right to present an opinion as a person who finds your rant half-arsed: it doesn’t matter who employs me or who I hang out with. You can draw any inferences you want, but I am not a professional WP developer of any sort, FYI, nor do I hang out with Chris Pearson and his ilk.

The fact is that the GPL license is viral – it doesn’t matter if the developer believes in it or not. Even if Pearson hates GPL’s guts, his theme is legally a derivative of WP. Forget legality – the code above tells you how much of a derivative it is. Who cares if he has embraced WordPress philosophy? It doesn’t matter an iota that his index.php is merely an entry point for the rest of his framework – you could still take his theme, create a child theme, and add category.php, which will take precedence if you are viewing a category.

It does probably verbatim what WP does and even invokes all the WP standard functions (which has been my point throughout, in case you failed to grasp it, or shoved it aside as “irrelevant”). It is merely a proprietary wrapper around standard code. If Pearson was really as SEO-savvy as you profess to be, he would have simply added this:

remove_filter(‘pre_comment_content’, ‘wp_rel_nofollow’);

… with a check for post author. This would have worked just fine even in his “proprietary” framework. Given that he isn’t doing this is no crime (lack of smartness is not a crime, the last time I checked) – though IMO the standard WP functionality should have removed the filter automatically for post authors. But I guess this is a lose-lose situation for Pearson with you as the judge: if he applies this filter you might accuse him of not adhering to WP standards, and if he sticks with the standard WP functionality, you accuse him of not doing his SEO properly.

Issues 1 and 2 above can be fixed by WP simply providing a
handful of options in their Settings → Privacy section. That is why this
is more of a core WP issue than anything else.

You have amazing insight on this…considering you haven’t seen Thesis’s code.

At least in this regard I can say that I now have looked at the code. I also looked at the code for the way it generates Previous and Next links – very much standard WP. So I stick by my assertion. If you want this fixed and are trying to involve the WPTRT, you should ideally take this to the core developers of WP rather than blame every theme that doesn’t do this right. That way it will be fixed for every theme. Otherwise your post sounds very much like a child’s tantrum with an overdose of expletives.

1. Almost all repository-hosted themes have most of the SEO shortcomings
you listed, because as I have pointed out, each of them has to adhere
to standard WP calls and the calls themselves produce sub-optimal SEO
code.

Again…irrelevant. WordPress.org
themes could fuckin’ cause cancer for all I care. That still wouldn’t
make DIYThemes’s SEO advice valid, it wouldn’t fix the shitty code in my
websites, and it wouldn’t put the $164 back in my bank account.

Irrelevant how? Firstly I never mentioned about DIYThemes’ SEO advice – just their code. Again, refer to the code and suggestions above. If you believe that WP’s tackling this in core will not improve things across the board, you have no idea what you are talking about. If this is fixed in the core, sure as hell it will fix the “shitty code” in your websites.

Also, out of curiosity, what do custom post types have to do with Thesis? Are you saying that I cannot define a custom post type at all in Thesis? Even with a child theme? Or with a plugin such as “Custom Post Types UI”? And why should a theme provide pre-packaged Custom Post Types by default? Whatever it is that you are smoking, it sure is strong stuff. And don’t even think of trying your fancy “Thesis’ mother” argument here stating something like “so what if other themes don’t do it” – it isn’t even in the same league of relevance.

Honestly though, this is not my battle to fight. If any of the Thesis guys are subscribers here they might care to respond. As I have pointed out, almost everything in the “Examples of SEO Bullshit in the Thesis WordPress Theme” is misdirected hokum, and quite frankly I am beginning to question your credentials as a person qualified to provide any opinions on WP theme development (either on the WPTRT list or otherwise).

Do a little research, start at : http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/ (Matt Cutts works for Google).

So what happens when you have a page with “ten PageRank points” and ten outgoing links, and five of those links are nofollowed? Let’s leave aside the decay factor to focus on the core part of the question. Originally, the five links without nofollow would have flowed two points of PageRank each (in essence, the nofollowed links didn’t count toward the denominator when dividing PageRank by the outdegree of the page). More than a year ago, Google changed how the PageRank flows so that the five links without nofollow would flow one point of PageRank each.

Anyone making a theme or a plugin that adds MORE nofollow links is not creating an SEO theme or plugin because nofollow damages a sites SEO. It’s bad enough WordPress core includes nofollow links, SEO themes/plugins should be removing nofollow links NOT adding more.

I’m getting sick to death of having to explain this to people online, you’d think two years after Google pretty much announced nofollow no longer does what nofollow was designed to do the forums would be up to date.

I don’t expect the average theme developer to take nofollow into account, however if they call the theme an SEO theme and they haven’t tackled nofollow it’s not really an SEO theme since nofollow is the biggest SEO problem with WordPress today. Everything else SEO wise in comparison is minor issues, WordPress core is pretty good SEO wise, many times better than any other CMS I’ve looked at.

Does the fact I develop an SEO theme mean my information isn’t valid? I’ve worked as an SEO consultant for about a decade and have spent all that time testing SEO theories.

David

I appreciate your thorough response, but it’s flawed in a couple ways:

1. It’s based on your personal opinion regarding what does or doesn’t affect SEO.

2. It ignores the fact that DIYThemes claims Thesis offers “airtight SEO.”

You see…I don’t have to prove whether or not Thesis’s SEO imperfections will have a major impact on SEO–all I have to prove is that the imperfections exist. When someone says something is “airtight,” that means air can’t get in or out–it doesn’t mean “only a small amount of air can get in.”

Here’s an analogy:

DIY Chemical Warfare Depot:  “Our competitors offer free gas masks, but they notoriously leak. If you’re serious about not inhaling poisonous gas…you need the Thesis gas mask! It costs $164 more than the free alternatives, but the good news is…it’s airtight!”

Darren Slatten:  “Well…that’s a pretty steep price difference, but I certainly don’t want to inhale any poisonous gas, so…SOLD!”

[later]

Darren Slatten:  “It smells like mustard gas in here. Wait a minute…this mask isn’t airtight! What a bunch of bullshit! Hey everybody, don’t shop at DIY Chemical Warfare Depot; their masks leak!”

Ben Cook: “True, their masks do leak…but so what? The free masks leak too. Plus, the Thesis gas mask only has minor leaks. I agree that mustard-induced boils are a nuisance, but take comfort in the fact that there are no confirmed deaths caused by these leaks.”

SEO Mofo – you are the man.  Correct as usual!  :)

I do welcome bug reports.  But, I’m struggling to reproduce step 2 because I don’t know how to add a widget to a sidebar without saving the widget.  WordPress auto-saves widgets when they’re first added to a sidebar.

Nevertheless, I cannot reproduce any errors following your steps.

But, I’m struggling to reproduce step 2 because I don’t know how to add a widget to a sidebar without saving the widget.

Ah, I see now. You can add a widget to the sidebar without saving provided it is in your “Inactive Widgets” area, because the widget has already been saved.

When I activated Hybrid I had one of each of your widgets sitting in the “Inactive Widgets” area – probably I created them when I had version 0.8 installed, then they got marked as inactive when I changed themes (the new theme didn’t have a sidebar called “Primary”). I dragged the inactive widgets back to the sidebar and since their settings were already saved in the older version I had to do nothing. They all blew up.

I concur that this is a corner case and I can see how it wouldn’t be caught in testing. It is still quite simple to fix though, but it is entirely your call if you want to invest time into it. I just don’t use the theme enough, so seeing it generate errors when I was not doing anything weird or non-standard was quite off-putting.

1. You can nitpick the specific details all you want. It won’t change the fact that DIYThemes released an announcement called “Thesis 1.8.2 Brings You Full Compatibility with WordPress 3.2″ that accomplished 2 things: fixed an admin panel that few people realized was broken (0 gain) and forced their blog feed into the single most visible space in the entire admin area, without providing any convenient way to remove it (net loss). And honestly, I’m not sure where you’re getting the jQuery thing from. I do a full directory differencing with each new release, and I don’t remember seeing anything new related to jQuery. Even if you’re right about everything you said, I don’t see how that changes my point. Thesis has basically been stagnant for almost a year. When the WordPress core goes through 2 feature updates and Thesis gets 0…that’s just ridiculous.

2. Adding display=”none” doesn’t change the fact that my server is pulling in a remote XML feed that I didn’t ask for. There’s no excuse for the RSS feed.

3. I’m not too concerned about updates–they rarely occur and when they do…things might be worse than before.

4. No…I’ve already discovered the source of the error, and it’s definitely in Thesis’s code.

5. If I wanted a Theme that provides default functionality, I would have paid the default price ($0). Thesis markets itself as “premium” but provides standard functionality. That’s the problem.

6. Not acceptable, for the same reasons in #5. If you tell people your Theme is fuckin amazing…be amazing. Don’t be like everything else. (BTW…the h3 tags are not consistently implemented in the Thesis widgets, and some do not use the before and after parameters at all.)

30 day guarantee:

Unfortunately, I bought Thesis in 2009. And 30 days isn’t enough time to realize that Thesis won’t be updated for another 4 months.

Move the fuck on:

That wouldn’t help anyone but DIYThemes and its affiliates–the very group of people I resent for using deceptive marketing tactics on me. In other words…no.

Ah, sorry – I didn’t realize this post was meant to be a harangue on Thesis that brooks no moderation.

LOL…wut?

Based on your post on the WPTRT mailing list claiming “The post addresses real issues with a well-known commercial theme, and I think at least a few people on this list will find it very interesting”, but I was mistaken in the intent of your invitation. I thought it might be prudent to point out aspects that are core WP issues in general, but I guess it wasn’t something you wanted to know or you wanted your readers to know.

No, I think you got it right. I wanted people like you to head over here and try to prove me wrong. Thanks for coming.

I thought it might be prudent to point out aspects that are core WP issues in general…

I’ll try one more time to explain why most of your arguments are irrelevant. See if you can follow this:

1.  Many WordPress Themes are free.

2.  The free Themes on WordPress.org must adhere to the guidelines established by the WPTRT.

3.  The guidelines require Themes to use standard WordPress functionality. For example, to get a comment author link, Themes use get_comment_author_link(), which is hard-coded with the rel=”nofollow” attribute.

4.  Commercial Themes do not have to follow WordPress standards.

5.  Commercial Themes do not have to use functions like get_comment_author_link().

6.  Commercial Themes do not have to hard-code rel=”nofollow” attributes into their comment author links.

8.  Some commercial WordPress Themes cost a *lot* of money.

9.  Some consumers pay a *lot* of money for commercial WordPress Themes, because they believe the claims made by the Theme’s developers and/or marketers.

10. In my particular experience, the Theme was Thesis, and the claims included the phrase “airtight SEO”.

11. I believed the claims were true, so I paid a *lot* of money for Thesis.

12. The claims were actually *not* true.

13. At least one example of “non-airtight SEO” is found on line 238 in lib/classes/comments.php, which calls get_comment_author_link()–even though it is *not* required to do so.

14. DIYThemes had the ability to change some part of Thesis for Version 1.8.2.

15. DIYThemes decided that the best way to spend their development resources was not to fix the SEO issues, but to add their RSS feed to the Thesis Dashboard.

16. When compared to free Themes, Thesis does not even come close to justifying its $164 price tag.

…but I guess it wasn’t something you wanted to know or you wanted your readers to know.

Know what? That your arguments are invalid?

As another user on the mailing list pointed out to you, your post might have been relevant or even helpful if you had taken the initiative to illustrate how to fix these issues. But judging from your response I now understand that this was indeed intended to be a barf-fest, nothing else.

Actually, my original post *does* contain information about how to fix Thesis. I didn’t push the issue with “another user” because I accepted his oversight as the result of my poor delivery. Yours, however, is inexcusable.

Otherwise, given that the WPTRT folks know that the repository themes are better coded, whatever was the point of self-promotion on that list at the cost of trashing a commercial theme?

Self-promotion usually implies the person is receiving some kind of benefit. Full disclosure: I’m not receiving any benefit whatsoever. This isn’t even my blog. The point was to warn consumers not to make the same mistake I did. In fact, I’ve pretty much guaranteed that no one will buy Thesis through my affiliate ID–should I decide to become a liar in the future.

It is not like people adhering to standards would have gained any insights from your post. The best you could have got was, “Let’s pat our backs, because Darren Slatten thinks Thesis sucks at SEO and we don’t use Thesis.” Oh wait, I guess you already sent a reply to someone who told you to buzz off, saying “If you’re not interested, don’t read it. Simple as that.”

Maybe *you* didn’t gain any insight, but considering your history of invalid reasoning and poor reading comprehension, I’m not surprised. The mailing lists are publicly available to everyone, so…I don’t understand why you keep bringing it up like you’ve courageously hacked Skynet to bring us this top-secret information. Oh and of course…irrelevant.

Seriously? Grow up. After all the bitching on your part the best you can come up with is that I am a DIYThemes employee? Is that the limit of your rational discussion skills?

What I meant was: your perspective is obviously skewed in favor of Thesis, so either you have some kind of affiliation you’re not disclosing or you’re dumb.

Quite simply, if you have the right to rant as a Thesis customer and then invite people on an open-source forum to read your rant, I have the right to present an opinion as a person who finds your rant half-arsed: it doesn’t matter who employs me or who I hang out with. You can draw any inferences you want, but I am not a professional WP developer of any sort, FYI, nor do I hang out with Chris Pearson and his ilk.

Cool story, bro.

The fact is that the GPL license is viral – it doesn’t matter if the developer believes in it or not. Even if Pearson hates GPL’s guts, his theme is legally a derivative of WP. Forget legality – the code above tells you how much of a derivative it is. Who cares if he has embraced WordPress philosophy? It doesn’t matter an iota that his index.php is merely an entry point for the rest of his framework – you could still take his theme, create a child theme, and add category.php, which will take precedence if you are viewing a category.

Ahhhh, you got me! For a second there, I thought you were going to make a point…but turns out…you just wanted to show off the fact that you, like, *know* things…things about WordPress and GPL and all types of ill shit.

It does probably verbatim what WP does and even invokes all the WP standard functions (which has been my point throughout, in case you failed to grasp it, or shoved it aside as “irrelevant”). It is merely a proprietary wrapper around standard code.

Wait…I’m confused…I thought *I* was the one arguing that Thesis is extremely expensive but not extremely better than free themes? You’re saying that renaming WP functions to include the word “thesis” does in fact make it worth $164?

If Pearson was really as SEO-savvy as you profess to be, he would have simply added this:
remove_filter(‘pre_comment_content’, ‘wp_rel_nofollow’);

… with a check for post author. This would have worked just fine even in his “proprietary” framework.

*gasp*  Wow…is there no end to your knowledge of WordPress…stuff?

Given that he isn’t doing this is no crime (lack of smartness is not a crime, the last time I checked)

No, but it’s a crime to sell something to someone at a price point that is unjustifiably much higher than the market value. SNAP!

But I guess this is a lose-lose situation for Pearson with you as the judge: if he applies this filter you might accuse him of not adhering to WP standards, and if he sticks with the standard WP functionality, you accuse him of not doing his SEO properly.

Nice try, slick. I mentioned in passing that Thesis generates a bunch of errors. This is not the same as saying “I think Thesis should adhere to the same standards as free themes.” As evidenced by the week-long thread about output buffering, I don’t agree with all WPTRT guidelines. My point is: Thesis draws the worst from both Worlds; it doesn’t have to follow the WPTRT rules, but instead of breaking the rules to overcome WP core problems, all it did was use that opportunity to write bad code that generates errors. With *anyone* as the judge, Thesis loses.

At least in this regard I can say that I now have looked at the code. I also looked at the code for the way it generates Previous and Next links – very much standard WP. So I stick by my assertion. If you want this fixed and are trying to involve the WPTRT, you should ideally take this to the core developers of WP rather than blame every theme that doesn’t do this right. That way it will be fixed for every theme. Otherwise your post sounds very much like a child’s tantrum with an overdose of expletives.

If calling me childish helps you feel better about being stupid, then I’m glad I could be here for you. For the record, I don’t expect the WPTRT to *do* anything with Thesis or this post. That’s obviously absurd, and I’ve never suggested anything more than the possibility that someone might find it interesting. Obviously my suspicions were correct.

Irrelevant how? Firstly I never mentioned about DIYThemes’ SEO advice – just their code. Again, refer to the code and suggestions above.

Irrelevant because you don’t have a valid point that contradicts my points. You might be relevant to *something*…just not my post. Oh…and your code isn’t what I was referring to either.

If you believe that WP’s tackling this in core will not improve things across the board, you have no idea what you are talking about. If this is fixed in the core, sure as hell it will fix the “shitty code” in your websites.

Cooool.

Also, out of curiosity, what do custom post types have to do with Thesis? Are you saying that I cannot define a custom post type at all in Thesis? Even with a child theme? Or with a plugin such as “Custom Post Types UI”? And why should a theme provide pre-packaged Custom Post Types by default?

Dude…I got this Theme called “Kubrick” that’s mad tight, yo! It does anything you can think of…all you gotta do is write the PHP code for it. I’ll hook you up…only $164.

Whatever it is that you are smoking, it sure is strong stuff. And don’t even think of trying your fancy “Thesis’ mother” argument here stating something like “so what if other themes don’t do it” – it isn’t even in the same league of relevance.

I agree: irrelevant.

Honestly though, this is not my battle to fight. If any of the Thesis guys are subscribers here they might care to respond. As I have pointed out, almost everything in the “Examples of SEO Bullshit in the Thesis WordPress Theme” is misdirected hokum, and quite frankly I am beginning to question your credentials as a person qualified to provide any opinions on WP theme development (either on the WPTRT list or otherwise).

Your response started with an invalid conclusion, and all you did was elaborate on it or change the subject. You’re searching for something that will make you feel “right,” but you don’t even understand what “right” looks like. If you want to disprove any of the assertions I made in this post, then have at it. But trying (miserably) to prove a bunch of loosely-related points that you made up…isn’t going to change the points I made in this post. If all you’re looking for is someone to talk to…I recommend finding someone who isn’t going to constantly remind you that you’re stupid.

4. No…I’ve already discovered the source of the error, and it’s definitely in Thesis’s code.

In case any Thesis users (or DIYThemes developers) are reading this and want to know more about this issue, I’ll provide more details.

The issue being referenced is the missing trailing slash on the home page link in the Thesis nav menu. The error is most likely present on your site if:

1. You use the Thesis menu (not the WP menu).
2. You installed WordPress in a sub-directory (e.g. example.com/blog/).

The problem is caused by the Thesis function thesis_nav_default(), located in /lib/functions/nav_menu.php on line 33 (might be different, depending on your version of Thesis).

echo "<a href="" . get_bloginfo('url') . ""$home_nofollow>$home_textn";

There are a couple of ways you can fix this:

1. Change get_bloginfo('url') to user_trailingslashit(get_bloginfo('url'))
2. Change your Theme.

Ah, ad hominem attacks! Bring them on!

No, I think you got it right. I wanted people like you to head over here and try to prove me wrong. Thanks for coming.

Bullshit.

4.  Commercial Themes do not have to follow WordPress standards.

You mean it is alright if they throw up a debug trace? Or are we being selective here?

5.  Commercial Themes do not have to use functions like get_comment_author_link().

You lost me. Do they have to be compatible with WP at all, or are we being selective here too? What if they use these functions in good faith, then WP changes the behaviour of them? What if the powers that be offer a certification option at WordPress.org for any GPL theme (free or premium) that is compatible with WP fully?

10. In my particular experience, the Theme was Thesis, and the claims included the phrase “airtight SEO”.

11. I believed the claims were true, so I paid a *lot* of money for Thesis.

ROTFLMAO. And I haven’t stopped laughing. With this inane line of reasoning you paid $164 for a theme while:

1. You claim to know enough PHP to whip up an entire options framework.
2. You don’t care for support.
3. You proclaim yourself to be an SEO expert (and yet, for all your PHP skills cannot figure out the SEO part maybe?).

Did you pay $164 just on the claims of “airtight SEO”? You know you had the option to pay $87 for it (with an upgrade option) AND test it for 30 days? You are a moron, right? Sorry, that was a rhetorical question.

Know what? That your arguments are invalid?

Oh, they are valid alright. I called out your bullshit at every point, as did quite a few others. Of course, a moron doesn’t like getting told he is one, hence you have got your knickers in a bunch.

Actually, my original post *does* contain information about how to fix
Thesis. I didn’t push the issue with “another user” because I accepted
his oversight as the result of my poor delivery. Yours, however, is
inexcusable.

Irrelevant, ambiguous and bullshit. The only “fix” you talk about is how to disable a dashboard widget. The rest is barf.

Self-promotion usually implies the person is receiving some kind of
benefit. Full disclosure: I’m not receiving any benefit whatsoever. This
isn’t even my blog. The point was to warn consumers not to make the
same mistake I did. In fact, I’ve pretty much guaranteed that no one
will buy Thesis through my affiliate ID–should I decide to become a
liar in the future.

Bullshit. Along the same lines of logic as your asinine “You are a DIYThemes.com employee”, you probably get a paid a lot more for your crapfest here than you would ever get for your affiliations. You are hoping to have people hire you on the basis of your supposed SEO skills (which don’t even get you figured on the front page of Google/Bing/Yahoo or your favourite DuckDuckGo when one searches for “SEO Expert”).

Simply sticking to valid points here (like non-canonical URLs, comment page permalinks and cross-linking trackbacks) would have helped you make your case, instead you chose to showcase your ignorance by lumping native WP issues with this.

Maybe *you* didn’t gain any insight, but considering your history of
invalid reasoning and poor reading comprehension, I’m not surprised. The
mailing lists are publicly available to everyone, so…I don’t
understand why you keep bringing it up like you’ve courageously hacked
Skynet to bring us this top-secret information. Oh and of
course…irrelevant.

Bullshit. A lot of people have caught you with your pants down here.

Seriously? Grow up. After all the bitching on your part the best you can
come up with is that I am a DIYThemes employee? Is that the limit of
your rational discussion skills?

What I meant was: your perspective is obviously skewed in favor of
Thesis, so either you have some kind of affiliation you’re not
disclosing or you’re dumb.

Wow! And I thought the whole “You are either with us or against us” mentality died with Bush getting kicked out. Sorry for calling you a moron. Do let me know when your IQ touches positive points, will you?

Read my comments again (slowly, keeping your IQ and learning disability in mind) and let me know which comment doesn’t have a single statement damning Pearson/Thesis. I couldn’t care less if the whole world stopped using Thesis this very moment. My only position throughout this exchange has been to balance your tripe with a fact: whether you pay $0 for TwentyEleven or $499 for Carrington, there are some things best resolved if WP fixes its core. Till then spew as much bullshit as you want trying to lump WP bugs on any other Theme – it is irrelevant. Yes, people will stop buying Thesis. So what? The next theme they go to will have this problem again. After all, all your farts so far have been to divert anybody from getting a solution.

*gasp*  Wow…is there no end to your knowledge of WordPress…stuff?

Seriously? Is someone paying you to show off  how little you know and understand about WP? Either that, or you are being paid to be as vague as possible. A statement like “Post Authors’ links in comments are nofollowed” has two connotations, both of which I mentioned in my very first comment:

1. “Post Authors’ links in comments are nofollowed” – Standard WP
functionality. If you are talking about links by post authors in comment
content, WP hooks a function called ‘wp_rel_nofollow’ to
‘pre_comment_content’, which is applied while building out the comment
information. The ‘wp_rel_nofollow’ function adds nofollow attributes to
all links. If you are talking about the link to the Post Author’s URL,
then WP’s native code adds “external nofollow” in the call to
‘get_comment_author_link’.

In my previous comment I covered the first scenario in Thesis’ code. I
can just as easily paste a code fragment from Thesis that shows the usage of the second (get_comment_author_link), and tell you that this is WP’s problem to fix. You have
essentially been making these out to be Thesis’ problems, while I have
always maintained that these are WP’s.

The fact is that the GPL license is viral – it doesn’t
matter if the developer believes in it or not. Even if Pearson hates
GPL’s guts, his theme is legally a derivative of WP. Forget legality –
the code above tells you how much of a derivative it is. Who cares if he
has embraced WordPress philosophy? It doesn’t matter an iota that his
index.php is merely an entry point for the rest of his framework – you
could still take his theme, create a child theme, and add category.php,
which will take precedence if you are viewing a category.

Ahhhh,
you got me! For a second there, I thought you were going to make a
point…but turns out…you just wanted to show off the fact that you,
like, *know* things…things about WordPress and GPL and all types of
ill shit.

Irrelevant. Refute the statement properly if you can, otherwise shut the fuck up.

Wait…I’m confused…I thought *I* was the one arguing that Thesis is
extremely expensive but not extremely better than free themes? You’re
saying that renaming WP functions to include the word “thesis” does in
fact make it worth $164?

We get it. You have written a book on dishing out logical cockamamie (Hint: Remember support? Options?). Drop in the link in your next post – we will buy the book so that some money goes your way, for soon nobody is going to give you any.

If calling me childish helps you feel better about being stupid, then
I’m glad I could be here for you. For the record, I don’t expect the
WPTRT to *do* anything with Thesis or this post. That’s obviously
absurd, and I’ve never suggested anything more than the possibility that
someone might find it interesting. Obviously my suspicions were
correct.

Bullshit. You have been trying to win brownie points with the WPTRT after they took a dump at your doorstep over your output buffering approach.

Irrelevant because you don’t have a valid point that contradicts my
points. You might be relevant to *something*…just not my post.
Oh…and your code isn’t what I was referring to either.

Nice try.

Also, out of curiosity, what do custom post types have to do
with Thesis? Are you saying that I cannot define a custom post type at
all in Thesis? Even with a child theme? Or with a plugin such as “Custom
Post Types UI”? And why should a theme provide pre-packaged Custom Post
Types by default?

Dude…I got this Theme called
“Kubrick” that’s mad tight, yo! It does anything you can think of…all
you gotta do is write the PHP code for it. I’ll hook you up…only $164.

Dude… with your coding “skills” and abysmal intelligence I wouldn’t even take a “Hello World” program from you if *you* paid *me* $164 for it, but let me play along.

Are you going to support it fully? Are you going to give me a full-blown options panel? Will it come with at least better typography than a Lucida Grande font? Does it have a trial period? Will it be upgraded more often than 4 times in its lifetime?

Nice try to deflect your ignorance. But stick to the point, though I know it is impossible for you to do so.

Whatever it is that you are smoking, it sure is strong
stuff. And don’t even think of trying your fancy “Thesis’ mother”
argument here stating something like “so what if other themes don’t do
it” – it isn’t even in the same league of relevance.

I agree: irrelevant.

I repeat. Bullshit. And also, out of context. Seriously, what *is* it that you have been smoking?

Your response started with an invalid conclusion, and all you did was
elaborate on it or change the subject. You’re searching for something
that will make you feel “right,” but you don’t even understand what
“right” looks like. If you want to disprove any of the assertions I made
in this post, then have at it. But trying (miserably) to prove a bunch
of loosely-related points that you made up…isn’t going to change the
points I made in this post.

Bullshit. I *have* proved that you cannot distinguish WP from your own backside. You on the other hand have simply tried to cover up your mess by *pretending* my assertions on the code will not work. As Russell Peters would say, “Be a man. Do the right thing”. Man up and show us some code, will you? Otherwise you sound like a petulant teenager who has just been scolded and is screaming to the world, “But I am right. You don’t know anything.”

Show that what I have said about comments and their hooks will not work.
I addressed the very points you made about comments getting their links
nofollowed.

It is all really very simple – if tomorrow WP releases 3.2.2 with a critical bug that prevents links from getting parsed at all in comments, are you going to blame Thesis just because you paid $164 to them? This is like blaming a car manufacturer for their hybrid not giving you 50mpg, while it is your preferred gas station that starts giving you dodgy fuel.

If all you’re looking for is someone to talk
to…I recommend finding someone who isn’t going to constantly remind
you that you’re stupid.

I guess that is why I have several friends and you have so few. You reek of bullshit, man! And you are a moron and shameless self-promoter to boot!

It is easy to see why this site is called “SEOBullshit”. Content like this post of yours and your comments thereafter isn’t *about* bullshit – its content *is* bullshit. Pure and unadulterated. Go ahead and wade in it, happy in the knowledge that your remaining fans care. The rest of the world doesn’t.

You mean it is alright if they throw up a debug trace? Or are we being selective here?

SEE: “Nice try, slick. … With *anyone* as the judge, Thesis loses.”

You lost me. Do they have to be compatible with WP at all, or are we being selective here too? What if they use these functions in good faith, then WP changes the behaviour of them? What if the powers that be offer a certification option at WordPress.org for any GPL theme (free or premium) that is compatible with WP fully?

Free Themes: must always use core implementation.
Premium: *may* use core implementation. If core implementation is flawed, *should* create custom solution (that doesn’t produce PHP errors). If Theme is marketed as not having core flaws, Theme *must* create custom solution.

Can you hear me now?

ROTFLMAO. And I haven’t stopped laughing. With this inane line of reasoning you paid $164 for a theme while:
1. You claim to know enough PHP to whip up an entire options framework.
2. You don’t care for support.
3. You proclaim yourself to be an SEO expert (and yet, for all your PHP skills cannot figure out the SEO part maybe?).

I don’t know where you’re getting this from. Please cite your sources.

Did you pay $164 just on the claims of “airtight SEO”? You know you had the option to pay $87 for it (with an upgrade option) AND test it for 30 days? You are a moron, right? Sorry, that was a rhetorical question.

I paid $164 (instead of $87) because at that time, DIYThemes was still claiming that Thesis was under a proprietary license and therefore had the rights to enforce restrictions on how the PHP could be used and modified. One of the stated benefits of purchasing the Developer’s Option ($164) was that DIYThemes would “allow” the removal of their footer attribution link. This was my primary motivation for purchasing the more expensive licensing option. In retrospect–now that I have a better understanding of the GPL issue–I obviously made the wrong choice, since DIYThemes never had the rights to sell or restrict that in the first place. I considered mentioning this as another instance of bullshit marketing hype, but I omitted it because I think it was just a matter of ignorance of the GPL, and I was equally ignorant about it. To their credit, this benefit is no longer marketed, so it would appear that they’ve adjusted their pricing options to be compliant with the license.

Oh, they are valid alright. I called out your bullshit at every point, as did quite a few others. Of course, a moron doesn’t like getting told he is one, hence you have got your knickers in a bunch.

Last I checked, you’ve called out my bullshit once, and I acknowledged it:

After rereading it…yeah, I originally read it through opinionated eyes. I concede.

What else have you successfully argued? I guess I’m assuming the definition of “calling out your bullshit” is something like “disproving your claim,” but maybe your definition is more like “challenging your claim by providing a series of my own claims that are false or unsupported or they’re true but they don’t disprove your point.”

Irrelevant, ambiguous and bullshit. The only “fix” you talk about is how to disable a dashboard widget. The rest is barf.

Let’s recap:

1. There’s a site called SEOBullshit.com, which was created for the sole purpose of ranting about bullshit SEO.

2. Darren writes a post that rants about bullshit SEO and how DIYThemes uses bullshit SEO to sell Thesis.

3. Darren’s rant includes simple instructions on how to remove the RSS feed from Thesis. The inclusion of how-to information in rants is atypical, but Darren takes the extra initiative.

4. Space Strands makes a claim–despite the fact that, if true, the claim wouldn’t disprove anything from Darren’s rant–that Darren’s rant is not relevant or helpful, because it doesn’t explain how to fix the problems being ranted about.

5. Darren–despite the fact that Space Strands’ claim cannot disprove his own claims–proves that Space Strands’ claim is false, by referencing the rant’s included how-to information.

6. In response to a separate comment, Darren disproves Norcross’s claims by providing proof that the Home link trailing slash problem is caused by Thesis’s code. Darren also provides information about how to fix the problem–even though the inclusion of how-to information in rants is atypical, and even though he already proved Space Strands’ claim was false and had no further obligation to address it.

7. Space Strands–despite the existence of 2 examples that prove his claim is false, and despite the fact that even if true, his claim wouldn’t disprove anything in Darren’s rant–refuses to acknowledge the irrefutable fact that Darren just destroyed one of Space Strands’ arguments.

Did I say “recap”? More like re-SNAP, bitch!

Bullshit. Along the same lines of logic as your asinine “You are a DIYThemes.com employee”, you probably get a paid a lot more for your crapfest here than you would ever get for your affiliations. You are hoping to have people hire you on the basis of your supposed SEO skills (which don’t even get you figured on the front page of Google/Bing/Yahoo or your favourite DuckDuckGo when one searches for “SEO Expert”).

Actually, I don’t even offer SEO services anymore. In fact, neither this site nor my own site even provides contact information. Believe it or not, I’m actually losing money over this crapfest, since obviously there are opportunities available that are more lucrative than proving you wrong full-time.

Regarding your remark about ranking for “SEO expert,” that’s obviously flawed reasoning. Even if it were valid, I wouldn’t be an SEO expert–I’d be the World’s greatest SEO.

A lot of people have caught you with your pants down here.

OMG, totally! And just think how embarrassing it would have been if everyone saw my ugly little penis! Thank God you were there…hiding it in your mouth.

My only position throughout this exchange has been to balance your tripe with a fact: whether you pay $0 for TwentyEleven or $499 for Carrington, there are some things best resolved if WP fixes its core.

That’s not a position, that’s a purpose. If your official position is: “there are some things best resolved if WP fixes its core,” then I agree with you. However, as I’ve pointed out already, that doesn’t conflict with my position, which is “DIYThemes uses bullshit SEO to sell Thesis” or “Thesis says it provides airtight SEO, but that’s not true.” You keep bringing up WP core like it’s relevant (i.e., like it disproves my position) but it’s not.

After all, all your farts so far have been to divert anybody from getting a solution.

No, they’ve been to warn everyone else that Thesis is *not* the solution. That’s it.

You have essentially been making these out to be Thesis’ problems, while I have always maintained that these are WP’s.

No, the only thing I’ve said is that the problems are present in Thesis. It doesn’t matter where they originated from. DIYThemes makes claims that Thesis does not have these problems, when in fact it does.

Irrelevant. Refute the statement properly if you can, otherwise shut the fuck up.

You didn’t make any statements that require refuting. That’s the point.

We get it. You have written a book on dishing out logical cockamamie (Hint: Remember support? Options?). Drop in the link in your next post – we will buy the book so that some money goes your way, for soon nobody is going to give you any.

No idea what that means.

Bullshit. You have been trying to win brownie points with the WPTRT after they took a dump at your doorstep over your output buffering approach.

That’s weird…the way I remember it, I single-handedly schooled the entire mailing list until they shut down the thread. But again…that’s all public information. Anyone interested can read that thread and draw their own conclusions.

Seriously, what *is* it that you have been smoking?

Thus far, all but one of your points.

You on the other hand have simply tried to cover up your mess by *pretending* my assertions on the code will not work.

I’m not saying it works or doesn’t work–honestly, I assumed your code works without even looking at it–I’m saying I paid $164 for fixed code, not code that can be fixed. Therefore, you proving that the code can be fixed doesn’t change anything. If someone sees an advertisement for a Shelby Mustang and decides to buy it, the seller can’t deliver a stock Mustang and a garage full of parts and expect the customer to be satisfied.

This is like blaming a car manufacturer for their hybrid not giving you 50mpg, while it is your preferred gas station that starts giving you dodgy fuel.

LOL…what a terrible, terrible analogy. My Mustang analogy was way better.

I guess that is why I have several friends and you have so few. You reek of bullshit, man! And you are a moron and shameless self-promoter to boot!

Oh yeah? Well…my bike is cooler than yours!

It is easy to see why this site is called “SEOBullshit”. Content like this post of yours and your comments thereafter isn’t *about* bullshit – its content *is* bullshit. Pure and unadulterated. Go ahead and wade in it, happy in the knowledge that your remaining fans care. The rest of the world doesn’t.

The only thing I’m wading in is the satisfaction that comes from owning you. :)

I can’t be here commenting, because technically I just died LMAO.

Which is QOTD?

I <3 Thesis foar evar!

OR:

If any of the other premium themes want a “fair share” of this rant,
they can take a Thesis-sized shit on my website and charge me $164 for
it!

Can’t decide…

The class to either offer an easy opt-out box or at least make their
link unobtrusive. For the price of Thesis, I’d call their actions just
plain tacky.
Erotic Game

Interesting discussion. I landed here because I am looking for a theme that is good seo-wise AND looks good. I find this pretty difficult. The Stallion theme might be good, but is just plain ugly. Seo mofo: can you recommend some WordPress themes that look good and are good from a seo standpoint?

Ouch, ugly is a bit harsh.

There’s 10 built in colour schemes with Stallion 6.0.1, working on an update that will include 2 more built in colours and custom slots for users custom colours (stylesheets and images). Plan to use the custom slots to port in more colour schemes between updates. Also added the option for layouts (currently one layout in Stallion 6.0.1, 2 sidebars each 200px wide) used by most people, in the next update there’s 8 sidebar layouts (for example single left or right sidebar 310px wide).

So will be adding more theme looks in the future. I use Stallion on over 70 installations and want more variety myself.

Currently Stallion is by far the best WordPress SEO theme available. You will not find a theme that comes close SEO wise, every theme I’ve looked at make the same SEO mistakes. For example not seen a theme that removed nofollow links from core WordPress which is WordPress SEO 101 now or should be, we’ve known for over 2 years Google deletes the link benefit of nofollow plenty of time to code themes that remove nofollow. I’m rubbish at PHP and I’ve managed it, in Stallion 6.1 nofollow links left by mistake on posts (I used to use nofolow a lot of affiliate links) are converted to javascript/css links on the fly.

Working on making it the best WordPress ad theme as well which is a hell of a lot more subjective than SEO.

David

Sorry for that David ;). I just think the look of the theme is a bit outdated and I am also looking for something that doesn’t look so much like a blog. I do want to compliment you on your seo skills. I am by no means a big expert but followed your discussions with other ‘experts’ and learned a lot from you.

I use thesis as of the last week and I’m not going to argue with your post at all. However, I will say, I don’t think any business is 100% honest in their advertising and it’d be smart to walk on the skeptical side with any company. The fact that SEO is an on-going process and that it’s never a set it and forget it, I wouldn’t bet my life that Thesis is telling the truth about being “airtight”.

Having that being said, I also didn’t pay for my version of thesis. I may be wrong to want to try it before I buy it (or not buy it) but I also believe in not paying for WordPress themes. It’s a pet peeve of mine when people try to capitalize on open source. It’s like taking advantage of something that is already free and saying “hey we made it better except we didn’t and we’re going to charge you for it.”

I don’t take as much time and devotion to go through and see if the coding is right. DIYThemes attempted to target people that didn’t know how to build themes and wanted customization options and customer support. They were looking for people who didn’t know better and wanted their hands held. I think it’s great for those kinds of people but if you’re technically savvy and can build your own, I would do that. And I can. I just don’t. Because I’m lazy.

It’s much like back in the day with Dreamweaver. You can pretend to know what you’re doing and build websites and have the HTML code done for you. But in the end, your code was more than likely crap.

Again, I don’t agree or disagree with your post so if this came across as either, it was not intended. Just giving my two cents and pondering some thoughts aloud.

Oh my lord.. I had a good laugh reading this article, in fact I can’t stop laughing :) I think shat you’re writing is all true… The product is over-hyped and $160 is a lot of money (way too much!) for that theme.. I prefer one from themeforest and install a kick-ass seo plugin like all in one seo on top of that. This way you’re talking business for max. $35..

I’m not an SEO expert or claim to be one but I am a WordPress developer and recently completed a project for a client whose main requirement was to build the website using Thesis.

It was very frustrating working with Thesis and the end product basically ended up being a custom theme completely written using the custom loop api.  Still there was no way to remove all the bs css files even though none of the Thesis classes or ids are even used in the theme.  Then you still have to override the entire layout.css file that gets loaded after custom.css.

I wish there were more posts out there about how poorly coded the theme is but even the bad reviews all contain affiliate links.

So you are lazy to build your own theme, but you think that it`s wrong to pay for someone else work ? Talking in general here, not thesis in mind. Also a good theme can do allot more and in fact can extend the functionality of wordpress. There is nothing wrong in premium themes and plugins if they are doing their job. You all have choices to buy or not to buy! The price tag is something that you dont choose, you only choose to buy or not to buy again. GPL is wonderful thing it gives us a code that let us read and comment even that post and yet it would be impossible to be done if there is nothing commercial in the whole opensource world, developers and designers have to eat and live too! So the bottom line for me is i guess, yes the themes are inheriting and extending wordpress, but that does not mean that they have to be free in fact wordpress is also generating revenues just by different ways which is cool, because they have the needed resources to support wordpress and keep it free full with wonderful features that allow us to communicate.

“DIYThemes doesn’t know jack shit about SEO”

And that makes them different from 80% of the people offering SEO advice how??

Make your blog comment section into  ‘dofollow.”
By default, the wordpress comment section is ‘nofollow,’ meaning that when someone places their link in your blogs comments section, it passes no pagerank.
This really is a debatable point, and what you do will depend on your business model. By turning your blogs comment section into a ‘dofollow’ you will attract a lot more comments, while giving away pagerank at the same time.
For my business model, this is a “dofollow’ blog for my comments because I am more concerned about relationships than about pagerank. I feel that the benefits far exceed the negatives.
OlineSEO Training

We’ve developed roughly 20 sites using a variety of WordPress themes and Thesis beats them all on a number of levels, principally SEO (it works) and seamless upgrades (far too many themes are limited in flexibility and lack support). Your “critique” reminds me of a typical teenager’s rant about something he or she doesn’t personally like – they get titillated by using lots of profanity to ‘make their point.’ But after a time it just comes across as a general absence of intelligence, since clearly they don’t enjoy sufficient command of the language to use something other than profanity to get attention. I’m sticking with Thesis.

I totally agree with you, how could anyone ignore this? It’s outrageous!

London Cleaner

Agreed!

Personally I don’t give two hoots about Thesis’ SEO claims, or anyone elses’ for that matter. The only Search Engine Optimisation I ever do, or tell my clients to do, is to write honest, informative, helpful, good quality content, give it a descriptive title and a few relevant keywords and let nature take it’s course. Seriously, if it is *good* – then it will rank. End of.

What I do give two hoots about is the ability to be able to create beautiful, reliable web sites in short time. Thesis allows me to do this in spades. The approach to typography is awesome – stunning in fact! This alone makes the fee worthwhile and reduces the bill I have to present to my clients considerably!

Re. the cost, isn’t $164 a developer option? i.e. multiple sites? Charge your customers a $50 a year fee for updating the theme and relish how much time and effort you have saved yourself by piggy-backing on top of a beautifully laid out framework that is incredibly easy to change… worth every cent and more :)

Shrugs, I really don’t see what the problem is and have no intention on letting up on Thesis any time soon.

For what it’s worth, the rss feed and the affiliates do suck, but these idiots are everywhere. Just ignore them!

Just report and ask your money back. They will pay.

Great post! I am not very familiar with Thesis, but I won’t buy it  for sure!

 I am not familiarized with wordpress themes,even I have a blog in wordpress.Much easier for me is to use free themes,I don’t have knowledge in CSS.

 The pandora warm autumn wind, air mixed into the firecrackers fire taste;

[...] July 2011: The website SEO Bullshit was clearly not all that impressed with Thesis. She wrote, but carefully did not say that this [...]

what is said is correct in your point of view, although as you said Thesis may have got few flaws but on the whole I should agree that it is a kick ass SEO theme which helps me in eradicating many of the 3rd party plugins..

Ha, i had a good laugh on your blog, i don’t know how often i already b!tched on various webaster forums about Thesis. You know, i would not mind if this would be a a cheap theme or a free theme – but for the price it’s likely the most overrated theme there is. The SEO “capabilities” of Thesis – you can achieve the same thing with any other theme (unless it does mistakes like blog name in H1 or similar) – get All-In-One SEO plugin and you have the same “SEO” capabilities with ANY theme. The only thing which speaks for thesis (IMO) that it has a clean layout, but configuration is a pain. And i say that as a PHP coder..

Smart me…

I switched to Genesis theme.

You forgot to mention all the thesis 2.0 hype they are sending out.

Great information Darren, Yes there are alot information about Thesis Theme Framework, I was going to buy Thesis because I read that some friends, like Neil Patel and Sugarrae use it  but you make think about it.  now I do not know what to do. What do you think about Genesis framework?
one more question, I am looking to improve the segmentation of my WP, what do you recommend?

Screen Options > Uncheck 
The latest from the DIYthemes Blog. Done.

Thank God, I had not enough money to buy Thesis when starting my Website 6 months ago – and meanwhile with my still small SEO – Experience I’m tending not to rise my Pagerank but instead being found on page 1 for some Longtail Keywords that give me some Traffic and with that some money ;)

I allege that your son is full of it.

Dumb you. You are still a clueless, WordPress-using, snake-oil selling dipshit.

 I would like to know about Genesis too…This post has given me a headache…..With all this banter about Thesis sucking…now I want to know which theme DOESN’T Suck!  Who’s better?  I really would like to know!!!

Please list the better SEO WordPress theme out there!

 The Stallion SEO theme is the only WordPress theme with serious SEO features, comment I made quickly comparing Thesis to Stallion (only look for 5 SEO mistakes in Thesis, there’s more) http://www.stallion-theme.com/1500-blogging-contest-stallion-wordpress-seo-theme-review-10-prizes?cid=8033 note that link goes to the comment which has it’s own indexable SEO’d page, Stallion SEO feature, no other WordPress theme includes this SEO feature.

I offered $5,000 for a two month period for the first person to find a WordPress theme with all the Stallion SEO features plus one more, no one even tried to claim the money. This offer has been available at $1,000 for over a year, no one has come close to claiming it.

David

OK….

I’ve been an amateur Web Programmer for a number of years….html….xml…and when i got into blogging and wordpress I had to get to grips with CSS…that scared me initially….I recently bought a site with Thesis recently and in my opinion…..it does totally suck!

I’d rather use w3 schools and know exactly what I’m doing and where I’m doing it…..I want to modify my Tag archive page…..I cannot figure out how to do it with Thesis…and it looks way more complicated than doing it on 2012 or something…..i get the hooks thing…..that is cool…but i cant see it being as flexible as diving into the original code.

Thanks Dave! I appreciate ur input. I’m new to WordPress & all the options are confusing.
Have you done a review on the Genesis framework? If not, will/can you? Inquiring minds want to know :)

Yes I’ve looked at Genesis before, takes about 5 minutes to check a page for SEO mistakes because most sites/themes have the same SEO mistakes.

One of the Genesis showcase sites http://blog.allaboutlearningpress.com/ has the same sorts of SEO mistakes as described in the quick Thesis review.

An example I doubt any theme developer is taking into account except me. The slider function that generates a pretty image slider of posts.

Stallion has two slider features one is the same sort of design as you see with the Genesis showcase site, in Stallion the images have alt text, specifically the alt text is the title of the post it is linking to. In Genesis the alt text is the name of the image, you can see on the example site above the images are named poorly SEO wise, names like

37-iStock_000012342970XSmall-1

Any SEO consultant will confirm the alt text of a linked image (as you get with these sliders) pass SEO benefit, the alt text is the equivalent of anchor text of a text link. If you use a slider like the one with the Genesis site above and have ten posts sliding, that’s ten links with awful alt text! It’s also repeated in the title attribute which is used as the hoverover text as well, so not only doe it damage a site SEO wise when a user hovers over the image they read a hoverover like

37-iStock_000012342970XSmall-1

Instead of the name of the post.

I assume the owner of the site doesn’t understand the importance of alt text SEO wise and when they uploaded images using WordPress they left the title hover over text as the default which is the name of the image (like 37-iStock_000012342970XSmall-1) and the genesis theme developer who coded the slider doesn’t understand SEO too well and used the title of the image as the alt and title attribute text. A Stallion theme user can make the same mistake of not adding decent SEO alt text and it won’t matter because Stallion uses the name of the post which is more likely to include relevant keywords to that post.

I’m working on an update to Stallion that adds the All In One SEO Plugin code with improvements, rather than add one extra title tag that’s only used for the title element, you add up to five related keyword phrases and these are used throughout the theme including as part of the Stallion theme slider see this comment http://www.stallion-theme.com/stallion-wordpress-theme-feature-requests/comment-page-5#comment-10500

NO WordPress theme comes close to Stallion SEO wise. Doesn’t matter what theme it is or the plugins used or who you hired to code it, Stallion is MUCH better SEO wise.

That’s really BullShit!