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

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.

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.

 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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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).

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

“DIYThemes doesn’t know jack shit about SEO”

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

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.

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!