The wait is almost over, at least for the smart folks who own a Thesis Developer’s License. Thesis 1.7 is almost ready to go into beta mode, according to Chris Pearson. In fact, Chris was busy today giving us a sneak preview of the new options panels. Here are a couple of the highlights:

• Thesis Options will be renamed Site Options, shrink, and be more organized.
• Design Options gets all sorts of new built-in Javascript libraries, and comment settings
• Brand new Options Manager lets you import / export settings from the Thesis options pages. Amazing tool for Thesis skin designers.
• New Page Options panel to fine-tune SEO settings.

Better organization, better control over SEO, and the Options Manager. Sounds like it should be Thesis 2.0, but it’s being released as 1.7. Even with all these goodies that we get to enjoy, I’m sure Chris was hard at work under the hood, tweaking and optimizing code that we’ll never see.

Though there has been talk about a price hike, nothing has been done yet. You can still get in on the Thesis goodness for $87. Of course, you really should go with the Developer’s Option at $164 – that lets you use Thesis on unlimited sites, and you get access to beta releases.

Most of the skins featured here on GL3 media are of the free variety. Since there are plenty of great free thesis skins »”>Thesis skins available, I try to focus on them. However, sometimes a more professional look is desired, but there simply isn’t a budget for a completely custom design.

Let’s face it – custom work isn’t cheap. Not everyone can afford to have a site designed and developed from scratch. That’s where premium Thesis skins come in.  You get premium features and premium design without the completely custom price tag.

ThesisPlay

The skin I want to take a quick look at today is called ThesisPlay, and it was created by Matt Hodder. ThesisPlay’s big selling point is the easy color switcher. With a single click, you can cycle through 8 different color schemes. If you like to change the look of your site frequently, this feature could appeal to you.

Beyond the color switcher, ThesisPlay offers a customizable header area, where you can include an image, ads, text, or just about whatever you want. You can manage this area right from the Wordpress Dashboard.

ThesisPlay is just solid. Professionally designed with plenty of attention to detail. You won’t find any rough edges; there’s nothing amateurish about the skin. Granted, it’s not free – but it only costs $45. Compared to somewhere in the four figure range for a completely custom design, that’s quite inexpensive.

Can I get ThesisPlay with a Custom Blog Setup?
Absolutely. While my “prepackaged” setup includes your choice of a free Thesis skin, I’m more than happy to help you upgrade to a premium skin. When checking out, just leave me a note with your desired premium skin. I’ll purchase a license for you, and include it on your bill. No extra work on your part, and you’ll get the custom look that you want.

The phrase of the year for 2009 (and 2010) should be social media. Everyone’s doing it, and the ones who aren’t are apparently idiots. Or at least that’s what you might believe if you read just about any popular website these days. Social media is in, it’s cool, it’s hip, and it makes you money.

That’s great and all, but let’s hold up just a second, k?

Setting up a Facebook page and a Twitter profile are great steps, and most businesses should probably do both at some point. There’s a ton of value in both sites, and used properly, they can help your business succeed.

BUT!

Having a Facebook and Twitter presence is absolutely useless if you don’t have a website of your own. A real, live, website that you own. Your own website should be your online hub. The majority of your budget, time, and effort should be spent making sure your website is up to par. Think about it:

Your clients can’t fill out an order form on your Facebook page.

Prospective customers can’t read all about your company and offerings on your Twitter profile.

You can’t sell anything on social media sites – it just doesn’t work that way.

Relationships are important
Social media sites are great for building relationships. Eventually that can translate into getting new business, which is the ultimate goal. Without a solid website to direct prospective customers to, you’ll never get to that point. Making money is the point of any business, and it’s crucial that you don’t forget that.

Get your website in order first, because that makes you money. Then you can start dabbling in social media.

There are a billion good reasons to host your own website, and really only one reason not to: having someone else host your site is easy. Really, really easy. Using a site like Blogger, Tumblr, or Posterous makes being a webmaster dead simple. But far and away, the biggest problem is this:

You have absolutely no control over your site.

That’s right – your site, your hard work, your blood sweat and tears, and you have absolutely no ownership. What kind of sense does that make?

The situation that unfolded yesterday regarded a Tumblr site. The complete story can be found here, if you’d like to see it straight from the source. Me, I like crib notes. So here they are.

This cat who goes by Tumbedore was the registered owner of http://pitchfork.tumblr.com . He only had 5 posts, but whatever, he had it first.

The company Pitchfork contacted Tumblr to find out if they could take over the URL in question. After all, Tumbledore hadn’t updated in quite some time.

Ten short minutes later, without contacting Tumbledore, Tumblr deleted all his posts, and re-assigned the URL to Pitchfork.

To make matters worse, Tumblr lied about it after the fact. But that’s not really the point. The point is that Tumbledore lost all his posts (granted it was only five, but imagine if it was five hundred), and he has no recourse. He wasn’t paying for the service. He doesn’t own the content.

URL gone.

Content gone.

Search engine traffic gone.

Just like that.

If you’re going to have a website, you need to do it right. Get a custom blog setup done. It’s quick, affordable, and you will own the site and content. You will have complete control. You, and no one else. That’s exactly how it needs to be, if you’re serious about your business.

You are serious about your business, aren’t you?

There are a shocking number of parts to even a fairly basic website. Non-web developers would probably be quite surprised if they knew everything that went into creating a new site from scratch.

One of my least favorite tasks is the creation of forms. I hate making forms. There, I said it. The basic contact form is usually easy, at least in Wordpress, because there are plenty of great plugins that take the work right out of it. However, most sites require at least a few forms, and there isn’t an easy to use all-in-one solution.

Sure, there’s cforms II. While certainly a powerful solution, it’s far from user friendly. Extremely far. I’d rather hand-code forms than use cforms II, and I bet I’m not the only one. Of course, hand-coding forms is very time-consuming, and not a fun way to spend your days.

Enter Gravity Forms.

After discovering Gravity Forms, I will never create another form by hand again. Ever. It’s that easy, and that powerful.

Want to create a new form? Click on the Forms tab in your Wordpress admin dashboard, and hit New Form. Use the visual editor to create your form. Some of the most commonly used items are built right in – things like name, address, email, phone, etc. If you don’t see it, you can *easily* add it.

What about data validation?

Are you serious? Gravity Forms has that covered. Your customer won’t be able to enter “Giant Dog” in the phone number field – it will throw a friendly error.

Dropdowns, multiple chioce, file uploads, captcha, multiple choice, if it can go in a web form, it’s in Gravity Forms. Tons of stuff I’ll probably never use, too, but it’s there if I need it.

All your data saved
Sure, every time a form is submitted, you get an email, which is the way it should work. Gravity Forms goes a step further, and stores every form submission in your Wordpress database. No worries if you accidentally delete an email for a customer order – just log in to Wordpress and get the information you need.

The catch
What, you thought it was going to be free? Not for all this functionality. There are three pricing levels : $39 for a single site, $99 for multiple sites, and $199 for the developer option. I’ll admit it – I flinched, probably just like you are right now. Two hundred bucks for a Wordpress plugin? Wordpress is free, for crying out loud.

Then I thought about the time.

Just a few hours saved from coding forms, and Gravity Forms pays for itself. If you have multiple sites, you’re talking about many hours saved, much frustration saved, and more time that you can spend working and being productive. Gravity Forms is cheap for what it does.

I can talk all day long about how much I like Gravity Forms, but the best thing I can say is this: I use Gravity Forms on GL3 Media. Every single form you see on this site is powered by Gravity Forms. If I didn’t think it was the best solution available, I wouldn’t recommend it, and I certainly wouldn’t use it.

Start with the $39 single site license if you’re having doubts. Once you fall in love with it, you can upgrade to a multi-site or developer license for a reduced price.

There are a ton of things I love about Thesis, many of which I go over in my Why Thesis post. However, one thing that people often have trouble with is including a header image instead of just text. There are plenty of tutorials on how to do this out there, but many of them handle it just plain wrong. The biggest issue I have is that many tutorials advocate using this faulty line of code:

.custom #header #logo, .custom #header #tagline { text-indent: -9999px; }

No, no, no. This little snippet casts the text headline 9,999 pixels to the left, so it will never be seen. It technically works, but it’s more of a hack than a solution. One day, search engines may decide that they really don’t like the practice of hiding text this way, much like they don’t like white text on white background.

What’s the right way to get rid of the text?

Thesis has a built-in hook for exactly this purpose, though few people use it. This is the hook you’re looking for:

remove_action(‘thesis_hook_header’, ‘thesis_default_header’);

That gets rid of the header text correctly, instead of just hiding it. The next step is to actually add your header. This is the code:

function custom_header() { ?>
<div id=”headerlogo”>
<a href=”<?php bloginfo( ‘url’ ); ?>/”>
<img src=”<?php bloginfo(‘template_directory’) ?>/custom/images/header.jpg” alt=”Dont forget your alt text here” />
</a>
</div>
<?php }
add_action(‘thesis_hook_before_header’, ‘custom_header’);

Of course, you’ll need to make a header image, and upload it to the /custom/images directly of your Thesis installation.  So, to put it all together, just copy and paste this block of code into your custom_functions.php file:

function custom_header() { ?>
<div id=”headerlogo”>
<a href=”<?php bloginfo( ‘url’ ); ?>/”>
<img src=”<?php bloginfo(‘template_directory’) ?>/custom/images/header.jpg” alt=”Dont forget your alt text here” />
</a>
</div>
<?php }
add_action(‘thesis_hook_before_header’, ‘custom_header’);
remove_action(‘thesis_hook_header’, ‘thesis_default_header’);

That’s it.  One tiny block of code, and you have a clickable image header in Thesis.

I’ve always been a fan of keeping Wordpress plugins to a minimum. Don’t get me wrong – there are some plugins that I just can’t live without – I even have a great list of recommended Wordpress plugins that I install on every single custom blog setup that I do. Fortunately, with the Thesis framework that I’m so fond of, a lot of plugin functionality is built right in. That means I can reduce the number of plugins needed, yet retain the same features.

Take the Google Analytics for Wordpress plugin. A fantastic plugin that lets you add Google Analytics tracking code, and thus track your visitors. It’s simple, functional, and written well. However, I’ve just removed it from my recommended Wordpress plugins. Why? Thesis allows you to install Analytics tracking code right from the Thesis options panel.

See the Footer Scripts box highlighted in the screenshot above? Paste your Google Analytics tracking code in that box, and you’re done. No plugin to worry about, and no plugin updates. If any bugs need fixing, they’ll be taken care of along with the Thesis updates. In other words, it’s set once, and you never have to concern yourself with it again. With all the challenges and demands on our time, doesn’t that just make sense?

Sure, it’s 2010, and all the cool businesses have a website. Many of those websites even offer products and services for sale. But your business is doing just fine, you say.

Is it?

I’ll be very clear when I say this.

Every business needs a website. Every single one.

If you’re doing business in 2010, you absolutely must have a website. Not only that, you must have a professional looking website. Your website must be informative, and it must also drive new business.

You might be doing okay right now. In business, “doing okay” is really just a nice term for “about to fail.” To succeed in the long term, you must be able to move forward. You must be able to get new prospects and new customers. The only way to really do that today is with a solid web presence.

Having a well-designed website is like having your best salesperson prospecting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Your customers can learn about your company on their schedule. Fortunately it costs a lot less than paying a 24/7 sales staff.

And these days, you don’t have to know any of the technical stuff to get up and running. I can setup your website for you, from start to finish. Don’t worry about that whole “blog” thing if you’re iffy about it. Wordpress and Thesis (the platform I use to setup your website) make for a great “regular” website, too.

One of my favorite Thesis skins is Looks Good Naked. When the latest version of Thesis, 1.6, was released, this skin broke. Thesis 1.6 overhauled the nav menu code, which means all skins needed to be updated or they would break.

Finally, the author of Looks Good Naked took the time to make the necessary upgrades. Now you can use LGN once again, without having to modify the code yourself.

Here at GL3 Media, each and every site that I design is built on the Thesis Wordpress framework. That’s right, every single site – without fail. When I have a new site on the drawing board, I never question what I’m going to start with. The choice is always Thesis, and it will be until something even more amazing comes along. (Is that even possible?)

What in the world makes Thesis my only choice? A few things, actually.

Efficiency
See, though Thesis is often referred to as a “theme”, even by it’s creator, it is nothing of the sort. Thesis is actually a framework, which is a whole different beast. See, before Thesis, every site needed to be built from scratch. All the boring, but incredibly important, foundation of each site needed to be created every time you made a new site.

Not very efficient.

Starting with the Thesis framework means I don’t have to re-invent the wheel each time. There is a solid foundation in place, ready to be built on top of. My focus is on creating an amazing site, not setting up Gravatars in the comments.

If you decide to have your site professionally designed, using Thesis will save you money. Remember, the foundation of the site is done. Your designer / developer will spend less time on the site, which means less billable hours. More money in your pocket.

You don’t have to code if you don’t want to

Say you’re ready to move forward with Thesis, but a full site design just isn’t in your budget right now. No problem. But, you say, you don’t know how to code any sort of site design.

No problem.

Say what?!

Thesis has a built-in design tool. Through a series of easy to use drop-down boxes, you can change things like: number of columns, column width, text & link colors, even whether you want to include a multimedia box above the sidebar. There are hundreds of changes you can make to a site without editing a single line of code. That’s powerful.

Top-Notch SEO Out of the box

It’s easy to spend thousands of dollars optimizing your site for search engines. It’s also tough to find that sort of budget these days. Thesis is the best-optimized Wordpress framework in the world, period. Your sites are likely to rank higher, thus getting more traffic, when built on top of Thesis.

If you’re serious about your business, you need Thesis

Yes, Thesis is that good. Whether you have a blog or a conventional website, Thesis makes sense. The cost is minimal compared to the benefits. Eighty-seven bucks? I would recommend Thesis at $200. It’s crazy cheap at $87. Buy Thesis now.