How to Setup Thesis Theme

This site is under construction. I am steadily working on it hoping to bring you useful processes for working with WordPress and Thesis. Meanwhile, if there are any topics you’d like to see covered, let me know. Thanks for stopping by!

Note: I’m chatting for the next several paragraphs. Step by step directions follow.

Judging from some of the comments I see around the net, some people, particularly those new to blogging or WordPress, or changing out themes in WordPress, have a little bit of a struggle installing the Thesis theme. This site, and many of my other sites, all use the Thesis theme. I can remember my first attempt to install the Thesis theme as being somewhat challenging and a bit of a hair puller.

Anyway, I’m going to list what works for me, consistently, when installing a brand new copy of Thesis to a WordPress site. When I say brand new, I mean there was never a copy of Thesis on the site, so this is for a fresh install. The latest Thesis is version 1.8.2.

The first thing I do, after I’ve set up a domain with the latest WordPress, which nowadays is 3.3.1, is upload my zipped (do not unzip it beforehand) Thesis folder via the theme uploader inside of WordPress. Then I stop.

You will need to venture over to the control panel where your site is hosted or to your FTP client to make the other changes to the files. Generally, for most control panels, you want to look for the section named “file manager, which stores all your WordPress folders. Your host’s control panel may have a different setup for changing permissions. You’ll have to familiarize yourself with your host’s method, because there is no set method for all hosts.

The other option – Filezilla, which is free FTP software that you have to download to your hard-drive, also holds your WordPress folders. FTP stands for file transfer protocol, which provides a way to get your files off your computer and onto your website. In Filezilla, you right click the folders and you will see the options to rename the file or change the permissions.

I personally prefer using FTP, and Filezilla in particular. It’s free and it works! There are other FTP clients. You can search for them in Google.

Once that’s done, I go back to the theme uploader and activate Thesis. That’s it! (note: these instructions are practically the same for upgrading Thesis, but there are extra steps, which I will cover in the next segment.)

Here are the steps again for a “brand new installation:”

Buy a domain if you don’t have one.
Buy hosting if you don’t have it. I generally buy both with the same company. For ease, choose a host that offers the famous one-click automatic installation of WordPress. WordPress must be installed before you can install the theme.
Once WordPress is installed, make sure you have the latest version. If you don’t, you’ll see a note across the top of your WordPress dashboard. Update to the latest version by clicking the button for automatic installation. I’ve always had good luck using the automatic feature.
You should have your zipped Thesis file on your harddrive. Do not unzip it. Upload the Thesis zip file by going to the “Appearance/Themes/Upload section of WordPress.”
Do not activate Thesis at this time.
Go to your host’s control panel for your domain or to your files via FTP.
Do the following:
- Go to the custom-sample folder via FTP or your Host’s control panel. The custom-sample folder has to be renamed. It is located inside of Thesis, which is inside of the theme folder, which is inside of the WordPress Content folder. (see the path following this line of instructions) Right click in Filezilla.
  If you’re using your Host’s control panel, there may be a different setup for renaming or changing permissions. Look around the panel to see if there are links for making the changes.
- Change the custom-sample folder’s name to just custom. In other words remove “sample.”
- Right Click on layout.css , which is inside the custom folder that you renamed. Change the permissions on the layout.css file to 666.
- The “cache folder” is also inside the custom folder. Change the cache folder (yes, it’s empty) to 775.

Return to the theme library in WordPress.
Go back to Appearances/Themes, look for your Thesis Theme in the list. Activate the Thesis theme that you previously uploaded.

You should now see that you are rocking the latest Thesis theme. If you missed a step, like renaming the custom-sample folder, or not properly changing the permissions, there will be a message posted in the Thesis panel telling you so.

Note: one of the first things I do after I’ve set up a fresh installation of Thesis is set my “permalinks.” I find that if I do that before I start creating posts, it prevents headaches down the road.

No doubt, there are other published ways to load Thesis. This way works for me, and I find it fairly simple and straightforward. There are other steps that have to be followed if you are:

Upgrading from an earlier version of Thesis to the newest version
Moving Thesis to another domain
Converting a website to Thesis
Installing Thesis on your local server

For those instructions, you can use the Thesis User’s Manual or visit the forum once you’ve purchased Thesis. There are some mighty helpful folks over there and loads of posts that cover just about every process there is in Thesis, which are other good reasons for purchasing Thesis. (In the future, I’ll include some tutorials, but for now, this information is will at least get you set up.)

Tagged as: Thesis Theme

{ 3 comments }

michael February 9, 2011 at 8:57 pm: Hi I am a little confused and I thought you could help me. I have a domain name, hosting account, filezilla, mysql database, Wp config file or I think I did it right. That is about as far as I got till it was information overload. What would be my next step?

Thanks Mike.
Dee February 10, 2011 at 10:18 am: Are you needing to know what to do next as far as getting Thesis set up?
Idalee April 23, 2011 at 7:06 am: YMMD with that aswner! TX