| USING THE THESIS OPTIONS PANELS |
If you haven't done it already, now is a good time to go through ALL the options that Thesis provides in your WordPress dashboard. Here are a few of the things you can quickly get rid of with a simple checkmark.
 TIP: If you click the plus sign beside the heading on the Thesis Options and Design Options screens, it will expand all the panels so you can see all the options at once.
Thesis Options Screen
The site name or tagline in your browser title bar on your home page. (Document Head > Title Tag) Note that you can't actually eliminate both of them. If you uncheck both boxes, your site name will still appear.
Author name and published date in post bylines. (Display Options > Bylines) This is also where you can add those items into your page bylines if you want them.
Comments on static pages. (Display Options > Comments) Here you actually have to check the box to remove the comments field from your pages. Also, remember this is referring specifically to static pages, i.e. not blog posts.
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Default widgets. (Display Options > Sidebars) These are those funky blue boxes that show up in your sidebar(s) that don't actually show up when you go into your WordPress Appearance > Widgets screen. And, as soon as you add any other widget to the sidebar, the default one disappears, even if the boxes are still checked in the Display Options. I'm not exactly sure what the purpose of them is and I find the text about editing the content to be confusing, because you can't actually modify these specific boxes. |
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Edit and admin links on your pages. (Display Options > Administration) Note that visitors to the site don't ever see these links. They only appear if you're an administrator and you're logged into your WordPress account. But if you don't want to see them either, you can turn them off here.
The Subscribe link in your navigation menu. (Navigation Menu > Feed Link in Nav Menu)
Thesis Design Options Screen
Lines between main content area and sidebars, and double lines at top and bottom of page. (Fonts, Colors, and More! > Body and Content Area)
Post title, author, excerpt, and link text for teaser blurbs. (Teasers > Teaser Display Options)
Multimedia Box. (Multimedia Box) Note that if you turn off the MM box for the site as a whole, you can still add one to individual posts and pages by using the Multimedia Box Options panel on the Add New/Edit screens for those entries.
White space surrounding entire page content. (Framework Options > Outer Page Padding)
To remove an element using CSS is usually simply a matter of adding display: none; to the selector's definition in your custom.css file. (Check out my earlier newsletter for more tips on working with CSS.)
For example, if you don't want avatars to appear beside people's comments, you would add this to your file.
.custom .avatar {
display: none;
) |
Here are a few things I've seen people ask about removing, as well as the selectors that go with them.
Page headlines. .custom .headline_area will remove both the content of the headline and the space provided for it. .custom #headline_area h1 will remove the text only, leaving the space. Note that if you're using a static page as your home page, the h1 changes to h2. (I don't know why.)
Curly brackets around number of comments. .custom .bracket
Link to comments on home page. .custom .to_comments
If you want to remove an element from a specific static page, you can add that page's unique class to the selector. For example, if you didn't want the standard Recent Posts widget to display on your About page's sidebar, you would use the code below.
.custom.about .widget_recent_entries {
display: none;
) |
If you're not sure what the page class is, right-click on the page and choose View Source/View Page Source and look for the <body> tag. The class will appear beside "custom".
Note that blog post pages—individual posts or lists of posts—don't have body-level classes assigned to them by default. So to do the same thing, you would need to add a class to the post using a custom function. You can see an example of how to do that for all blog pages in this earlier newsletter about home pages, under the Customizing Your Home Page section.
Most of the hooks built into Thesis are simply empty placeholders where you can add your own content by writing custom functions. However, there are some hooks that have content already added to them—for example, the navigation menu, the Previous and Next post links on single post pages, and the Thesis attribution in the footer. A complete list of these default functions is available on the DIYthemes site.
To remove any of these bits of content, simply place the code below, which shows how to remove the navigation menu, into your custom_functions.php file and then replace the hook and function names accordingly.
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remove_action('thesis_hook_before_header','thesis_nav_menu'); |
Removing the Comments Intro Text
This code will remove the text that appears above the list of comments on your individual blog posts.
In custom_functions.php
function remove_comments_intro($content) {
$content = '';
return $content;
}
add_filter('thesis_comments_intro', 'remove_comments_intro'); |
You can find more ways to style this element, including changing the text, on the DIYthemes Answers blog (login required).
The much-anticipated Thesis 1.7 upgrade is now available to download! (Login required.)
I installed the beta version a couple of weeks ago, but haven't really had a chance to play around with it yet. So my next few Thesis blog posts will be about some of the new features available, as well as changes to the interface. In the meantime, here's a sneak peak at the cool new Thesis Options Manager that will make it easier to duplicate your customizations across multiple sites.
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This 15-page eGuide offers explanations of the basic Thesis concepts, step-by-step instructions, and code samples for several popular customizations, including adding a clickable header to your site.
The Starter Pack is free to anyone who purchases Thesis through the Tech for Luddites site. The offer applies whether you're purchasing a Personal or Developer option, or upgrading from Personal to Developer. |
“Read the T4L Thesis Starter Pack last night & was so excited about it I couldn't sleep! A WIN for beginners: very clear!”
– @kristarella, web designer and Thesis skin developer
“I LOVE Thesis Theme Starter Pack. It answers some simple but important questions that I couldn't find the answer to anywhere else.”
– Yael K. Miller, Co-Founder of Miller Mosaic, LLC
If you've already purchased Thesis elsewhere, you can also purchase the guide
for $9.95.
Get the Starter Pack today!
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