Woot! Just in time. Unlike my last post about the totally outdated Thesis 1.7 beta I can now serve you a very short, yet incredibly informative “tutorial” about how to create a custom Thesis design within 2 minutes.

Especially if you are new to the Thesis scene and/or did not yet dare to pay some bucks for the best WordPress theme on this planet – this video is for you.

Let’s Create A Custom Thesis Design

Learn how easy it is to customize Thesis from within the options menu solely. No hassles with digging into HTML or CSS code, no dirty methods of trial and error. It’s really that simple!

Yo, beware of choosing the wrong typography for your blog as a bad decision might cause your results to suck. I’m serious. It’s simply not okay to serve your users a font-face that doesn’t please their eyes. No discussions needed.

You have to think about that at least once or you are going to let a good chance go for the better to improve statistics and user responses! You are now asking yourself how you can determine which font is the right one for your blog – I’ll help you out with that question. Listen up!

First of all: Forget about the term “perfect font” – there is no such thing. Typography is a huge thing in itself and I’m told it to be very difficult. In fact I proved myself the contrary. I experimented with different font-faces and (naturally) achieved different results.

Arial – Choose this font to look like the rest of us

When I started publishing on the web I felt “wired” and it was a great feeling. But, alas, little did I know about typography. I stumbled upon a few articles ^{1, 2, 3} and read through them. Then I had changed my mind: Arial was going to be buried alife. In fact I’m only using Arial on websites that have to look like any other site.

Sometimes this Helvetica derivate just fits perfectly for my audience. That is because many people are used to (and by) known and widespread font-faces. It has to do with trust and nostalgy – both are relative terms and should be replaced with outstanding designs which force your users to just “forget” about their feelings they encountered elsewhere.

Create a new feeling. An unique feeling. Arial is not going to help you with that task…

Courier New – Pick that font to cry out loud

Damn, this is ugly. For flowing text it is okay in some way. But I feel with you right now as you are whining while you watch my example picture below. PS: It’s obviously not the right choice for any blogger to pick Courier New as a typeface for headlines. No discussions please.

If the rare case applies to your mood of choosing Courier New as the “perfect font” (which does not exist) you might need some help. Seriously: Do not use this font unless you are willingly shouting at your visitors: “I don’t have a clue, please go away. Don’t visit my blog. Just go.”

Georgia – Good font for good websites

WOW! I love Georgia. The very first version of ilovethesis.com ran with Georgia. In fact many of my blogs & websites are 100% Georgia. A smooth and simple yet extravagant font for those of you who dare to break the rules.

Times New Roman – Are you The NY Times? So…

Cool font though. I like Times New Roman. It’s clear-cut and stonecold. Just perfect for anybody who wants to publish a newspaper. Are you going to publish a newspaper? Or are you just too ignorant to realize the most obvious fact about Times New Roman?

It’s a cool font, isn’t it? But do you really want to feature this masterpiece of typography on your own blog? If so I beg you to have a closer look at Georgia again. And again. And then once again…

Trebuchet MS – Clear font for special design purposes

“Oops, I did it again, I played with your heart…” – Before I switched ilovethesis.com to Trebuchet MS I was using Georgia and it felt wrong. I cannot explain why. I just knew I had to pick another font to perform some true Thesis blog magic.

As you can see while glimpsing around this site I did a good job with Trebuchet. It’s used rarely and in my opinion it is the best alternative to the famous “Apple font” which is on their precious website: Lucida. I would switch to Lucida if it was as widespread as I am praying…

Verdana – Verdana is a cool font for everybody

Verdana is made for screens. Verdana is made for monitors. Verdana is 100% digital. Yeah, I agree. Verdana is nice and fluffy when it comes to tiny text. I often use Verdana for footnotes or descriptive text for images. But as it becomes uglier the bigger it gets I try to avoid using it for long passages of text.

Nothing more to say about Verdana. If you are unsure you can pick this font to make your readers happy. But beware: Verdana is widespread and your website and/or blog might look boring while it’s driven by Verdana. (As I said it is the same with Arial)

Bottom line

Okay folks. I hear some whining because I did not make in-depth descriptions for you to copy. That is because all the resources are out there. And I cannot stop me from saying: “There is NO perfect font.”

If you are just beginning making up thoughts of how your website is perceived by your users you should try different fonts and use a tool like Google Analytics to see whether changing the primary font has any (bad) effects.

Attention: All of my judgement is far from being professional. I did not write this post for professionals either. It’s for Thesis users who do not know where to start. As Chris Pearson implemented a huge variety of fonts to choose from actually choosing the “right one” might be very mind-boggling. I repeat: This is not a professional point of view. That would be boring and not help you with your decisions. You could easily head for another resource to get the stuff on a silver plate but, you know, I like to experience things.

You should not stop experiencing things for yourself. Do not live other people’s lives. This is still a message of pure truth if a “professional” tells you otherwise. Listen carefully and but do what you want ;-)

PS: A nice start would perhaps be Wikipedia with Core fonts for the Web. Have fun!

Of course there do exist dozens of guides to Thesis Theme Customization, so I decided to pick 9 of every level from beginner over intermediate to professional. Besides my method of hand-picking your favourite search results I will also give you a brief summary of those Thesis Theme Resources you are going to click through!

9 Thesis Theme Guides for Beginners

1. Thesis Theme User’s Guide @ diythemes.com
   DIYthemes.com itself proves professionality and superb support by answering most of your questions related to Thesis in the first place. By reading the manual you will learn how to install and maintain the Thesis Theme, setting up a nice navigation menu on your blog, change fonts and layout with ease, add custom backgrounds and header images – and how to use the famous & mighty Thesis Hooks!
2. Video Introduction to Thesis Design Options @ diythemes.com
   Without reading boring text you will learn how to use the Thesis Design Options panel in a efficient way. You will also realize that most of the customization takes place in that very panel – you do not necessarily have to dig into complex CSS files to make your blog look great and outstanding.
3. How to Add Adsense Section Targeting @ wolf-howl.com
   Although the seemingly complicated Thesis Hooks are used in this short tutorial you should not hesitate to make the most of your Adsense ads right now! With ad section targeting you are telling Google where to look for the content which is used to display context relevant ads on your blog. Easy!
4. Thesis Hooks for Dummies @ sugarrae.com
   Rae Hoffman stretched the limits of explaining stuff that is hard to understand for many people who are new to either WordPress blogging and the Thesis Theme: She created an easy-to-catch Hook reference which will definitely answer most of your questions regarding the implementation of powerful commands to your blog. Study this masterpiece of education and you’ll get going very soon. If all the info material about Thesis Hooks is understood you might want to skip to more professional tutorials…
5. Add Twitter Follow Me link @ doublemule.com
   “If you can blog you can tweet”, said a wise man some time ago – he is perfectly right. In this easy tutorial you will learn how to integrate your own Twitter profile picture and link in your blog. No Thesis Hooks this time, but you’ll need to add the subscription widget to your sidebar first (that’s easy, too).
6. Creating Custom Categories @ sugarrae.com
   With only little knowledge of Thesis Hooks you will be able to perform some serious magic with your categories! As you can see at the top of this post there is a custom message for this very category. Create a more interesting experience for your visitors by adding customized layouts, images or just texts to your categories.
7. Customize Thesis CSS Inside Your Posts @ randomphobia.com
   On another blog of mine (before I created ilovethesis.com) I recently added a nice tutorial about customizing special “zones” in your blog post with CSS. You can see what I’m talking about on my Why Thesis page. One of those dropdown buttons will reveal the magic…
8. Customizing the 404 Page @ sugarrae.com
   Every now and then your users will experience a failure on your website which leads to a 404 error page. Those pages are mostly annoying and seldom informative. You can change that in case your visitors click a dead link or something like that. BTW: A cool resource for 100 well-designed error 404 pages can be found here.
9. 8 Thesis Design Tips @ howtomakemyblog.com
   Marko Saric is helping you out with eight easy-to-understand tips about designing your top navigation menu, adding custom backgrounds for your sidebar and content area, implementing a “welcome” message before your original post content and much more. Eight easy steps to a better blog – must have read that…

PS: If you are heading for a really huge list you might also be interested in this post @ mattflies.com: 100 Resources for Thesis Wordpress Theme Users – it’s a whole bunch of info there but lacks description…