Like a leader in any market, Thesis has inspired other developers to create similar frameworks. In the last few months we’ve seen a handful come to market. It has to be said that Thesis is already a relatively mature and stable wordpress theme/framework, and is several iterations ahead of its competitors. Thesis theme created itself a separate niche in the premium wordpress theme market, and these latest themes are trying to claim a piece of that pie. Currently Thesis is leaps and bounds ahead, but the following might be worth following in the future…
Other Wordpress Theme ‘frameworks’
- Frugal Theme: to give it some credit, they do have a few high profile blogs using their framework. But if you look at a screenshot of their admin layout, it is eerily similar to the Thesis admin area. Coincidence?
- Genesis Framework by Studiopress. This was created in March 2010 by Brian Gardner, who is a recognized expert in the WP theme space. Arguably it’s a little more ‘out the box’ than Thesis in terms of sidebar widgets etc, but its still very much in its infancy.
These are the 2 products that have had a stab at matching Thesis on its framework capabilities. Of course, there are hundreds of other premium themes on the market, but they are not directly compatible. If you are struggling with the concept of the differences between a wordpress theme and a wordpress framework, you should probably watch the videos on this page.