Richard Knop's Zend Framework Blog » Vigilance http://blog.richardknop.com Zend Framework, PHP, MySQL, jQuery, JavaScript, AJAX, SEO, E-commerce and more Mon, 06 Sep 2010 15:49:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Free alternative to Thesis for WordPress http://blog.richardknop.com/2009/05/free-alternative-to-thesis-for-wordpress/ http://blog.richardknop.com/2009/05/free-alternative-to-thesis-for-wordpress/#comments Fri, 08 May 2009 19:06:35 +0000 Richard Knop http://blog.richardknop.com/?p=89 I’m sure many of you WordPress users and developers have heard about the Thesis. For those of you who haven’t heard about it, it’s a flexible WordPress theme framework with an emphasis on SEO, accessibility and usability. Sounds great, doesn’t it? There’s a small catch in it though – it’s not free.

There are two type of licenses:

  1. Personal license for use on a single site (and a local development server) with a compulsory link in the footer. Costs $87.
  2. Developer license for use on any number of websites you own (a $40 fee to deploy the Thesis on a client website) without the link in the footer. Costs $164.

Both options include lifetime updates, access to support forums and some other useful stuff.

It is certainly a great framework with the SEO being its strongest selling point but not everyone can afford (or want to) buy it. Personally, I think the Thesis is a great anf flexible solution and if you are serious about your blog/website you should at least think about pursaching.

On the other hand, it doesn’t make much sense to buy it if you are just a free time blogger and are not looking to make money with your blog/website it’s (in my humble opinion) not worth it because there is a free solution.

Let me present to you the Vigilance – a free Thesis alternative. The Vigilance theme is not as great as the Thesis but when compared with other free themes it’s definately up to par. Features:

Vigilance

  • SEO friendly: mainly dynamic h1 tags (one of the two most important tags on a page for search engines)
  • dynamic top banner image and a sidebar image box
  • higly customizable sidebar
  • page layot options
  • neatly looking archives

There is a paid PRO membership for $39.95 which includes priority updates, access to support forums, special premium add-ons and more which sounds pretty good (I might buy it in the future if I decide to stay with the Vigilance). But the theme is free.

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