As a big fan of the SEO optimized Thesis theme for WordPress, I use it on most of my blogs.

And the newly released 1.6 upgrade is a great new version of Thesis.

In my opinion (and that of many big name bloggers) blogs built with the Thesis theme definitely do better in the search engines than blogs using other themes. But for me its biggest attraction is that it’s so simple to change the layout and the look of your blog.

Do you want to stop it looking like a blog? A few simple clicks in the admin area and you can make it look like a site built with Dreamweaver or XsitePro and the only way people will know it’s a blog is by looking at the source code.

Do you want to make it look like a salesletter page? Takes 30 seconds if that.

This is definitely the easiest and smartest blog theme I’ve ever used.

One site I haven’t used it on is philwiley.com, because I’ve got lots of pages on that blog and Thesis didn’t handle drop down page menus.

Until now that is.

Last week the latest version of Thesis was released and along with a great new interface for customizing the look and colors of your blog, it now offers drop down page menus.

So as soon as I could I installed it on philwiley.com. Which means you’re seeing it in action now

It took me perhaps 5 minutes to change from the old look of the blog. Still might fiddle with the look a bit, by adding a background image instead of the dark gray background, but to add the header image, the border around the body, and a few other things was really simple and fast.

Using an ordinary WordPress theme this would taken my ages. But with Thesis it hardly  takes anytime because changing the look is mainly point and click.

Want 1, 2, or 3 columns? It’s a simple as checking a box.

Want to change the header image or the background? Well there’s no delving into the CSS which is the way you have to do it with an ordinary WordPress theme – with Thesis you just drop the new code you want into a box in the admin area. It’s so simple that even I can do it without making mistakes, and I’m about as far from being a technie as you can imagine. My brain just doesn’t work that way

Anyway, here’s a short video from Chris Pearson (the genius developer) showing you how simple it is to make fast changes to the look, and the colors, of your blog.

http://philwiley.com/recommends/Thesis/

Don’t judge the theme just by looking at philwiley.com. Check out all the custom looks in the site showcase on the Thesis site. Many pro bloggers are using it, including people from Google, because they know it’s the best theme to use for getting high search engine positions.

Thesis is not a free theme, but it’s well worth the investment – especially seeing all future upgrades are included in the deal.  It’s SEO capabilities and it’s ease of use are awesome. Highly recommended for serious bloggers.