I noticed that some of the things you were looking for are now included in the new release of Thesis, version 1.2. I’ve added another post to my Thesis Theme blog about the new features here:

Thesis Theme 1.2 Revealed

Let me know if it proves helpful.

http://diythemes.com/forums/thesis-customization-tips/273-how-avatars-thesis.html

The answers to your questions about contact forms and comment editing will vary. In general, Thesis avoids duplicating functionality that is already provided by popular plugins, and there are several that handle contact forms, for example. This does mean that to really customize your blog you’re going to have to learn a bit about WordPress and plugins, which does represent a bit of a learning curve and potential frustrations.

It looks like you’ve done a fair amount of customizing of your blog already, so hopefully things will improve for you. I notice you like to use Flickr photos. If you haven’t seen it already, my tip on using Photo Dropper with the Thesis Theme might be of interest to you:

http://www.thesistheme.org/photo-dropper-thesis/

Hope that helps. :-)

– no Gravatars
– no built-in contact form
– you can’t edit your own comment

The free MistyLook I was using before had these things.

Gravatars are very important to me – they have been in WP for a while, why on earth not include them?

There is also no clear way to get help, despite being promised it loudly. (I find the forum not much use)

It’s early days, but I’m frustrated so far.

http://www.thesistheme.org/what-are-my-options/

As far as the Cosmo theme goes, I haven’t seen it and I’m not sure that anyone besides Chris Pearson himself has any idea what exactly it will look like. So I guess we will all have to wait and find out later.

Will that be because it was via an echeque on PayPal? I’ve tried contacting Chris, but no luck yet.

Looking forward to using it!

Jon

The design panel options is great but the options are very limited and you still get to identify thesis theme no matter how much flip-flopping you do in the design themes panel. The only way to look different is code and dig deep into the structure which is not what the marketing of thesis says. And to top it off the structure of thesis was written by a top developer which makes dissecting it really difficult at the beginner and intermediate levels.

The reason I bought it is because of the lifetime free upgrades and the free cosmo theme. I also bought it as a learning tool as I am starting to learn PHP for now and Cris Pearson seems to write using best practice coding standards.

But most importantly I trust that Cris Pearson, would continously improve thesis to a point that you don’t have to dissect it like a top class php developer to make your thesis theme unique.

I like my current theme but I guess it’s always nice to know that your blog is unique. Perhaps when I can get some more income to my blog, I’ll definitely get one designed

The forum is worth the price of admission alone. If you do decide to modify Thesis beyond its design panels, the forum is the place to learn how to do it. People are doing some amazing things.

The Cosmo theme is a magazine-type theme.

Check out Thesis. If you do get it you won’t be disappointed!

It’s a great theme and as I get used to blogging, I’ll be exploring a few more of the features Thesis incorporates.

Cheers
Dave

*sighs*

There’s always the next promo as I’ve been wanting to get the Thesis theme since it was first announced.