There’s been a lot going on lately behind the scenes here at the ministry of Kolakube (heh).

I wanted to take a little time to talk about some new skin updates (this is a big deal), show you some of the client designs I’ve worked on, and talk about things like Beast Optimization and other plans for Kolakube.

Basically, there’s a ton of stuff that I want to talk about, and it’s all stuff you’ll just love.

Want to get started?

Chronicl 1.1 ↩

New features:

• Fully-featured, badass responsive design
• HTML5 enabled

Improvements:

• Cleaner, and super light CSS
• All new simplified file structure
• Better logo/nav vertical alignment
• Better dropdown menus
• Cleaned up archives template

If you’re an existing Chronicl customer, you can download the update and instructions in your client area.

Don’t have Chronicl yet? Find out why Chronicl is the funnest Thesis skin to customize, ever.

Marketers Delight 2.2.6 ↩

Improvements:

• Much more flexible responsive design
• Better page-width framework support
• Simplified, more condensed CSS
• Improved pagination

Fixed:

• Orb lead/table lead misalignment
• Better logo/nav vertical alignment
• Better language support
• Fixed comment threading

If you’re an existing Marketers Delight customer, you can download the update and instructions in your client area.

Not a current Marketers Delight customer? If you want a Thesis skin that helps you create beautiful optin forms, feature boxes and landing pages— you may want to consider getting your hands on Marketers Delight now.

Have You Seen These New Thesis Sites? ↩

Over the past few weeks I’ve had the pleasure of working with great people to help redesign their sites, using the one and only Thesis theme.

Have you seen me raving about them on Twitter? If not, check them out!

The Sales Lion ↩

I met Marcus Sherdian at BlogWorld NYC last month during his great presentation. After his presentation, I went up and introduced myself to him, in which he then recognize me from my posts on DIYthemes. One thing led to another, and we ended up redesigning The Sales Lion!

He even wrote a blog post about some of the changes we made, and how you too can use good design to turn your blog into a REAL business.

View The Sales Lion →

Make Money on the Internet ↩

Make Money on the Internet is a blog and podcast that needs no intro. It’s run by Chris Guthrie, who I became good friends with after I got interviewed on Quick Sprout.

Chris and I worked together to get a nicely customized version of Marketers Delight 2 that better matched his site’s theme.

View Make Money on the Internet →

Pitch Anything ↩

I was approached by the team that works with author Oren Klaff (at a rather awkward moment in my life) to redesign their website and help better funnel their content.

Using Marketers Delight 2 and a little bit of elbow grease, the results came out pretty amazing.

View Pitch Anything →

Michael Fishman ↩

This wasn’t a full redesign, as I was tasked to create a better, inspired version of his previous website. I had a lot to work with, and I think things came out very nicely.

View Michael Fishman →

As Seen at BlogWorld… ↩

I thought this was sweet, when I watched my friend Lewis Howes speak at BlogWorld, he incorporated the feature box I designed for him months ago and talked about the results it brought in for him.

It was great seeing my work being appreciated like this to a room full of people.

Sorry for the crappy quality. I design, I don’t take pictures.

The Perfect Blog Post ↩

Recently, Derek Halpern released the “perfect blog post” formula on Social Triggers. It instantly went viral, and I think is an incredible resource that I had the honor of designing for him.

And as a traditional reaction to Derek Halpern’s content, everyone on the Internet will now become an expert on creating the “perfect blog post” and will now share these ideas as if they were their own.

View the Perfect Blog Post →

What’s Next For Kolakube ↩

So that’s just a glimpse at some of the things I’ve been working on. Can you tell I’ve been busy?

While I have plenty of other projects in line for others, I also have some killer stuff I’ve been working on to make Kolakube an even better resource.

Expect to see these things being deployed over the next few months:

• A gigantic video library full of tutorials for my Thesis skins, and other videos related to design
• I’m going to start writing more about designing for your business on Kolakube
• A new skin hopefully coming out late July/early August. It’s a portfolio skin called Spotlight
• I want to get in the habit of releasing more freebies here

Have You Signed Up For Beast Optimization? ↩

In a journey to help me get back into writing (and share some much-needed knowledge), I created a series called Beast Optimization.

This free series is all about helping you create a faster, better-performing website. Some of the topics covered are:

• Do plugins really slow down your website?
• What features on your website you should remove
• How to supercharge your website with these killer cache + CDN tips
• The HTTP outbreak: How HTTP requests suck the life out of your website
• And much, much more…

To give you an idea of the quality of content you receive by joining this course, I released the article I wrote about image optimization for everyone to see. You should read it, it’s a great article if I do say so myself.

Want to learn more about creating a faster website? Join Beast Optimization right now:

Click here to join Beast Optimization →

So That’s Me… How About You? ↩

You know, after writing down what I’ve been doing the past few weeks, I feel like I’ve accomplished more than I thought prior to writing this.

This motivates me to only keep going strong and hopefully being able to write more update posts like this to show off the work I’ve been doing.

I want you to get the same kind of feeling that I have right now. In the comments below, tell me some of the things you’ve been working on the past few weeks. I’d love to know what you’ve been upto.

Continuing on what has been a crazy week around Kolakube, I have something that all you Marketers Delight users are going to love.

Marketers Delight version 2.2.5 is out and it brings a responsive design to the table. Or in other words, MD2.2.5 now looks incredible on any device (phone or tablet).

This is the 6th major update in the 4 months Marketers Delight has been available (talk about getting your money’s worth).

See it For Yourself

click the image above to see for yourself!

Ever since releasing Aroxis and the responsive skin starter set, more and more people have been requesting that I make Marketers Delight responsive as well.

Because of the amazing amount of detail that went into creating Thesis, it was easy for me to figure out how to create the most flexible responsive skin I could. You can create as many columns as you want, adjust your layout widths, swap your column order, and more without touching any code.

And like my previous work with making responsive Thesis skins, Marketers Delight is no exception to any of that.

But what I think really makes this so great, and it may seem simple to you, is this option right here:

This is an option I created for those of you who do NOT want their site to be responsive. By nature, responsive design is not the most bulletproof way of serving content to your readers on smaller devices, and some aren’t a fan of it and would prefer other options— like a mobile site.

There was a huge conversation about it here, and you can learn a lot by reading some of the comments in there.

So if you don’t like the idea of responsive design and don’t want all the extra code to load on your site, you can turn it off very easily. I think many of you will appreciate that.

Upgrade Now

If you’re a current Marketers Delight customer and want this update, go ahead and login to your Kolakube account to download the upgrade and follow the instructions provided in the download.

If you don’t have Marketers Delight yet…

There’s Only 2 Days Left Before We Raise Our Prices

If you are planning on buying a skin from us, now’s the time to do it. This Friday, June 1st (2 days), Kolakube is nearly doubling the price of all skins in our gallery from $37 to $67. These next 2 days are your last chance to save on our skins while they’re cheap!

Check out our skins gallery now →

Ever since relaunching in February, Kolakube has made huge strides. From new Thesis skins to better support, an affiliate program and some awesome freebies— we’re always keeping busy to keep you busy.

With the future shining so brightly for us and the Thesis community as a whole, I’ve decided to make a few changes on how Kolakube delivers new and awesome skins to you.

From $37 to $67 (Starting This Friday)

As it stands, the prices of the skins in the gallery are now at a modest $37. What is included in that price tag? Quite a bit:

• 1 beautiful, highly functional Thesis skin
• New features, bug fixes + updates for life (1-2 skin updates a month)
• A growing documentation library with guides, how-to’s and tutorials
• A support forum where Sean Davis and I live, often going above and beyond to help you out

That’s a lot of stuff, and it’s only getting better. With plans for even more Thesis skins, and our upcoming video library (full of tutorials, guides and how-to’s on our skins), the $37 you spent on one of our skins really goes a long way.

The truth is, we go the extra mile here to deliver not just the best Thesis skins on the market, but to deliver the best customer experience possible.

And we work our asses off. Kolakube is a two man show at the moment (me, Alex, developing skins + running Kolakube and Sean essentially taking over the support forums).

Let’s Be Real: Here’s the Reason Why

So why raise the prices? I’m not going to come up with any BS, here’s the truth:

Kolakube is a growing business. As a business grows, things change. While I will always be sure our skin pricing is reasonable and affordable for you, I need to be sure that myself and the people who work with me here can make a living.

The things we do here aren’t motivated by money, trust me. Ever since the relaunch in February, I set out to help you create a business based on good design. One way to do that, was through selling well-designed Thesis skins.

Hopefully, if you’ve used our skins for even just a day, you’ll agree with us that the service here is worth more than the $37 price tag we put on it.

If not, I welcome you to buy one of our skins and use it yourself. See how good our products are and how good our support is if you need it. And do so before Friday, when the prices of our skins go up from $37 to $67.

Want All Our Skins? Join a Club!

Also happening on Friday, is the release of our membership clubs. These clubs basically let you get all our skins (and future skins), and everything else that comes with it, for one low price.

There will be 2 options: yearly access and 6-month access.

Depending on which option you choose, you will get access to all skins released in that period of time until you need to renew. However, you will always have access to the support and documentation that comes with joining these clubs.

This is the Last Week to Grab Our Skins at $37

Once Friday comes around, all Kolakube skins will be sold at $67 a piece. This week is your last chance to get them at this lower price of $37.

Or if you’d prefer to get all our skins for one low club membership plan (for killer savings in the long run), you can wait for Friday to come around and grab our skins there.

Thanks for your continuous support of Kolakube. It’s been an uphill climb since last year, but this site is really coming together, and it’s all thanks to you who use our skins, leave blog comments and spread the word about us.

Aroxis is a new Thesis skin from Kolakube, and it’s pretty damn cool.

The main idea of Aroxis is to help serve your content to multiple devices, providing a more elegant experience for users on any device.

Or, in shorter terms, Aroxis has a stunning responsive design. And it’s not like anything you’ve seen in the Thesis community yet.

The best part of this responsive experience isn’t for your readers. It’s for you, the site creator.

Since Aroxis is built on Thesis, you know it sits on some pretty powerful layout options.

You can set your own column widths, create one, two or three column layouts, and even reverse the order of your columns.

A problem with many responsive themes is that they remain static.

As in, you can’t change the widths of columns or set your own custom column order settings. Your stuck with what you get out of the box.

Aroxis solves that problem and integrates perfectly with Thesis’ layout options. And of course, it all remains responsive.

From Flexible Layout to Killer Design Options

Taking a page from Chronicl, Aroxis is a “design first, ask questions later” kind of skin.

Armed with killer design options, you can set your own background color, change textures throughout the skin and even create some beautiful logos:

Click the image above for a full view

The logo settings in Aroxis are impressive:

• Broken circle logo format (far left)
• Rectangle box (left)
• Plain text (right)
• Your own custom logo (far right)

…and you can align your logo any way you want. Left, right, center— and the layout adapts.

That’s Just A Glance…

Aroxis is a pretty powerful skin, and has opened the doors for current and future Kolakube skins to become perfectly responsive within Thesis.

If you want to learn more about Aroxis, you can click the link below to get started:

Learn more about Aroxis →

PS: A huge “thank you” to Matt Gross (@mattonomics) for the help he gave me. Aroxis wouldn’t be as slick without his help!

Responsive web design is probably the hottest topic in the design community right now. And no, I’m not just realizing this.

For the past couple of weeks, I have been reading all there is to read on the subject and been experimenting with a lot of different techniques.

Needless to say, I am ready to start converting my Thesis skins (and all future designs) to be responsive, just as I have on my new personal blog.

People who use my skins are always asking when I will make them responsive, and why it’s taking me so long to do it.

My answer? It’s simple:

Why is it such a big deal?

Believe me, I think responsive web design is a great thing. As a designer, it’s fun to create and as a consumer of content on multiple devices: it can make life easier (or all the more tougher).

But in all honesty… why do you want it so bad?

Have you taken the time to truly understand what a responsive website design does? Do you really need to serve your “mobile” visitors a different layout based on your current content?

Or, have you been programmed by all the hype and what the ‘experts’ are doing and suddenly decide you need a responsive website over anything else?

I Need Your Opinions

I have become so fascinated by not just responsive website design, but how people react to it. I want to know why you want a responsive website, and why this new way of design is such a high priority for your website.

I want to gather as much information as possible, because let me tell you: I am working on a monster post about everything responsive web design soon, and I want your opinion to use towards that post.

So please, leave a comment expressing your honest opinion about responsive web design and why it’s so important to you.

(orig. 3/19/12)

I’m not going to lie and tell you my premium Thesis skins haven’t been selling like crazy. Because they have.

And I also have to mention that I did decide to *proudly* ditch my affiliate program for a ton of reasons a couple of months ago.

Despite an inbox full of requests and tweets telling me how giant of an opportunity I was missing out on— I kept a hard head and kept it closed.

But today, I’m reopening it. And doing it a hell of a lot better than last time.

Here’s What New With The Affiliate Program

A quick look at it, there’s a lot of awesome things about this program:

• Earn a nice 30% cut of each sale (about $11 a skin. Just wait until the prices rise!)
• Access to a growing list of 50 beautiful affiliate banners
• Detailed click, sales, traffic, trends reports
• Full support at the awesome Kolakube support forum

You can learn more about it (and signup) by clicking the link below.

Click here to learn more

Why I Brought it Back

I want to go back and take a minute to respond to my article about why I closed the affiliate program. If you read it, you’ll think I’m an absolute hypocrite for bringing back the affiliate program. I did bash it pretty badly.

In business, there is a difference between being hypocritical and learning. Opinions change in an instant and like most things the past few months, this has been a learning experience.

So, I specifically wanted to address these points I made:

• The sales brought in through affiliates was not worth the time it took to maintain the program
• Many people used “spam” methods to promote through the affiliate program, making me look bad
• Affiliate programs lead to higher refund rates through that spam by creating unrealistic expectations

Note that I based everything in that article based on the old Kolakube of a few months ago.

I even came up with a detailed chart of the differences between the ‘old’ Kolakube and the ‘new’ Kolakube to give you an idea of the data I was working with at the time:

1. Not Worth the Time

The first time I ran my affiliate program, it accounted for about 5% of the overall sales. Between taking the time to pay the few active affiliates, responding to emails and promoting the program, I started to feel like it wasn’t worth it.

Truth is, it wasn’t. How could it be when few people would really recommend my skins on account of the bad service?

Opposed to now, where customer support is the biggest priority here, I think a lot more people would gladly promote Kolakube. And in the end, it will be worth all the time it takes to manage it.

2. Spam Marketing Methods

Let’s understand this now:

No matter what, there will always be spam. I wanted to close the affiliate program because people use spam methods to promote my skins. But why let spam win?

When you get email spam, do you close your email account? When you get comment spam, do you kill off your commenting system indefinitely?

I bet not, because that’s all crazy. You just need to have better management over these things, and accept that you can’t beat spam, but you can control it.

3. Higher Refund Rates

Through these spam methods, people were often promoting my products unrealistically. Advertising things they could not do, promising things that would never happen… leading to high frustration when people found out it wasn’t true, and blaming me. Then getting a refund. Bummer.

I can only trust that people truthfully promote the products around here, and that I continue to keep pumping out great updates to always make them better.

Those are my new beliefs about the affiliate program here, and it is here to stay for sure. But this was the one major drawback of not having an affiliate program:

Missing Out on a Huge Opportunity (For You)

If you’re a customer here, you know one thing Kolakube is all about is listening to what you want. And you wanted an affiliate program to promote the Thesis skins you used and make some money. I’d want that too, money is awesome!

With such a high demand for Thesis skins in the market, promoting a skin only seems natural to be a huge hit in affiliate sales.

So I invite you, whether you’re a customer here or not, to try out the FREE affiliate program and see what you can make with it.

Hey, you! Yeah, the one who’s wasting hours upon hours scrolling through Tumblr for another mildly amusing cat gif.

I know you have better things to do, and if you’re reading this blog then you probably have ambitions for your web experience that extends beyond browsing image sharing sites.

For you happy few, I want to give a bit of a pep talk. To motivate you to commit to your dream of founding the next big thing on the web. We all daydream about stumbling into web-based stardom in one form or another, so why not pursue those dreams in earnest?

C’mon, let’s give it some serious thought.

Consider Pinterest

I think the recent explosion of the relatively new social media service Pinterest is a great example of how ordinary people achieve huge success on the web.

Less than a year ago, Pinterest was a medium level website with a small following and little to no media coverage.

Then seemingly, overnight, the site exploded in popularity, going from a struggling site to one with over 11 million viewers a month within a very short period of time. The developers behind Pinterest run a small operation—less than fifty employees in all—and yet they’ve managed to cultivate massive success.

The most amazing thing about Pinterest is that it doesn’t really offer any groundbreaking features to its users. It’s simply a new platform through which people can share info with other users. Designed to look like a pin-up board, people on Pinterest can pin up text, photos, and videos that they find interesting, funny, or worth talking about.

It’s essentially a refinement of an experience on the web that’s already ubiquitous. And that’s key.

Evolutionary, not Revolutionary

Pinterest’s path is nothing new, but it does teach a valuable lesson to web entrepreneurs looking to stake their claim to fame:

You don’t need to reinvent a person’s fundamental browsing experience in order to create a successful enterprise. All you need to do is identify a pressing demand in the blogosphere, and think of an innovative (and feasible) way to meet that demand.

For example, say that you happen to notice that a number of graphic designers complain about the difficulty with a certain design software.

While it probably isn’t within your skill set to create a more user friendly software, perhaps you could find the resources to build a site for graphic designers to vent about their frustrations and brainstorm solutions to common problems in their profession.

There was a need, and you created a space to address it.

Maintaining Quality

If you ever want to have any success on the web, you have to hold yourself up to the highest standards in everything you do.

From the idea stage, to actual design, to execution and implementation— you can only hope to succeed if you remain dedicated at every stage.

A half-brained idea won’t have a chance when you try to design for it, nor will you be able to execute it in an appealing manner.

A great idea isn’t worth anything if you aren’t willing to get down and dirty with the design and coding problems involved in making a site worthwhile.

Stay strong throughout or don’t bother at all; remember, there are millions of hungry entrepreneurs who trying for the same success as you.

Whatever you do, you better make it count.

It must be that time again, there’s a new version of Kolakube’s flagship Thesis skin, Marketers Delight, out again.

I’m usually a pretty modest guy, but I can’t contain myself here:

This is an update for the ages and easily secures Marketers Delight as the most powerful Thesis skin on the market.

This is a (literally) bold statement, but I truly believe that with all that Marketers Delight 2.2 offers, you’re not going to find another skin on the market that can really compare.

Let’s see what’s new.

1. New Streamlined Page Lead System

If you’re familiar with Marketers Delight and the Page Lead system, then you know a Page Lead essentially acts as a “feature box on steroids.” You’ll find plenty and plenty of tutorials around the web that teach you how to create a feature box… but they all require some fairly tricky code.

And that’s why Page Leads are so powerful. You can create absolutely gorgeous feature boxes without touching any nasty code. And the best part is, you can create content in your Page Lead just like you would in a regular post. So, it’s all very familiar to you.

Marketers Delight 2.2 comes with 6 built-in Page Leads:

• Feature Box Lead (with 2 color schemes: dark and red)
• Standard Box Lead
• Full-Width Lead
• 3 Column Lead
• Table Lead (dark) (light)
• Orb Lead

And the new way of using Page Leads have gotten easier. Rather than changing the entire Page Template to use a Lead, I’ve come up with something a lot simpler.

You can see how the new Page Lead system works in the demo video below.

2. New Design Options

This has been an option many people have been dying for. In 2.2, you now have the control to:

• Change the background pattern
• Change the color of the main menu bar
• And other, minor settings

I created the design options page with a few options for now, but have big plans for this page in the future. So, stay tuned.

3. Better Support And Documentation

A huge bright spot in Kolakube is the support forum and documentation sections. That may seem funny to some of you, as when Kolakube originally opened— there wasn’t much of either.

I am used to waiting days or even weeks for answers about other themes I have used. I really appreciate the fast response. I’m so happy to have found this theme and the quick support makes it even better.

The truth is, Marketers Delight is nothing without support or documentation. That’s why we take it so seriously around here, and yes, I say “we” because of a fantastic addition to the Kolakube team.

If you’ve been around the support forum, you’ve probably seen this big shiny head around. That’s because Sean Davis has been monitoring the support forum with me to help Kolakube customers get their skins the way they want them to look.

He goes out of his way to help out, and really adds a new level of greatness to the support community here on Kolakube. So if he’s helped you recently, be sure to send him a big “thank you” on Twitter!

Having said that, we’ve added a bunch of new tutorials to the docs to help make your Marketers Delight experience a whole lot better:

• How to Properly Customize Marketers Delight
• The Ultimate Guide to Customizing Page Leads
• How to Upgrade to MD2.2
• How to Use Page Leads in Marketers Delight 2.2
• How to add a Custom Message After Your xth Post
• How to Disable Share Buttons on Individual Posts And Pages

The two bold articles are probably the most useful. They’ll teach you the right ways to customize Marketers Delight, as well as provide some tutorials for enhancing your Page Leads.

4. Other Improvements

A lot has been changed, added and removed from Marketers Delight 2.2. Here is the full list of changes:

• Refined Page Lead system
• Design options panel
• New widget: affiliate links widget
• Can now add post footer message after “xth” post on homepage
• Disable share buttons on individual posts and pages
• Add custom share codes via Marketers Delight options panel
• Simplified CSS, making it easier to override default MD styles
• Replaced old button system with the DIYbutton set
• Can now use feature box on every page you want
• “Ribbon Lead” and “Feature Box” merged as alternate color scheme options
• Contact page template removed
• Non-English language friendlier
• Better feature box/Page lead styling
• Admin options, Page Lead controls simplified with fewer input boxes
• Fixed search bar “break out” bug

5. Watch the “What’s New” Video!

Now, I’m not a video guy (if you watch, you’ll probably figure that out). But I thought I’d shoot a quick video showing off what’s new in 2.2.

This video shows:

• New design options panel
• New post options
• New feature box options
• New affiliate widget
• How the new Page Lead system works
• Why Alex shouldn’t make videos

Haven’t Bought Marketers Delight Yet?

Marketers Delight is one of the hottest Thesis skins around right now. There’s a lot it has to offer your business, and this post doesn’t even cover them all.

Click here to learn more about Marketers Delight →

Already A Customer? Login For Free Updates

Marketers Delight 2.2 is free to all current Marketers Delight customers. Just login to the forum to grab your copy, and read the upgrade guide for instructions on upgrading from 2.x to 2.2.

Share Your Thoughts

Marketers Delight 2.2 is a huge, huge release. After reading this post, please spare a minute or two to leave a comment and let us know your experience with Marketers Delight, and of course post any questions too.

Also, be sure to subscribe to the Kolakube newsletter below to be the first to hear about Marketers Delight, new skins and more.

Sure, coding isn’t the most attractive solution to most people — but it’s honestly not tough to wrap your head around if you really want to do it.

In this tutorial, I want to go over how I created alternate sidebar layouts throughout Kolakube.

A lot of people have been asking me how I have all these different sidebars on different pages, so I figured I’d write a tutorial on how to do it.

To get an idea of how extensive you can get with creating these alternate layout schemes, I’ve taken a screenshot of the 3 places on Kolakube where I’ve used the techniques I’m about to share to create a diverse layout:

Click for a larger view

Click for a larger view

Click for a larger view

Step 1: Prep A Few Numbers↩

Before we get started any coding, we need to know a few numbers:

• The page you want to create the custom layout out (you can grab the page ID, or a conditional tag
• The width of your content column (found in Thesis → Design Options → Columns → content column)
• The width of sidebar 1 (found in Thesis → Design Options → Columns → sidebar 1)

For reference throughout this tutorial, here are my settings (using the Thesis 2-column layout):

• content: 480
• sidebar 1: 195

Step 2: Filter All Sidebars↩

Thanks to this handy article from DIYthemes, we can easily remove all sidebars from the layout of whatever page we specify through the use of conditional tags.

Don’t worry, we’ll add them back in the next step. Paste this code into custom_functions.php:

See that code is_single()? That tells the function which page it should remove the sidebars on. is_single() controls the layout for all blog posts, so by firing this function— you’re removing the sidebars on all blog post pages. Like I said, we will be adding them back.

A few of conditional tags I use the most are (see full list in the Codex):

Save that file, and check out your site. You should notice that there is only your content box left in the content area, and no sidebars.

Click for a larger view

Step 3: Add A Custom Body Class↩

For styling purposes, we need to add a custom body class to the page. You may know the default body class Thesis assigns to all pages is custom, as in:

We need to assign another class to only whatever page we just filtered the sidebars out on. Paste this into custom_functions.php:

See that is_single() again? That’s targeting only single post pages, since we don’t want to add this class to any other page.

You can add as many targeted body classes as you want. Just add this right before return $classes:

Now we have the following body class on all our single post pages:

Still with me? Let’s go deeper:

Step 4: Adding Sidebar 1 Back↩

Going back to the DIYthemes tutorial, we can go ahead and add back our first sidebar to the layout. Paste this into custom_functions.php:

}
add_action('thesis_hook_content_box_bottom','restore_sidebar',1);
[/php]

This will bring sidebar 1 back to the layout, but underneath the content area. Here's where that custom body class we added comes into play.

Add this CSS to your custom.css file (you will have to adjust these values to your own):

How did I get the value 51.4? Easy.

Thesis sets the #content column (the section that holds your post content) to whatever number you assign in the design options (mine is 480), and adds the margin (spacing) around the #content column to the total width.

So, if you look into the layout.css file (or use Firebug) and search for #content, you should find the width already calculated for you. Replace my value, 51.4em, with the value created for your content column.

After that, you should have a layout put together a little something like this:

Click for a larger view

Step 5: Play Around!↩

We've successfully recreated a sidebar in Thesis and are ready to roll.

What we basically did was go around in a complete circle. We removed the sidebar from the page, and then added it back. The only difference? More control.

Going back to Step 4, you'll see that's where the key to the customization lies. You can replace:

…with anything!

What that code does is just recreates the sidebar Thesis registers. Remove that code, and place your own there — and now you'll see the true power of this tutorial, and how easy it will be to create these alternate layout schemes, such as you see on Kolakube.

Let's get a little more specific here…below, I've outlined some codes you can use to create multiple columns all in different order.

Content | Sidebar | Sidebar↩

You must have the 3-column layout enabled in Thesis → Design Options → Columns

Replace the function from Step 4, restore_sidebar, with this function:

}
}
add_action('thesis_hook_content_box_bottom', 'content_sidebar_sidebar');
[/php]

Alternate: Sidebar | Sidebar | Content ↩

Using the same function as above, paste this into the CSS:

As always, adjusting the content width.

Sidebar | Content | Sidebar↩

You must have the 3-column layout enabled in Thesis → Design Options → Columns

Replace the function from Step 4, restore_sidebar, with these functions:

function kol_column_wrap_open()
{
if(is_single())
{
?>

}
}
add_action('thesis_hook_content_box_bottom', 'sidebar_content_sidebar_2', 1);
[/php]

…and replace your old CSS with this:

Match the #content width as explained in Step 4, and make sure the #sidebars width is the same as #sidebar_1.

Widgetizing Your Custom Sidebars ↩

If you want to make these sidebars a little more dynamic, you can very easily create new widget areas to them. Go back to any of the functions you just made, and replace any instance of:

With this:

Now, you need to add this somewhere outside of the function. I recommend placing it right after add_action():

',
'before_title'=>'

',
'after_title'=>'

'
));
[/php]

Make sure the name values both match. Now, you can go into the Widgets section in WordPress and drop widgets into your new sidebars just like you would with the other Thesis sidebars!

How Have You Implemented This?↩

Do you plan to, or have you already done something like this in Thesis? What do you think of the layout methods I created for this tutorial?

I have a feeling there will be plenty of people who need help implementing these layouts into their own site, so feel free to leave a comment below if you have any questions or issues with this tutorial!

I’ve been busy here on Kolakube, and can finally show you what I’ve been working on! I call it: The Kubicle.

The Kubicle is my little office space on the web where I (and other authors) create and release some pretty sweet stuff that’ll enhance your website.

And for the starting lineup, I’ve got some pretty cool stuff for you to play with on your site.

KolFolio Thesis Skin

New Thesis Skin: KolFolio

For starters, I’ve released a new Thesis skin called KolFolio.

It’s a simple portfolio skin that was based off the short-lived Kolakube v3 design, and it’s all yours — for FREE.

Learn more about KolFolio →

Marketers Delight 2 PSD File

Marketers Delight 2 PSD File

My popular Thesis skin, Marketers Delight comes highly customized right out of the box. It’s easy to make your own customizations, but you may not have as much control as you want.

So, I am offering you the Photoshop file of Marketers Delight to give you that little bit of extra control.

It’s fully layered, organized and easy to build around. This is the perfect tool for those looking to really take their installation of Marketers Delight to the next level.

Buy Marketers Delight 2 PSD →

…And Plenty More at the Kubicle

I’ll always be updating this new section with new freebies and resources as I make them. Of course, if you want to submit your own resource — shoot me an email. You’ll get plenty of exposure by the Kolakube community for your site.

What do you think of everything so far? Let me know, and don’t be afraid to make some suggestions for new resources you’d like to see in the Kubicle!