A reader of this blog posted a comment asking me to share the code that I’m using for the comment gravatar images. I’ve provided the code below, but keep in mind that you can always use Firebug to look at the CSS code used on elements of a website. I’m not saying you should copy code from other sites, but you can certainly get ideas and learn from other web developers as to how they achieve certain effects.

It’s really just CSS that was used to achieve the border and drop shadow effect, along with an image I had to create.

Now, you can certainly recreate that shadow effect using only CSS and that’s also an option for you. Here are two links to tutorials on that:

• CSS Drop Shadows Without Images from Nicolas Gallagher.
• Pure CSS3 box-shadow page curl effect from Matt Hamm.

Here’s my simple CSS code that I used for the avatar images on this site. Just add this to your custom.css file.

.custom span.avatar {
   background: url(images/shadow.png) no-repeat center bottom;
   float: right;
   height: 103px;
   margin-left: 10px;
   width: 86px;
}

.custom .avatar img {
    background: #FFFFFF;
    -moz-border-radius: 5px;
    -webkit-border-radius: 5px;
    border-radius: 5px;
    border: 1px solid #DDDDDD;
    padding: 5px;
}

Here is a link to the image file I used. If your avatar image on your site is not the same size then the shadow won’t work and you’ll need to create a new one, or you can just try out one of the CSS solutions I provided above. You can always adjust the avatar image size too.

Of course, you aren’t limited to this styling. You can get creative and style the comment gravatar images any way you want with CSS.

Chris Pearson has released the latest version of Thesis, version 1.8.3 which has numerous performance and usability enhancements.

To learn more about Thesis 1.8.3 and hear from Chris on the latest developments with regard to Thesis 2.0, you can read the official post over at DIYthemes.

How to upgrade from a previous version of Thesis
How to install Thesis for the first time

It took a while, but Thesis-Blogs.com now has a Twitter profile! Be sure to follow us to receive more tips for Thesis, WordPress and anything else we find interesting.

Follow @thesisblogs!

If you’re a Google Reader user, you may have noticed the “Explore” section in the left sidebar of the main Reader screen. Many users find this to be quite annoying, but as of this writing, there is no way to disable it. Google basically loads up a bunch of recommended feeds, which for many of us is not needed because we have already loaded the feeds we want.

Sure, you can click the arrow and “collapse” the section, but it’s still there taking up space on the screen. Fortunately, there’s a Greasemonkey script out there that takes care of this, and other UI issues.

How to Remove The Explore Section From Google Reader

You will need to install the Greasemonkey Firefox addon if you don’t already have it. Greasemonkey allows you to customize the way a web page displays or behaves, by using small bits of JavaScript. If you aren’t a Firefox user, I’m not sure what alternatives there are but if you know, share your knowledge in the comments.

Once you have this installed, head over to the Google Reader UI Fixer script page, and click the Install button at the top right.

That’s it! If you’re logged into Reader, log out and back in again. You will notice the changes. The script page has a list of all the changes it makes along with before and after screenshots.

Still Want More Tweaks?

Since it’s a Greasemonkey script, you’re able to make additional tweaks yourself if you’d like. For example, I didn’t really need the “Home” link in the sidebar because I never go to that page. I just show the feeds in list view all the time, and have no need for a home page. So here’s how I added that to the script:

From the Firefox Tools menu, click “Add-ons.” When the Add-ons Manager displays, click the “User Scripts” link from the left side of the screen. You will see something that looks like this:

Click the Preferences button, and then in the window that shows up, click “Edit this user script.” It will probably ask you to associate an editor with the file so you can edit it. I’m using a Mac, so what I did was search the Applications for TextMate, which is the editor I use, and I selected that.

Then the script should open up in the editor. Now, you would need Firebug to find the applicable CSS selector. In the case of the home link, it’s “#home-section”.

So you would add this to the file:

// Hide Home Navlink
GM_addStyle("#home-section { display: none; }");

Save the file, and you’re done. You can apply the same rules for other elements on the page.

Have fun!

The latest version of the WordPress software — 3.3, named “Sonny” in honor of the great jazz saxophonist Sonny Stitt, is now available for download or update inside your WordPress dashboard.

WordPress has had over 65 million downloads since version 3.0 was released, and in this third major iteration the WordPress team has added significant polish around the new user experience, navigation, uploading, and imports. Check out this short video that summarizes the new updates:

• WordPress 3.3 Official Notification
• WordPress 3.3 Download Counter
• WPCandy.com post on known plugin compatibility issues
• What’s new in WordPress 3.3

Whenever I’ve needed to add a form to a WordPress page, I’ve used either Contact Form 7 or the Secure Form Mailer plugin.

I’ve found they both work well. I have had some problems in the past with Contact Form 7 not sending the notification after a form has been submitted. But overall they seem to work fine.

Gravity Forms

Just recently, I wanted to update a contact form on one of my sites, and also wanted to be able to have the data automatically sent to a 3rd party system. So I figured I’d give Gravity Forms a try and see how things went.

I’ve been really impressed with this plugin. Gravity Forms is a premium WordPress plugin, which typically means it isn’t free. I don’t have any problem paying for a plugin if it offers more than what you’d find in a free plugin. After all, the developers have invested a great deal of time and expertise in building the plugin.

There are three options available for purchasing the plugin. You can buy Gravity Forms (affiliate link) from their website and click on the “Plans & Pricing” button for more details on the three options.

Gravity Forms Plans & Pricing

At the time of writing this post, Gravity Forms offers three pricing levels:

• Personal – $39
• Business – $99
• Developer – $199

On all three options, you have unlimited forms that you can receive and you can export the entries you receive.

The main difference is that for the Personal plan, you can use the plugin on only one site. For the Business plan, you can use it on 3 sites, and the Developer option allows you to use it on an unlimited number of sites.

Gravity Forms Add-Ons

Gravity Forms also offers numerous “Add-Ons” which are like add on plugins that will enhance the feature set of the main plugin. For example, there is an Aweber and Mailchimp add on which will automatically add your submissions to one of these email marketing platforms.

So, the other main difference between the three options is that on the Basic plan, you do not have access to any of the add-ons. For the Business plan, you have access to only the Aweber, MailChimp and Campaign Monitor add-ons.

With the Developer plan, you have access to the remaining add-ons, which includes, PayPal, Freshbooks, Twilio and User Registration add-ons.

I started with the Personal Option just to try it out and see how I liked it.

3rd Party Add-ons

I discovered there are a number of 3rd party add on plugins for Gravity Forms, most if not all are from one developer. If you search for “Gravity Forms” in your plugin search box you will see them. There is one for integrating with Highrise, and although it works, It doesn’t seem to be able to import any custom fields that you might have set up.

One of these plugins that I did have problems with is the Contact Form 7 Conversion plugin. This will automatically copy over your Contact Form 7 forms to Gravity Forms. Sounds like a great time-saving idea.

Since I was using Contact Form 7 before, I went ahead and did this, and although it seemed to work on the surface, something went wrong because when I tried to submit the form, it kept returning an error saying a required field was empty, when it fact it was not.

Deleting the form, and re-creating it from scratch fixed the problem.

How to Set Up a New Gravity Forms Form

After you install and activate the plugin, you will see a new section in your WordPress dashboard called quite appropriately, “Forms.”

To add a new form click the “New Form” link. Creating forms is super easy with Gravity Forms. You will be presented with a screen that looks like this:

You’ll see this when you click the “edit” link on the main form box on the left. You can enter a name for the form and some other options that will apply to the form as a whole.

To build your form, all you do is click the form element that you see on the right side and it will appear on your form at the left. Each element will have numerous options and settings, which you should edit based on your needs by clicking the “edit” link at the top right.

Gravity Forms Hidden Fields

Take a look at the “Hidden Field” element and add it to your form. There are various options here, but I like the “Referrer URL” field which will add the URL that the visitor came from on your site. I think it’s really useful so you know where the visitor came from. Sure, you have analytics platforms for this, but when it’s right there on the form, it saves you the trouble of looking it up in your analytics.

When you’re done building your form, you just save it and you’re done.

How To Insert The Form Into a Page

Once you’ve created your new form, head over to the page in WordPress where you want to insert the form. You’ll see a small icon as shown in the image on the far right. Click that and you will see a box with an option to select the form you want to insert, along with some options. This will insert the Gravity Form shortcode into your page.

That’s all there is to it.

Gravity Forms Entries

Aside from being able to automatically send your form submissions to an email marketing platform like MailChimp, you can also download the form data from the Entries screen.

All submissions received through a Gravity Forms form are saved to your WordPress database and can be viewed in the “Entries” section of the plugin. Form submissions are neatly presented in a table-like format and even the individual field data is styled so it looks great. The plugin also keeps track of how many views the form received as well as the number of submissions, and calculates a conversion rate.

A nice little touch is that on each entry, there is a field where you can enter notes and attach it to the entry. This isn’t some full-blown CRM, but the notes field can be useful.

What I also like about it is that when you receive the email notification of a new form submission, all the data is presented in a clear, easy to read HTML format. And of course, you have the ability to customize the email notification that is sent back to you.

Gravity Forms Support

With any premium WordPress plugin, you kinda expect the support to be superior to what you might find for a free plugin. The Gravity Forms Support seems to be quite good so far. I haven’t really needed any support but I did register at the support forum and there is a bunch of useful information there, and with the Developer option you get priority support.

Styling Gravity Forms

Gravity Forms are designed to look good out of the box, but you also have the ability to target every element of a form either directly by a class name, unique ID or by using CSS inheritance so you can completely change the look & feel of your form.

More Features

There are a bunch more advanced featured of the plugin, including multi-page forms, pricing and post fields, PayPal add-on for payments, etc. To learn more or to purchase Gravity Form, just visit the Gravity Forms Website. (Affiliate link.)

The plugin is really feature-rich with a ton of options available to you. The Gravity Forms plugin has really impressed me. I like the ease which which you can build a form and insert it into a page, as well as the options you have available with respect to the form and field behavior. For here on out, I’m going to use this plugin exclusively when I need to add a form to a WordPress site.

I discovered this app for the Mac by accident and wanted to share this quick post about it.

If you’re a Mac user and aren’t making use of TotalFinder, then I’d say you’re missing out on an incredibly useful program.

TotalFinder enhances the native Mac Finder by adding numerous additional features.

Here’s a list of the current feature:

• Tabbed Browsing – Add tabs to the Finder window.
• Dual Mode – Display two Finder windows side-by-side in dual mode.
• Folders on Top – Sorts the finder view so that folders appear above files.
• Show System Files – Displays hidden files in your Finder window.
• Visor – Convenient system-wide Finder always one key-press away.
• Cut & Paste – Adds cut and paste functionality.

The feature that I find most useful, and in fact the primary reason I purchased a copy is the tabbed browsing. The method I use to find files or folders that I’m looking for is to use the built in Mac Spotlight. I use the shortcut key combination Command-Space, but when I need to open a Finder window, I use Option-Command-Space.

That opens a finder window for me, but prior to discovering TotalFinder, every time I did that, a new window would open. After an hour of working, I’d have 10 or more Finder windows open.

The great thing about TotalFinder is that instead of opening individual Finder windows, they are now opened as tabs.

The other features such as Dual Mode and Folders on Top are useful too, but the deal closer for me was the Tabbed Browsing. They actually use the same code that is used in the Google Chrome browser, so the tabs look and function in a very similar way.

You can learn more at the Total Finder website.

I have been thinking about moving from Windows to Mac for about a year now, and I’ve finally done it. I wanted to share my experience and some things I’ve learned during the process.

My First Computer

First, a little background to set the stage. I have been using Windows for over 20 years, probably since the release of Windows 3.0. If we went back even further, my first computer was a Sinclair ZX81 when I was just a kid.

Apple Makes an Appearance. Briefly.

Soon after that, I got an Apple IIe, which I loved and which saw me through my teenage years. I have fond memories of trading 5¼-inch floppy discs with friends and playing all the latest games at the time. Games like Castle Wolfenstein, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego and Space Invaders, and of course anything from Beagle Bros. Those were the days.

Then at some point, probably the late 80s or early 90s, I went over to a PC running Windows because everyone was doing it. Since then I have never used anything else until about a year ago when I purchased a MacBook Pro. I needed a computer for some traveling I was doing, and had been inching toward the Mac camp, so bought the MacBook.

Over the past year, I’ve used it mostly for web browsing and non-business related tasks but just recently certain events have required that I be more mobile in my web design business.

Dealing with Synchronizing Two Machines, or Choosing Not To.

I went back and forth about how to synchronize files between the PC and the Mac, and although there are numerous ways to achieve this, I ultimately made the decision to have a single computer that does it all. It just makes more sense.

The Mac has taken some getting used to. I think many people who have been using Windows for years have difficulty making the switch but once you learn the Mac way of doing things, it really isn’t a big deal, and you’ll be better off for doing it.

The Re-emergence of the Mac Era for Me

The decision to move entirely over to a Mac was a long process, but the more I used the MacBook Pro I’d purchased a year ago, the more I started to feel connected to the OS. Everything just works.

I realized that most of the frustration I’d experienced over the years sitting behind a computer was as a result of Windows. Whether it was the numerous annoyances, or the regular crashes and blue screen of death that would invariably occur after some time of running a machine on Windows.

I don’t want to talk down on the OS because it did serve me well over the years, but it seemed clear to me that the change was long overdue.

Making the Switch

Once I had made the decision to move to a Mac, it required a certain amount of planning. Like most people who have used Windows for years, I’d become so accustomed to all the nuances of the OS. You establish your own system of shortcuts and tweaks so that it becomes almost an extension of yourself and how you work on a daily basis.

The Mac has taken some getting used to. I think many people who have been using Windows for years have difficulty making the switch but once you learn the Mac way of doing things, it really isn’t a big deal.

Some Things I Had to Get Used To

There were probably more than this, but I can’t remember them all right now, but these were the biggest challenge for me until I discovered the solutions:

1. Cut and Paste: I was dumbstruck when I discovered you couldn’t “Ctrl-X” to cut a file and then paste it somewhere else. I soon discovered a solution for this on the Mac which works great for me. To cut and paste on a Mac, just copy the file as you normally would using Command-C. When you are ready to paste it, hold down the Option key in addition to the Command key then press V. What this does is paste the file, but remove the file from the original location. So it basically moves the file.
2. No ‘Home’ and ‘End’ keys: Not a big deal. To go to the end of a line it’s Command-Right Arrow. End of page is Command-Down Arrow. Same concept applies to left and top arrow.
3. Copy file path: I liked the ability to just copy the path to a file in Windows. I’d just select the path in the address bar of explorer and that was it. Can’t do that on a Mac. I searched to find numerous solutions to this, from applescripts to an app, but ended up using this method:Just “Get info” on the folder. So right click, or Option left click on the mouse, and select “Get info”, then just copy the path from there.
4. Create New Folder Shortcut Key: If I remember correctly, I’d just hit “Shift-Control-N” or something in Windows to create a new folder. On the Mac, it’s Shift-Command-N”. So just get used to the new keystrokes.

The bottom line is that for the most part, whatever you can do on Windows, Mac can do it too natively, and if it can’t there’s likely an app out there that will add the functionality.

There is a process of unlearning the way things were, and re-establishing that comfort level, only now it’s on a Mac.

This video may be useful to learn about the major differences.

The Programs I’m Using and/or Not Using

There are a few apps that I have found indispensable. Here are a few:

• Cinch: Can’t live without this one. It basically provides the same functionality that was introduced in Windows 7 with respect to being able to drag windows to various areas on the screen in order to maximize the window, or position multiple windows side by side. With the release of Lion, there is the ability to now maximize windows to full screen, but Cinch is still needed in my opinion.
• VMware Fusion. There are numerous reasons why you may want to run Windows on your Mac. Maybe there are some Windows programs that either don’t have a Mac version, or you just prefer the way it runs on Windows, or if you’re a web designer, you need to test your sites in IE browsers.There are also numerous ways to run windows on a Mac, but I ended up going with VMware Fusion and haven’t been disappointed. Setup was so easy and it runs amazingly well. The “Unity” feature is incredible. It will run your Windows programs as if they’re just another app on the Mac in terms of user interface.
• Use Spotlight: I used to use a program called “Launchy” on Windows to make it quick and easy to dive directly to a specific folder on the drive, or launch a program. Interestingly, I’m finding that I have no need for that anymore. I just use the built-in “Spotlight” search on the Mac. Hitting “Command-Space” will bring it up. Just start typing and the contents of your drive which are indexed, will show up. It’s fast and accurate.There are other programs out there that will add additional functionality, but at this point it’s working just fine for me how it is.
• Afloat: Not that Windows had this feature anyway, but there were programs to achieve it. Same goes for Mac. This app will allow you to keep a window above all other windows. I’ve discovered that I need to use this more often than not. There are times when you need to float a window so that even when you click away from it, it still remains on top of other windows. This small program will allow you to do that and a few other cool things.

There are of course a ton of other apps and programs that you will likely use but this post is really more about my experience on changing from Windows to Mac, not necessarily the top 10 Mac apps list.

My experience with Other World Computing was incredible. They have top quality products and their support/sales people are amazingly knowledgeable.

What I Did to Upgrade My MacBook Pro

So, after the transition, which by the way, I networked the Mac to my PC in order to transfer all my files, I realized that the system seemed under powered for my needs.

So I decided to upgrade. I have a MacBook pro, mid 2010 version as of this writing and here’s what I did:

• Upgraded the RAM: The available ram on the machine was 4GB, so I upgraded to 8GB. There are many brands of RAM for the Mac, and I ended up going with Kingston memory from Amazon. It was only $45! No brainer there. As soon as I added the RAM, I could see a huge improvement in speed. The actual upgrade was super easy. Unscrew the back cover, remove old RAM, insert new RAM. Here’s the installation guide from Apple.
• Upgraded the Hard Drive: The next thing I did was to upgrade the factory hard drive, which in this case was a 5400rpm drive to a 480GB SSD drive. Solid State Drives are not cheap, but I just felt the improvement in performance, and boot/program load time was worth it.

  

  I ended up getting the OWC Mercury EXTREME™ Pro 3G SSD. I can’t say enough good things about this company. Up until I had a need for such a thing, I never even knew they existed. My experience with them was amazing. I called their sales dept. as I had numerous questions before making the purchase. The person I spoke to was knowledgeable and took the time to answer all my questions. The fact that he knew the product so well, was such a breath of fresh air. So often you get to talk to a salesperson and ask a question about the product they are selling only to find they don’t know the answer and have to either read a knowledge base article online, which I could have done myself, or refer to some catalog or ask a supervisor. This guy knew his stuff. I was just very impressed and ordered the drive soon after. Installation was so easy. They have instructional videos to show you how it’s done and even have a kit you can buy which has all the tools you need as well as a hard drive enclosure for your old drive. The entire process of changing the drive took about 15 minutes.

  I first had to clone my existing hard drive, which took about an hour, and I ended up using Carbon Copy Cloner. Great program by the way to use for daily backups too. A quick tip is to sign up for the e-newsletter from OWC because they offer discounts on products in the email. They send them out every Wednesday from what I can tell and all you do is click one of the products in the email, and it activates the discounted pricing. I saved $20 just doing that.

• Got a New Keyboard: I know I’m a little unconventional here, but I ended up getting this keyboard designed specifically for the Mac, and didn’t use the standard Mac keyboards available. Short version of why that is, is that I had one one time and it had an incredibly powerful smell that seemed to negatively impact my smell senses. I couldn’t bring myself to use it anymore. So I discovered Logitech Wireless Solar Keyboard K750 for Mac®. Works great and of all the keyboards I’ve been through, this one is definitely the best. And you don’t have to ever change batteries on it because it uses Solar power. Don’t worry if you have a dark room, it still works.

Wrapping Up

So, now my MacBook Pro is blazing fast. With 8GB RAM and the 480GB SSD, programs load incredibly fast. There’s a new drive from OWC which is 6G instead of the 3G which I got, but it’s my understanding that the model of MacBook Pro that I have can’t handle the 6G anyway.

I’m loving the Mac, and so pleased that I eventually circled back around to it. Having used it for a week or so now, there are so many small things that happen during regular usage, that makes it clear that the Mac is the perfect representation of how computing should be.

I have been a fan of the TimThumb script for some time now. It can be used as an alternative to using WordPress Featured Images to display and automatically resize images.

Recently there has been quite a lot of activity in TimThumbville. A security vulnerability was discovered which allowed third parties to upload and execute PHP code in the TimThumb cache directory.

Following the news of the vulnerability, the current TimThumb developer, Ben Gillbanks has been working to update it via the Google Code Project.

Enter WordThumb

Another development since the vulnerability was discovered is that the developer who discovered it, Mark Maunder, did a complete rewrite of the script and named it WordThumb.

The Saga Continues

While I was actually writing this post, I discovered that The WordThumb project has now become TimThumb version 2.0, which makes more sense to me. We don’t need two scripts out there that do the exact same thing. So I would guess that the new 2.0 version of TimThumb has all the latest and greatest security enhancements and more.

How to Use TimThumb to add Thumbnails to Your Posts

What I like about the script is that is will resize images without having to re-upload the image, which is the case with WordPress Featured Images. I actually like both methods, but it depends on the site you’re working on as to which you will use.

If you have many posts with images, and you decide to add thumbnails to the posts on your home page, or maybe in the sidebar, then having to re-upload the images if you’re using WordPress Featured Images can be a problem.

So, what I’ve done in cases like this is to grab the first image in the post, then use TimThumb to resize the image and place it where I want.

How to Use the First Image in Your Posts with TimThumb

One little spin on using TimThumb is to have it automatically use the first image in your post. Now, keep in mind that TimThumb doesn’t have anything to do with this script I’m going to use to grab the first image, I’m just using it in conjunction with TimThumb for this purpose.

So, let’s say you want to add thumbnail images to the posts on your home page and you want to automatically resize them, and also use the first image in your post. I’m going to use some code I first discovered on the wprecipes.com blog which will grab the first image. Visit that site and grab the code, then paste it in your custom-functions.php file.

Now that we have the first image, let’s use TimThumb to display it at the desired size.

You will need to make sure you have installed TimThumb correctly. It’s really easy and there are instructions over on the TimThumb Project Homepage.

I will just add that you should save the file in a folder called “scripts” inside your Thesis custom folder. You should also create the two additional folders as explained in the instructions, called “cache” and “temp” and be sure you place them in the same folder as timthumb.php.

Now that you have it installed, paste this into your custom-functions.php file:

function thumb_images() {
global $post;
$img = '<img class="alignleft" src="' . THESIS_CUSTOM_FOLDER .'/scripts/timthumb.php?src='.catch_that_image($post).'&h=150&w=150&zc=1" alt="">';
echo $img;
}

add_action('thesis_hook_before_headline','thumb_images');

Here’s what’s happening, and some points to note:

1. We are using the standard TimThumb syntax in the URL to resize and display the image, but we’re using the script that grabs the first image in the post and then passing that information to the TimThumb URL parameters.
2. You can change the width (w) and height (h) values to anything you want. Keep in mind too that in this code, the timthumb.php file is saved in a folder called “scripts” inside the Thesis custom folder.
3. I’m using the Thesis hook thesis_hook_before_headline to insert the image before the post headline.
4. You can use other Thesis hooks to place the image wherever you want.
5. I added the css class of alignleft which is already built into Thesis and which will float the image to the left. Again, you can change this class to anything you want.
6. Please note that this code is written to work with Thesis, but you can adapt it to work in your non-Thesis based WordPress site.

What’s really nice about TimThumb is that let’s say you decide to change the size of the thumbnails, then all you do it update the width and height values, re-upload your custom-functions.php file, and kablammo, the images are resized.

So that does it. You now have it set up so your images are getting automatically resized by TimThumb and it’s using the first image in your post.

I’ve provided some links below for additional reading.

• Grab the first image from the post
• TimThumb Project Homepage
• TimThumb on Google Code
• TimThumb Security Vulnerability Discovered.
• WordThumb Project Merges with TimThumb.

Sometimes you might want to show a single sidebar on certain pages in your Thesis theme if you’re running a 3-column layout. That means you basically have 2 sidebars sitewide, but maybe you just want to show one on a particular page. This tutorial from the Thesis User’s Guide will allow you to do just that.

There are four basic steps to making this happen:

1. Remove the original sidebars from the home page
2. Restore sidebar 1 to the home page
3. Add a unique body class to the home page (to be used for styling)
4. Add (and modify) the custom styles

The discussion which follows is specific to the home page (aka the posts page) — if you’re wanting to apply this tutorial to another page instead, you’ll want to substitute the appropriate WordPress conditional tag.

To remove the original sidebars from the home page, we’ll use a Thesis filter, thesis_show_sidebars. Add the following code to your custom_functions.php file:

// Remove original sidebars
function no_sidebars() {
	if (is_home())
		return false;
	else
		return true;
}
add_filter('thesis_show_sidebars', 'no_sidebars');

Now that the default sidebars have been removed from the home page, we’ll need a function which adds back only the one sidebar that we want; here’s the code you’ll need in your custom_functions.php file:

// Restore sidebar 1 to layout
function restore_sidebar(){
	if (is_home()) { ?>
	<div id="sidebars">
	<div id="sidebar_1" class="sidebar">
		<ul class="sidebar_list">
			<?php thesis_default_widget(1); ?>
		</ul>
	</div>
	</div>
	<?php }
}
add_action('thesis_hook_content_box_bottom','restore_sidebar',1);

Finally, since Thesis has been configured to display two sidebars by default, but our home page will only be displaying one sidebar, we’re going to need a unique CSS class which we can use to modify the existing styles to accommodate just the one sidebar. For that, we’ll use the Thesis filter thesis_body_classes. Place the following code in your custom_functions.php file:

// Add a class for styling
function one_sidebar($classes) {
	if (is_home()) {
    	$classes[] = 'one_sidebar';
 	}
    return $classes;
}
add_filter('thesis_body_classes', 'one_sidebar');

That’s it for the custom_functions.php file — remember to save all your changes!

Now, add the following code to your custom.css file (you’ll need to change the values until you’re satisfied with the final look for your home page):

.custom .no_sidebars #content { width: 51.4em; }
.custom.one_sidebar #container { width: 100em; }
.custom.one_sidebar #sidebars { width: 21.7em; }

That’s it! Now you’ll see only sidebar 1 showing up on your home page, whereas both sidebar 1 and sidebar 2 will show up everywhere else on your site!

But, what if sidebar 2 is the only sidebar you want on your home page? Simply replace 1 in the second function above with 2 instead, and you’re all set!

Source: Show One Sidebar Only on Certain Pages