Frankly, it is unfair to put the Thesis Theme and The Affiliate Theme to comparison on the same platform. Both are very good themes suited for their own purpose.
The Thesis Theme
The Thesis Theme is a theme for bloggers. From amateurs to professionals. The layout is meant to look like a blog and no mater how you personalize it, it will still look like a blog.
The drawback might be the learning curve. For a non tech savvy guy, the Thesis Theme is not going to be very friendly when it comes to customizing the theme’s look and feel. There are of course many tutorials on how to accomplish those modifications, but for someone who is blind to codes, it will be daunting trying top learn all the “hooks”
However, in my opinion, the Thesis Theme looks the best in it’s original plain looking form. The only modifications needed are changing the background colors and having a personalize logo. That done, the Thesis Theme will look equally as unique as the next theme and at the same time retains the beautiful clean look that the Thesis Theme is famous for. These 2 mods are easy enough for most as it’s only a matter of copying and pasting the codes into the custom css.
Other than that, the options page gives enough customization options which is easy enough for even those who are totally code blind. So if you are a serious blogger looking for a highly customizable theme with top notch SEO codings, I will say go for the Thesis Theme. It is a blogger’s dream theme.
The Affiliate Theme.
The Affiliate Theme is a different ball game altogether. This theme is geared towards serious affiliate marketers who has lots or who build lots of different affiliate sites promoting different affiliate products. This theme is designed with that in mind and thus not very suitable for bloggers. Maybe I should say, if you are a blogger, you will not realize the full potential of this theme and you will be wasting your money should you decide to buy it.
The customization level available in the options page surpasses those of the Thesis Theme. Apart from the changing of the fonts, and colors and where the Thesis Theme allows you to place and resize your sidebars to wherever and whatever you please, the Affiliate Theme lets you change the total outlook of your homepage completely to suit whatever products you are promoting. The latest version Affiliate 1.1 even lets you have an option to have a blog within the Theme so you can have more contents other than those in your landing page. This is a big plus as most affiliate sites you see has only provisions for limited amount of contents.
Then of course, don’t forget the number of templates and headers images that is provided free especially if you opt for the multi user package or the super package. You practically can build as many unique looking affiliate marketing sites as you like with only one Theme. For affiliate marketers or marketers wannabe, I will say, the Affiliate Theme would be a very good one time investment for your business.
So in conclusion. If you are a serious blogger, Get The Thesis Theme.
I agree, Thesis theme is great for bloggers. I use it on many of my blogs and achieve different looks for all of them which is great!
Thanks for the great review, I think I’ll be going with the Affiliate Theme.
I have to disagree with your saying Affiliate theme is better than Thesis. Whether you are a blogger, affiliate, whatever…Thesis is FAR more powerful and customizable, and also comes with far superior SEO setup “out of the box.” For anyone who is going to build more than a single simple blog, taking a day or two to get familiar with how to use Thesis will pay significant dividends.
In my opinion, thesis is more powerful than affiliate theme.
Another theme framework – Headway you could give a try.