If you want to create a brand new page and have it be your homepage, create a page and publish it. Then go to Dashboard—>Settings—>Reading…

From here…

If you pick your latest posts to display, you’ll have to change the features and teasers to what you want it to be

If you pick a static page, you have the choice to chose any page that you have created already

One way is to just play around with the different margins on all sides. In your custom.css add this…

.custom #header #tagline {
margin-left: Xem;
margin-right: Xem;
margin-top: Xem;
margin-bottom: Xem;
}

Replace X with a number that gives you the desired effect

The only drawback with this is that when you play around with the top and bottom margins it will increase or decrease the total height of your header area as you increase or decrease the top and bottom margins.

The alternative, give the tagline an absolute position and then place it along it’s x and y axis’ from the top of the page with the following in your custom.css…

.custom #header #tagline {
position: absolute;
top: Xem;
left: Xem;
}

Replace X with a number that gives you the desired effect

The first thing you want to do is assign a unique name to the drop cap class and put it in your custom.css. I named mine simply “dropcap”…

.custom .dropcap {}

Next, figure out where you want to place the drop cap and insert the following tags with the unique class name…

<span class=”dropcap”> </span>

For example, I wanted to put a drop cap at the beginning of the opening paragraph of this post..

<span class=”dropcap”> T </span>he letter “T” that begins this sentence is an example of a drop cap. This was made using the Arial font. You can make a class for the drop cap and use it over and over again on any post or page on you site. Here’s a really simple way to create your own individual drop cap.

Now in my custom.css I add some styles to the drop cap to make it look like the way I want…

.custom .dropcap {
color: blue;
float: left;
font-size: 4.8em;
margin: .3em .2em .1em 0;
}

You can pick and chose how you want your own drop cap to look with your own styles

Now you can place this in any post or page. When you’re writing or editing a post or page, make sure you’re in the html editor…

and simply apply the tags from the example above and wrap them around whatever letter you want to do it to

This is cool and simple way of placing as many ads as you want on your site…

First thing is to upload your ads into the custom/images folder on your server

The ads in this example are 125 x 125 which is pretty typical

Next, create a simple function in your custom_functions.php to add the ads, put div tags for the ads, and give it a class name…

function ad(){?>
<div class="ads">
</div>
<?
}

Next, add an unordered list of the ads your going to use between the two div tags and include the path to the image. Your path may be different than the example below…

function ad(){?>
<div class="ads">
<ul >
<li><img src="http://www.mysite.com/wp-content/themes/thesis/custom/images/ad1.png"></li>
<li><img src="http://www.mysite.com/wp-content/themes/thesis/custom/images/ad2.png"></li>
<li><img src="http://www.mysite.com/wp-content/themes/thesis/custom/images/ad3.png"></li>
<li><img src="http://www.mysite.com/wp-content/themes/thesis/custom/images/ad4.png"></li>
</ul>
</div>
<?
}

I decided to put them right under the header so I placed them with the appropriate hook. Here’s how the entire function looks…

function ad(){?>
<div class="ads">
<ul >
<li><img src="http://www.mysite.com/wp-content/themes/thesis/custom/images/ad1.png"></li>
<li><img src="http://www.mysite.com/wp-content/themes/thesis/custom/images/ad2.png"></li>
<li><img src="http://www.mysite.com/wp-content/themes/thesis/custom/images/ad3.png"></li>
<li><img src="http://www.mysite.com/wp-content/themes/thesis/custom/images/ad4.png"></li>
</ul>
</div>
<?
}
add_action(’thesis_hook_after_header’,'ads’);

Next, add the class to your custom.css and include one for the unordered list of images…

.custom .ads{}
.custom .ads ul li{}

These are the properties and values I used, yours may be different…

.custom .ads{padding: 1em; width: 94em; height: 10em;}
.custom .ads ul li{display: inline; margin-right: 1em;}

This is a really simple, fast, and effective way of placing ads on your site. Remember you can add as many ads as you want. you can also place them vertically, or in the sidebar, in the footer, in the header, etc. The possibilities are endless.

What this does is it allows you to give the post your writing or editing a unique class name. Once you do this, you can give it whatever styles you want in your custom.css.

For example, let’s say I’m writing a new post and I when that post gets published I want it to have a red sidebar. No other posts on my site have a colored sidebar but I want this one to.

Knowing that I’m going to style this post different than any other post I’m going to give it a class name of “red post” so in the css class box I type in

red-post

Now, you have to figure out what you want to style and then put those selectors in the custom.css. I know that I want to make one of my sidebars red so in my custom.css I drop this code in…

.red-post #sidebar_2 {background-color: red;}

My sidebar 2 changes to red and it’s the only post on my site that has a red sidebar

You can style any selector you want on the page.

The css class is a very powerful feature and highly underused. You can literally make every single page on your site completely different from all the rest. Let your imagination do the styling. The possibilities are endless..

Here’s the easiest way to insert your own custom header image…

First, get rid of the default header by putting this in your custom_functions.php file…

remove_action ( ‘thesis_hook_header’,'thesis_default_header’);

Next, make sure your new header image is in the correct folder…

Next, in your custom.css add this code…

.custom #header {background: url(images/your header image.jpg) no-repeat; height: Xem; width: Xem;}

Change the X to whatever number gives you the desired effect

And that, my friends, is it..

It just aint worth it…

Do you realize that you have far more flexibility to make your own box in html? When you make a simple box, it is a multimedia box! You can put any type of code in it you want. You can insert images, video, php code, javascript. Anything you put in the Thesis multimedia box or the feature box, you can put into your own custom box!

Don’t get me wrong, the mm box and feature box are cool things to have but if you really want to take your customization to the next level then read on…

Look how limited the feature box is. You can only put it above content or above content and sidebars. Not only that, just to get it working is kind of a pain in the rear. Look at the multimedia box, it seems to be forever stuck in the upper right hand side.

People, look outside the box (pun is intentional) Make your own custom box and put it wherever you want

How do you make your own box? Check out this tutuorial

Now, just to give you an idea of what I’m talking about. I made a simple box and just for the heck of it I placed it in a bunch of places. Check it out…

Now remember, you can make these boxes any way you want. The possibilities are endless. Stretch them any way you want. You can make them wider, smaller, bigger, taller, different colors, different borders, and all the while, inserting your own custom code inside them!

I left the multimedia box in the example to show you how stagnant it is and how dynamic your own custom box can be

Check out the hook map to see where all the hooks are placed

Check it out…

First you want to create the box with a simple function in your custom.functions.php file…

function mymmbox() { ?>
<div class="mymmbox"></div>
<?
}

I gave it a class name of “mymmbox” so that I can style it in my custom.css file. Name it whatever you want

Next I styled it in my custom.css file

.custom .mymmbox {
width: 91em;
height: 20em;
border: 1px solid
margin-left: 2em;
margin-bottom: 2em;
}

Then I decided I wanted to place it under my header so I added it with a hook

function mymmbox() { ?>
<div class="mymmbox"></div>
<?
}
add_action(’thesis_hook_after_header’ , ‘mymmbox’);

So there you have it. A real basic box that you can put anything into. Whatever you want to put in the new box, you place the code between the two <div> tags in the function.

You can now move it around anywhere you want with hooks in your custom.functions.php file, and you can change everything from the color, borders, size, etc, all in your custom.css

Go to your Dashboard —->Appearance —->Thesis Options —->Navigation Menu…

Just click and hold between the boxes and you can drag them into whatever order you want.

Try this technique…

First thing I did is made an image in photoshop. Use any graphic program you want. It’s 1050 px wide X 100 px tall. I uploaded it to my server and placed it in the custom/images folder. This is what it looks like. It’s been shrunken down to fit within this blog post….

Shadow.png:

Next, put the image onto the background by placing the following code in the custom.css file and uploading it to your server. You can move the image from left to right with the first % value. Adjust it to create your desired effect.

body.custom {background: url(images/shadow.png) repeat-y scroll 50% 0 ;}

And that’s it!