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I was really impressed when testing out my review copy of Headway. I was looking for something that was an alternate for Thesis and was very user friendly.

I didn’t choose to stay with Headway but I would highly recommend it to those looking for a really customizable theme.

Overview:

• A really versatile theme with a lot of design options
• Some issues with installation but these are well documented
• It offers the most design options
• Woothemes are superier in terms of ease of use.

Installation:

I was disappointed when I first tried to install Headway. I tried it both via FTP and the upload featured in wordpress, and both times came up with this message:

I had read about how easy Headway was to set up. I immediately went to the forums. It turned out there were a number of people complaining about this error. It usually because the webhost is not using version 5 of PHP. In the support forums, Clay asked us to identify what version we were using and said that we should ask our relevant hosts to upgrade.

Now, this product targets a lot of the new people that don’t have the skills to customize other themes. I used to be one of them. I can see this being a struggle for them but on Media Temple, it was a relatively easy problem to fix. I was able to change the version on my chosen domain and got this message on my domains homepage:

This was really impressive. Many fresh installs show a broken theme so I was pleased to see what it would look like without making any customizations. I was also impressed that it gave the instructions on this page.

I then went into my blogs dashboard and sure enough, found the following links under the appearance tab:

Configuration

Now, Headway configuration is pretty simple. It has two areas for scripts in the header and footer which I suspect will go unused by many people. But the other elements are all really useful. It allows you to add the headway affiliate cod automatically as well adding your feedburner URL automatically. This makes it really easy and allows you to avoid touching the code.

Headway design

This area is split into 7 different areas.

Stylesheets/skins

This section is quite useful but probably not as relevant to people who aren’t familiar with code. I liked the feature but would not be using it.

Site size/dimensions

There are only two things you can change in this area – the wrapper width and margin. This is useful to some, but you probably wont need to use it.

Header

I know that a lot of people will appreciate this setting. There are so many areas to customize – unlike other themes that I’ve bought. You can change the position, logo, tagline and even breadcrumbs. Its really, really useful.

Post display/comments

I really liked the options listed here. Some code was required, but they gave explanations of all the variables.  I really liked how you were able to customize the avatars in the comments section.

Typography (font)

This section is really awesome. It allows you to manually choose the size and font of all the text. There are 13 areas you can change including post title and <h2> tags. You also have the option of changing the line spacing. Now, I  am getting quite comfortable in the theme editor but this is an area that has always confused me. I really liked how I could customize it so easily.

Colors

This section allows you to choose from 3 colour schemes as well as easily change other colours of the layout. I know from experiencing that this is so much easier than manually changing everything in the stylesheet.

Footer

This section just allows you to check or uncheck the admin link. I would have liked more options available, but these are relatively easy to doo manualy.

Headway Layout Editor

This was the function that I fell in love with. You get a layout editor for all of the system pages. You can manually change the styles of the front page or archive via drag and drop. It was really simple and cool.

Headway Easy Hooks

I had originally bought Thesis. I loved how it looked, but the hooks completely confused me. I was nervous when I saw them in this theme.

I quickly learned that I shouldn’t be put off by the name. They had simple descriptions of where the hook would go, like before everything or leaf content top. You can add hooks using text, html or php. This allows you to add stuff easily without touching the code.

This aspect can potentially be confusing but it is well documenting. I would prefer to do this rather than touching the code.

Final opinion?

I think Headway is a great option if you are seeking a different look and don’t mind spending a while playing around with your theme.

I do believe that the Woothemes choices are a bit more user friendly and would recommend those to people who don’t have the time to learn about Headways features or dont want to touch code.