There was a time where WordPress theme where just a simple, unaesthetic articles list. Now, theme developers are using all the power of WordPress to create stunning, easy to use and powerful Theme frameworks.

I previously talked about the Thesis theme on this blog, now let’s turn our focus to Thesis main competitor, a very powerful and complete theme framework called Headway.

First impressions

I first heard about Headway a while ago, but didn’t pay attention, don’t ask me why. Then, some days ago someone mentioned Headway in comment left under my “10 hacks for Thesis” post, asking which theme, between Thesis and Headway, was the best.

I decided to give a try to Headway as soon as I can. Lucky me, a friend just bought the theme so I visited him and tried it on his computer.

By default, Headway looks simple but very clean, which made me remember about Thesis default look and feel.
To be honest, Headway default look and feel didn’t impressed me that much. Sure, the default look isn’t horrible, but for $87, I expected much more than black text on white background.

But Headway isn’t a premium theme as such as those released by Woothemes or ElegantThemes. Headway is a theme framework, which means that it have been created to be customizable and extensible. Headway has been made for you to create your own blog theme, not to be used out of the box, even this is possible, of course.

Once customized, Headway can definitely look great. For example, Headway site is made…using Headway! Click here to see by yourself.

Headway theme built-in options

The Headway theme is not just a simple WordPress theme, it’s a framework. So, lots of options as such as layout editor are available for you to customize.
After playing a bit with the theme, I was amazed to see that without any coding, I was able to transform the look and feel of my theme.

Layout editor

Headway features an amazing layout editor that I enjoyed a lot. As you can see on the screenshot below, this editor allow you to create content and visually organize them.

You can define many properties for each content block : Fluid or fixed layout, sizes, alignments, and so on. Predefined contents (RSS box, Twitter links…) are also available.

Color editor

With most WordPress themes, changing colors is often a painful action, mostly because the theme heavily relies on images. Even when it doesn’t, you have to know CSS to customize a theme.

If you don’t know CSS but still want to have an unique WordPress theme, you’ll probably enjoy Headway because of its color editor. Like the layout editor, this editor allow you to customize every detail of your theme colors without typing a single line of code.

SEO

Search Engine Optimization is definitely one of the most important aspects of any website. While WordPress is pretty well optimized for SEO, a badly coded/optimized theme can definitely ruin your precious search engine rankings.
This problem can be fought using some SEO hacks or a plugin as such as the popular All In One SEO Pack.

But if you’re a happy Headway owner, no need to worry about installing a SEO plugin : By itself, Headway do all what All In One SEO Pack can do.
The XHTML coding of the theme is pretty good and clean, and semantic is respected. This is the key to good SEO, but also to cross-browser compatibility and accessibility support.

Even more options!

In my opinion, using both the layout editor and the color editor, you have the tools to create a stunning and unique website. Though, Headway includes some more handy options.

I really enjoyed the fact that Headway is able to automatically tweet when you publish a blog post. As twitter is probably the most useful tool for blog promotion, this is definitely a good thing.

Another useful thing to mention is the navigation editor. It allow you to visually change your menu items order, choose if you want subpages to be displayed as a drop down menu, and more. Although developers can easily use some WordPress hacks to change menu order, non-developers bloggers will appreciate a theme which have been designed for every user, not for developers only.

Conclusion

Being a part of the WordPress community since 2006, I can honestly say that Headway is one of the most advanced theme framework I ever tried. Beginners and non-tech people will definitely enjoy how easy it is to customize it. Developers don’t have to worry, they’ll be able to “hack” the theme : Many hooks are available in order to supercharge the theme and make it fit your needs.

Compared to Thesis, Headway is easier to customize but have a smaller community due to its most recent release. If you’re hesitating between those two, I’d say that Headway is a better pick for non-tech people. People who are familiar with WordPress should grab Thesis instead.

Headway theme, $87. Click here to buy Headway.