Comments on: Headway 1.0 vs. Thesis 1.5.1 – A Designer’s Review

By: Justin

Justin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:22:33 +0000

Does Thesis or Headway work better as a CMS?

By: Justin

Justin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:21:26 +0000

Which platform would you say allows you to be more creative and push the boundries of a website.

I see a lot more fun and cool looking sites with thesis then with Headway….

By: Danny Brown

Danny Brown — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 01:47:48 +0000

Just checked in with Grant – here’s what he emailed back:

“There is a limit on the personal license. But we removed the $40 for additional sites on the Dev license.”

So yep – buy the Headway Dev license and you can use it on as many sites as you want, both your own and client sites.

By: Danny Brown

Danny Brown — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:38:48 +0000

From my understanding of the new announcement, Headway was the same as Thesis – as many sites as you liked using dev license, as long as they were yours. However, now I believe Headway can be used on as many client sites as well. BUT…. I could be wrong or misunderstood. Let me see if I can get Grant over to confirm

By: Rowboat Media

Rowboat Media — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:32:35 +0000

Always interested to see more discussion here, and thanks to Darryl for the note on the Builder theme – I’ll have to go check it out.

@DaveR – Headway will let you buy just a one-site license if you want, for $87 and try it out – then if you want to upgrade to the Dev License you can always pay the $77 difference. I know this works because I did it that way myself.

You are not the first nor the only person to complain about support only being for those who purchase – but since both of these themes are run by small shops, I think you can understand that they’d rather offer a money back guarantee instead of maintaining the staff to answer questions from people who are just looking (if their product was $870 instead of $87, that might be a different expectation). The pre-sale forum is an interesting one.

As I’ve said before, Chris usually keeps close tabs on his Twitter stream (@pearsonified) and so does Grant (Headway) at @grantgriffiths. Also, there are lots of people following the #thesiswp and #headwaywp hashtags if you have general questions.

While I was pounding this out, Robert said a lot of other good stuff – so I’m just going to let him…say it.

@Danny – I was unaware that Headway ever restricted the number of sites on a Dev License – am I understanding that correctly? I know that the Thesis Dev License lets you build as many sites as you like provided YOU own the sites – I can’t build sites for my clients without purchasing a Client Site License or their sending me proof of ownership of a Thesis license, but I can build as many of my own as I want.

By: robert phillips

robert phillips — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:26:03 +0000

@Dave: I feel your pain.
“Breathless defending”: well, yes. Not just Thesis. Headway. StudioPress with its Genesis. I think it’s called “marketing” . I don’t particularly like it easy, with all the ninjas screaming about yet another “kick-ass site”. But that’s how it’s down these days; I blame Bill Gates for making screaming into an art form .
Hidden Support. Agreed. A number of themes have specific presales sections in their forum which prospective purchasers can post in, usually just by registering. I think there was a discussion about it here awhiles back, and someone (either from Thesis or Headway) agreed. Haven’t seen it yet in either place. Pity. I think either would do better with a bit less screaming and opening a presale section in their fora.
Overt support. I may be lucky, but when I’ve brought an issue to Chris’s attention (Thesis) or Clay/Grant’s (Headway) they’ve gotten right back to me.
Coding and visual editors. Well, yes again. Developers love Thesis because it’s a very clean, powerful framework. So they do tend to trumpet it as “best”. I’m willing to go under the hood when I have to. But consider this. If I need a magazine-styhle static home page (greeting area, boxes with featured post, featured posts from each category). In Thesis I’ve got to pound out code for #div, style, etc. — with Headway I can drag/drop. For that kind of job, I’ll use Headway, because I’d rather use my time for blogging. But if I want to totally redesign a site ground-up, I might go with thesis, because I’m essentially starting totally from scratch. Right tool for the job in each case.
I have, and use all three. They’re all fine products. I would hate to try to do serious site work w/o all three.

@Darryl: Builder has a LOT of potential and has fine support. A bit too rough around the edges, still. Just the problems with trying to get a header graphic into a child theme. Can be pretty intracable — I had to pound out more php code than I care to think about; support just kept saying to do the obvious things I’d done by reflex (check GD library, permissions, directory structure, hosting service). Life’s too short.

%%robert

By: Danny Brown

Danny Brown — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:55:11 +0000

Hi there Dave,

There’s the full money back guarantee with Headway as there is Thesis. Additionally, if you have any issues with the product, Grant Griffiths (co-founder) actively encourages you to email him publicly via Twitter, etc.

You should find that the dev license for Headway is a little less “restrictive” (for want of a better word), as you’re not held by amount of sites you can use it on (they recently changed, if I’m correct).

Check in with Grant (@GrantGriffiths), I know he’d be more than happy to help

By: Darryl

Darryl — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:52:26 +0000

I found a pretty good wp solution at ithemes.com (mentioned in the wordpress for dummies book) . It’s called Builder and its a new product, with really great support. Easier than Thesis and with a larger development team behind it than Headway. I would welcome a discussion/comparison of it here.

By: DaveR

DaveR — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:45:27 +0000

So here it is end of February, and still no Thesis 2.0. I purchased the developer’s option and won’t rant about it here, but it’s been extremely difficult to work with as a mediocre coder. So I’m looking at Headway. But while Thesis offers a moneyback guarantee, I’m worried that dropping $164 on Headway might be a riskier proposition as there is no equivalent guarantee.

I think the worst part about both of these products is that they hide their support behind a wall, so people aren’t able to see that (in my example) the editor doesn’t work very well in Thesis, etc, and that there seems to be a lot of breathless defending of the Thesis developer as compared to Headway. It sure would have colored my purchase a bit. Plus, how in god’s green earth does one contact Chris at Thesis? “Second to none” support doesn’t mean you throw a post on a community wall and wait for conflicting answers to show up 18 hours later. There is NO contact on DIYThemes homepage. None. Do they only show up when you ask for your money back?

It seems given specifically Sheila’s comments above that many of the same issues with in-browser editors plague both of these products (ironically the “footer removal” issue–I cannot stand shilling for a product I pay for, they should be paying ME–is the same one I am having at Thesis). And I share her qualifier that I am a newbie to Thesis and have NOT used Headway at this point.

By: Headway vs. Thesis Cage Match: Overview, Price, and Customization Potential | The Inspired Solo

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 21:59:39 +0000

[...] from Headway Themes LLC came along recently and earned itself quite a bit of buzz as a potential Thesis-killer. Headway has a major selling point going for it with the coding-phobic [...]