April Tara » Headway

Home Study Consultant

April — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 18:28:02 +0000

Home Study Consultant is another one of those sites that needed to be mostly static since it’s intended for an “online business card” type of site rather than a blog. I love using WordPress for these because it’s so easy for both the designer (me!) and the client. Using a flexible theme like Headway makes it easy for me to get the look they want and using WordPress makes it easy for them to update it with articles and blog posts or even make simple changes to the content.

Now for the screen shot:

(You can’t tell from the screenshot but the image on the front page is one of four rotating images, done by using the Image Rotator Leaf in Headway.)

SIN – A band site using WordPress

April — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 18:20:08 +0000

Another Headway site, made to be more of a “static” site with a blog added as opposed to primarily a blogging site.

SIN is one of the bands I work with as a social media manager for indie & unsigned bands. Their old site was desperately outdated and just about everything on it was incomplete and just linked back to their MySpace page. So they needed something more modern, current, and easy to update. We also used some widgets from Reverb Nation to add their shows and music to the site.

As always, a screenshot:

AprilTara.com

April — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 18:14:09 +0000

I am LOVING the Headway theme. So much so that I’m using it on all of my sites (although I don’t have all of them transferred over just yet.)

The first site I used it on is my own “work at home” blog, AprilTara.com. It took me about 1 hour and only one line of code in the custom CSS to get this done. That’s how easy Headway is! And flexible…I’ve done several more sites since this one, all using Headway and all with totally different styles.

Ok, here’s the screenshot:

Headway theme rocks my world…and my blog

April — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 23:12:12 +0000

Have you seen my new blog design? I am absolutely in love with it! And Clay Griffiths is my new hero because he’s the designer behind the new Headway theme (as well as the son of my friend Grant Griffiths) which is the theme I’m now using.

Now on the surface, it may not be obvious why I’m just so tickled with Headway because you’re just seeing the standard stuff – header, sidebar, posts, footer. The beauty of it is under the hood. Kinda like seeing a beat up rusty old Camaro then popping the hood and seeing an absolutely immaculate 502 big block engine! (Ladies, keep reading, I’ll have an analogy that makes more sense in a minute.)

But you can’t make a car look pretty just by throwing a kickass engine in it. So just imagine if, by turning the key in the ignition, the exterior magically transformed and you were left with a shiny custom paint job. That’s how easy Headway is! Well, not literally…but close.

From the minute I installed the Headway theme, it took me all of about 30 minutes to get it looking the way I wanted. Thanks to a “drag and drop” layout editor and theme options that allow you to choose font styles, size and colors right from the menu, what usually takes me a couple of hours was done in a fraction of the time.

I didn’t have to tinker around the CSS at all. In fact, I only added one single line of code and that was to use a tiled background image instead of a solid color. One. Freaking. Line. You can also edit each page’s layout so that, for example, your ‘About‘ page doesn’t have a sidebar but your ‘Blog’ page does.

Now, with all of that time I saved, I spent some time playing around with different layouts, widths, colors and other style changes. Changes are easily made, whether its the location of your navigation bar or whether the ‘Comments’ link on each post goes under the post title or to the right of it. No minor detail overlooked! Even adding a favicon (that little image that shows up in your browser’s menu bar when you visit a webpage) was as easy as just pasting the link to the location of your icon file.

I’m sure there’s a lot more to it that I haven’t discovered yet and I had to force myself to move away from the laptop because anyone who knows me knows how much I love customizing WordPress blogs. I can totally see myself changing my blog design like I change purses. (See, ladies? You know what I mean, right?)

Don’t just take my word for it. I want you to see what others have said about Headway and how they’ve customized their own blogs using it.

Here’s my good friend John Haydon’s post about why he switched to Headway. He’s got some great videos that will let you take a peek under the hood. (See the differences in how his blog looks compared to mine? Headway works great for both business and personal blogs…not that mine’s “personal” but it certainly doesn’t look as ‘professional’ as John’s.)
Danny Brown is also using Headway but not just as a blog theme. He’s donating 50% of any profits he makes from affiliate links to the 12for12k.org charity.
And another post from another friend, Michael Martine a/k/a Remarkablogger who, even though he’s a devoted Thesis user and has not switched, is still very impressed with Headway and has a better detailed explanation of why than I do.
Of course, you can always get more details and take a tour at the Headway Theme website.

P.S. Just a quick disclaimer…yes, those are affiliate links and I would earn a small commission if you were to purchase Headway through those links. My opinion of Headway, however, would be just as high even if I never made a single penny from singing its praises.