What’s With the Cage Match Stuff?
It’s just a fun little way for all of us to explore — once more (since I’m far from the first blogger to compare these two premium themes to each other) — the relative strengths and weaknesses of Thesis and Headway. For more info, you can check out my earlier post introducing the cage match.
Briefly: I’m an affiliate of both, have used Thesis on my Tramadol Diaries site, and have just installed Headway here. I’m going to slowly (and that’s painful by the way) customize Headway as we go so readers can see the results as the series progresses.
DISCLAIMER: As noted, I’m an affiliate of both Thesis and Headway. The links in this post to both products are affiliate links. That means it’ll cost you nothing additional to buy from these links, but I’ll get a cut.
If you’d prefer not to use affiliate links, I’ve provided non-affiliate links to each at the bottom of this post, clearly marked under the heading “Non-Affiliate Links.”
I’d be grateful if you used the affiliate links since it helps me keep food on the table for the kid, but I won’t hold it against you if you don’t.
Round One: Thesis vs. Headway
An Overview of the Contenders: Thesis
Thesis, from DIYThemes, was the first heavyweight contender out of the gate (I’m aware I’m mixing my sports metaphors here). The selling points of Thesis have been from the beginning its SEO-friendly base and customization options. The theory behind Thesis: Change your blog’s looks all you want, but don’t tinker with the underlying architecture.
The interesting angle on Thesis, for my money, was the hooks approach. It’s an intriguing concept. Basically, it’s a way for the blogger or designer to change the functionality of some part or parts of your blog, without creating whole new code from scratch.
Creating your hooks in the Thesis options page of your Dashboard appends the changes to a file called custom_functions.php, and saves you from messing around in the theme editor (also a very good thing).
The downside: folks without experience coding websites and blogs, or tinkering with the theme editor, can easily and quickly get flummoxed with hooks. So, a sizable portion of the community support that’s sprung up around Thesis does deal with hooks. A few worthy pages you should bookmark:
- Sugarrae’s Hooks for Dummies
- Thesis OpenHook, a Plugin For Thesis and WordPress from KingdomGeek
- Kristarella’s diagram of all the places you can use hooks on your Thesis blog
An Overview of the Contenders: Headway
Headway 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 among us, and that’s the Visual Editor. Basically, you click on your page, wherever you want to make a change, and up pops a menu box with options to change the color scheme, the border thickness, the text … really, all the basic design elements.
In addition, Headway lets you add functionality to various spots in your site through what it calls “Leafs.” These leafs (leaves?) can add image rotation, widgetized sidebar content, rotating featured posts, and much more, through the Layout Editor. Very cool.
A few well-written resources for the Headway theme:
- Headway HQ: The Unofficial Headway Theme Guide (UPDATE: will be merged into HeadwayHacks.com in 2010 – thanks to commenter Corey Freeman for the head’s (yep, still funny) up!)
- Using Headway Theme (Remarkablogger – Michael Martine Youtube video)
- Headway WordPress Theme Tutorial (Zoopmedia)
Headway & Thesis: Pricing and Licenses
Updated because I goofed on the dev license structure. See comments for details.
Headway and Thesis both have similar licensing structures. There’s an individual license good for use on one site, and a developer’s license. But there are some key differences worth mentioning here.
Both the Thesis and Headway themes’ personal license option cost $87, and both themes also have a developer license option (both priced at $164). So, at first glance, it appears that the themes are on equal footing with respect to cost.
But appearances can be deceiving. As with anything, you need to read the fine print: Thesis personal option allows for deployment on one site that you own (defined as a site for which you or your business is the registered domain owner). Headway lets you put the theme on two sites that you either own or that you have developed.
With respect to the developer options, Thesis allows unlimited deployment — again, on sites that you own. Headway again broadens the license to include unlimited deployment on sites that you either own or have developed. In both cases, the developer option allows removal of footer attribution links.
With Thesis, both themes, therefore, if you create websites for others, you’ll need the developer license’s access to separate Client Options, which are basically add-on licenses (in addition to the Developer’s License). According to the Thesis site, “A single Client Site Option is $40, but you can also purchase 5 and 10-site Client Options for $36/site and $32/site, respectively.”
So, if my math is correct, I could upgrade to the Developer’s license for $77, but if I want to deploy Thesis either theme on five client sites, where I am not the registered domain owner, I’d have to pony up an additional $180. It would cost nothing additional under Headway’s license terms.
You can also upgrade from the Thesis personal option to the developer option for $77.
Bottom line: Have to hand this round to Headwayalthough Thesis is competitively priced. A draw.
Portfolios
I’ve selected five sites that run on each theme, Headway and Thesis. I’ve tried to pick sites that reflect a diversity in their approaches to design, so you can see a better range of what’s possible with each theme.
Thesis-Powered Sites
There are several excellent designs in webland powered by Thesis. A sampling to give you an idea of what can be achieved on the foundation of this architecture:
Headway-Powered Sites
Headway’s no slouch either, in the name-dropping department:
- Parent By Heart
- Remarkablogger
- Sarah White, Attorney at Law
- Success Creeations
- Thomas Schoenweitz (caution: some randomized photos on front page NSFW, although gorgeous, really)
Conclusion After Evaluating Portfolios
Clearly, the dominant deciding factor here is the genius of the geek behind the wheel, not the car she’s driving. Both themes demonstrate a capacity for supporting quite clever and effective designs of many flavors.
Are Premium Themes Really That Much Better Than Free WordPress Themes?
It’s a question worth asking. Why shell out cash — even though the themes aren’t, objectively speaking, that expensive — for a good-looking site when there are thousands upon thousands of WP themes out there available for free?
The answer is the architecture. Premium themes are — theoretically — better coded, more stable, and more customizable. Again: theoretically. Now, a lot of folks way smarter than I am have already opined that both of these themes feature some rock-solid SEO coding and greatly reduce the need for plugins, those add-on apps that make WP blogs more functional. That’s a very good thing for two major reasons:
- The fewer plugins your blog has activated, the faster your pages will load. That’s good not only for your visitors, but also for your SEO, as search engines are looking for quick-loading text-rich pages.
- The fewer plugins you have, the less chance that there will be some catastrophic conflict. As someone who’s been through the tedious process of deactivating and testing each plugin one by one when such conflicts result, I can attest: fewer plugins = VERY good thing.
So, are all premium themes worth the cost? I can’t say that for sure. What I can say is that at least in these two cases, you do get what you pay for, where it’s important: not the pretty bells and whistles which, let’s face it, almost anyone can do with a little coding and a lot of patience, but the really important stuff — the foundation of your blog/site, which is its coding. At least in that respect, yes, these themes are worth paying for.
Are they worth every penny, though? Ah, that’s a different question, and we’ll be looking at that in a bit more detail in Monday’s post, when we examine each theme “under the hood” in the installation process.
Non-Affiliate Links
I appreciate your points regarding the advantages of a premium theme. however, with wp’s explosive growth as a platform has come a corresponding surge in functionality of wicked cool free themes. To prep for a wp meetup on the atahualpa theme this fall, I switched my site over. in less than a week, I was able to get it looking really nice. sure it is a little bloated, but that’s because I am an addon slut, not because I needed functionality that would have been included with thesis or the like.
a client said he wanted “a blue site.” with that directive, I came across themehybrid, whose use of hooks boggles the mind. themehybrid’s developer does ask that you subscribe for extra help, but that’s a $25 flat fee.
free themes are like the minor leagues. a lot of them are gunning for a shot at the big game, and some will make it. but I’ve always had a soft spot for the pawsox and the late great worcester ice cats. I like to think they try harder – and it’s awesome to see some stars in the making for what the crackerjacks would cost you at fenway.
sadly, nobody’s paying me to push their products, so I am getting absolutely nothing for telling you that themes like atahualpa, themehybrid or carrington (another I’m playing around with) will get you great results.
Todd Randolph´s last blog ..better than real time? meet the intention web
Thanks for the balanced overview of these themes. Hooks really aren’t anything new, but they’re kinda new to WordPress themes, and Thesis was the first well-known theme to use them. Headway uses a system called “EasyHooks” to let you create content with hooks, but without requiring you to code any PHP.
Because of the leafs (and yes, that usage is correct in this case), you can customize the arrangement of content on any page you want in a nearly infinite variety of ways. This goes far beyond every other major premium theme out there. The ease with which you can do what use to take hours of hardcore coding is Headway’s greatest strength.
If I could pick only one word to describe Headway, it would be “easy.”
Michael Martine (Headway Marketing)´s last blog ..Headway 1.5.5 Available
I have been using Thesis for about a year now and have been very pleased with it. It is basically rock solid and offers you great freedom to customise as you wish. I recently bought Headway, thinking it might offer something different but have been very disappointed. It seems to be very flaky and I have been hit by glitches in many areas. The leaf system sounds great but does not seem to work brilliantly in practice. The forums are full of people complaining about problems with leafs. Support forums and documentation are much more extensive for Thesis. Also, the basic interface for the Headway theme is a visual editor, which might seem attractive but is actually quite problematic. As I understand it, the visual editor connects to a dynamic database which produces the necessary code for the CSS, etc. There isn’t a CSS file you can look through to see what’s going on, you have to use the visual editor inspector or Firebug to check out particular elements. This all results on my set-up, which is a fairly powerful computer, with a lot of delays, jumpy graphics and general frustration. You do have a custom CSS file so can put whatever you want in there but when I am customising I prefer to copy from the original CSS file and paste it into the custom file and then change it. I think I will be sticking with Thesis. I will continue to check out Headway, mainly because I’ve paid for it, and maybe future versions will improve on some of these issues but if they had had a seven-day money-back offer I definitely would not have paid for Headway.
Thanks to all for the comments – I was hoping we’d stimulate some healthy debate with this series.
@Todd: Actually, I agree that there are several good freebie themes out there. I’d add my former theme here, Arthemia, to the list you provide. The problem, as you note, is the bloat factor. But sometimes, that’s really not a big deal, at least for the kind of sites my readers are building — blogs and static content for solo professional services providers. Maybe that’d change with a more code-heavy site such as one selling products? I dunno.
I’d love to see the underdogs come up with something that kills, too – like you, major soft spot for the dark horses amongst us.
@Michael: I tend to agree, at least so far. Headway does seem to make customization easier. (Though I can only reiterate it’s KILLING me to leave TIS looking like this while I work through the series, especially when changing it is so easy.) But Thesis, even though it’s not quite as intuitive (perhaps) is also capable of producing the pretty. What I’m unsure of is why the Thesis hooks implementation prompts so much confusion. I’ve looked through the support on this issue and it seems pretty clear … yet, there’s no denying it’s the number one subject of calls for assistance out there in forums and blogs. There will be more on this in the next post.
@Rogerpacker: Good points, all, and I plan to incorporate them into the next post as well. Where I stand right now, though I’m intent on not reaching any kind of conclusion until the end of the series, is this: both themes are amazing. Neither theme is perfect. My question, then, becomes: which one’s all-around better for the average Inspired Solo reader, who’s a solo service provider?
That, I honestly don’t know yet. I have thoughts. I have no conclusions yet.
Thanks again for stopping in, guys! Truly appreciate the comments.
Roger, of course the forums are about problems. They’re support forums, after all. That’s what they’re there for.
Michael Martine (Headway Marketing)´s last blog ..Headway 1.5.5 Available
Michael: I got the impression Roger was saying that of the complaints in the forums, a large number were about the leafs — not remarking that the fact that there were problems reported was itself odd. Thesis forums are just as full of people asking about hooks — I’m sure Roger knows that.
Sheryl, of course.
Just providing some context. We’re listening to the feedback from the Headway community and have worked it into Headway 1.5.5. Instead of separate floating panels, all the panels are now incorporated into a sidebar, which is even easier to work with. Along the way we’ve made Headway faster and more compatible with various hosting configurations. I love watching changes take effect immediately, right on the blog.
Cool analysis. The Headway Visual Editor is getting steadier and steadier. I don’t want to be biased, but I often chat with clay and it’s awesome to see where the interface has come in just four versions with a sixth on the way and some awesome things in store. =)
I tried out Thesis and I just felt like it got in the way of what I wanted to do. Headway isn’t -just- for the newbies, as some people have talked about. I’m a professional designer and it definitely cuts down on design time. The ability to put it on unlimited client sites is awesome too.
Oh and I’d just like to point out that 80% of the support forum threads would be solved if people would just read the documentation…or knew how to use CSS…
I can’t believe you passed up headwayhacks.com for the support part of Headway. *cries* Totally joking. Just an FYI, Headwayhq.com will become part of headwayhacks.com in 2010.
Great post. =)
@Corey: Mea culpa! Thanks for the “head’s up” (hee) on the merger of these two great sites. I’ve amended the post accordingly for future reference. And a big fat “hells yeah” to the whole “RTFM” thing. (Although I confess, sometimes I don’t. I get lazy. What can I say? Character flaw. Working on it.)
@Michael: Damn that emoticon dyslexia of mine. Doc warned me this might be a problem down the road…
Sheryl – Thanks for a first in a series of post on this subject. And great job of comparing the two. I have always been of the belief that both products will work for some and not others. That is why we have choices when we go to buy things.
Let me also just say that we greatly appreciate all of the comments, suggestions and even complaints. Yes complaints. Only by listening to our users can we make Headway the best product it can be. As Corey mentioned, we are currently at v.1.5.6 and this latest version was brought about by the upgrade to WordPress 2.9 And, we are already working on 1.6.
We don’t intend to let the grass grow under our feet either. More and more things are coming down the road too.
I think you are wrong in the pricing comparison. Also with Headway, you have to pay an additional ‘add-on licence’ of $40:
“Install on unlimited websites that you or your company owns. If you develop client sites on Headway you must pay [or have your client pay you] an additional $40 per add-on license.”
Remco – you’re absolutely right.
After receiving your comment, I checked this out with Grant Griffiths, who clarified the licensing. My confusion arose because the initial paragraph on the sign-up page indicated licensing for unlimited sites “owned or developed” — I took “developed” to mean “set up” for others, as well as for yourself. But the bulleted list after that makes the point you do – there is a $40 add-on fee as well.
So, they’re absolutely the same up until the point you consider purchasing multiple add-ons, in which case it looks like Thesis offers a slightly better deal.
Thank you for calling me on it!
You’re welcome!
Isn’t it interesting that both products are priced exactly the same?
Makes you wonder what the relationship is between the two developers. If I would be in this ‘competition’, I think I would price my product different than my competitor, maybe even more expensive.
Looking forward to round 2!
I’m pretty sure there’s no relationship, so to speak, between the developers. I’m basing that on conversations/comments by people associated with both companies in comments on this and other blogs but could, of course, be wrong on that point.
Of course, the pricing similarities also have the impact of forcing the blogger/consumer to make a choice based on the product itself, which I have to consider a good thing.
The pricing is the same precisely so that it ceases to be a basis of comparison. People can choose one or the other based on whether it’s best for them.
Michael: yeah, that was my assumption. Of course, if Headway wanted to be truly identical, it should consider implementing that bulk add-on discount.
You might want to update the ‘Headway & Thesis: Pricing and Licenses’ section of your review to reflect the fact that even Headway needs you to pay $40 for every Headway powered site you set up for a client.
This is what I don’t ilke about both Thesis and Headway (I hold dev licenses for both, by the way).
StudioPress (planning to buy soon) and iThemes (have the dev license) doesn’t have this ‘must pay $ for every client site’ limitation. Buy once, get lifetime updates and install on any # of sites w/o bothering about add-on licenses or monthly charges (like WooThemes).
Crap. Thought I had, Sridhar. Thanks for pointing that out!