This Site Is Getting a New Look With Headway 3

Last November, I wrote a post on Building a Church Website With WordPress. In that post, I discussed the basic steps for setting up a church website using WordPress.org’s software. I also talked about using Headway Themes, a theme framework that uses an innovative “visual editor” to build and design websites with WordPress.

As I mentioned then, just days after that post, Headway 3.0 was released. However, because 3.0 was completely rewritten, users of the previous theme version were not able to upgrade. While Headway Themes has been promising that there will eventually be an upgrade path, I decided to go ahead and rebuild this site in 3.0 (and partly because I’m not convinced they’ll release an upgrade path).

I mention this for a couple reasons: (1) You may notice some of the ongoing changes/tweaks to the site in the days ahead, and also, (2) to ask you to let me know if you find something on the site that isn’t working; I may have broken something in the process!

Last November, I said I was excited about the release of Headway 3.0. Now that I finally got to use it, it seems that the learning curve went up dramatically. Part of the learning curve is simply that the visual editor was completely redone. It’s a major upgrade from the previous version, but unless I’m missing something (I’m still learning, of course), some basic elements aren’t quite as easy to customize as before (I’ve had to use a lot of custom CSS, which because I’m not a real web designer, means lots of research and trial-and-error, and little sleep).

I still recommend Headway Themes, but only if you’re willing to tackle the learning curve!

4 thoughts on “This Site Is Getting a New Look With Headway 3”

  1. Hi Randy — Nice job on your site! I would appreciate very much if you’d tell me how you did your categories menu as a dropdown. I’ve been searching high and low for how to info.

    Thanks!

    Reply
  2. Thanks, Suzanne.

    It’s been so long, I’m not sure. But when I go to Appearance > Menus (in WordPress Dashboard), I see my menu with the Pages in the navigation. I have a heading called “Categories” with all of the categories underneath it, indented.

    Once you get everything there you need, you should be able to arrange them as you like. You’ll have to indent the sub-categories underneath Categories.

    Hope that helps. Sorry it’s not clearer.

    Reply
  3. I am very frustrated with the lack of an upgrade path from Headway Themes. I originally bought it because it was going to be easy. Nothing about this upgrade path looks easy.

    Reply
  4. Thanks for the comment, Margot!

    Yes, I imagine many Headway users are frustrated by the lack of an upgrade path. Without it, you basically have to start over and build your site from the ground up.

    Reply

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