Now before I get into all this I feel I should point out that I am an affiliate with Thesis, along with several other premium WordPress themes. For example, SuccessCREEations uses Headway and New Media Profit Path uses Genesis from StudioPress. I recommend each of these theme frameworks depending on the needs of the client.

Background

The dustup has been brewing for well over a year. The main issue was that the Thesis license agreement was apparently at odds with the WordPress GPL license.

Basically WordPress, headed by Matt Mullenweg, has taken the position that, since WordPress has a GPL license, then WordPress plugins and themes also need to use that license. In the broadest, non-lawyerly terms the GPL license allows people to charge whatever they want for their software, but end users who purchase it are then free to use the software any way they want.

Thesis, and in particular lead developer Chris Pearson have long maintained that the way WordPress is applying GPL to themes is a legal gray area that hasn’t been tested in court and they have every right to restrict how purchasers of their theme use it after purchase.

It’s been a running feud that seemed to flair up ever few months whenever someone prominent in the WordPress community wrote a post about GPL with lively discussions flowing in the comment sections of those posts.

Coming to a Head

Then a couple weeks ago things came to a head. It started with a simple tweet. Which led to a flurry of tweets back and forth. Both sides went a little over the edge, in my opinion.

The conflict culminated in a video interview, sort of a point-counterpoint between Matt and Chris:

If you take the time to listen to the interview in that video, it seems that Chris comes across worked up, angry and, dare I say it, a touch arrogant.

I’ve seen a lot of chatter in the last couple weeks from people who have watched the video and many of them who were considering Thesis are having second thoughts now. Seems they just plain didn’t like the way Chris presented himself.

My impression is that Matt comes from a perspective of abundance. He sees that there is plenty of money to go around and, based on several of the premium theme developers who are releasing their themes with GPL and have booming businesses he doesn’t see a more open license as getting in the way of profitability.

With my nautical background I’d say it this way: A rising tide raises all the ships in the harbor.

Chris, on the other hand seems to be trapped in a scarcity mindset. He comes across as afraid that if he doesn’t restrict what people do with his work then they will take advantage of him and he will lose income.

Neither side really comes across smelling like a rose in this exchange. But over all it seemed to me like Chris lost this particular battle.

Fallout

Then, after all that, about a week later Chris announced that Thesis was moving to a split GPL license.

So on top of loosing the battle, it seems Chris capitulated and lost the war too.

More Fallout?

Now we’re starting to see some high profile bloggers replacing the Thesis themes on their sites. Social Media powerhouse Chris Brogan is one example. This week he switched to Genesis by StudioPress.

Now Chris (do we have enough Chris’s in this post yet?) says the change was purely a business decision, and I get that. He’s careful to point out that Thesis is a great theme and that the GPL dustup has been resolved so it is a non-issue.

But it still begs the question, is this the beginning of a wide scale abandonment of Thesis by the WordPress community? If so, how much does Chris Pearson’s approach and style throughout the feud play into it?

Then the Real Bombshell

Then the real piece of news related to this whole thing that I find completely shocking. Last week, Brian Clark, half owner of Thesis with Chris Pearson, announced he and Chris are parting ways!

Brian says the breakup of their partnership was months in the making. But I find it interesting that, according to Brian, Chris’ stance on the whole GPL thing was the beginning of the end of their working together.

Now I don’t have any knowledge of their business arrangement but from where I sit it seems obvious that Brian was the marketing force that propelled Thesis to it’s current place of prominence. Granted, it’s because Chris delivers the goods that there are so many satisfied customers at this point.

But I’ll be curious to see if Thesis continues to thrive without that marketing support.

Or has Chris Pearson torpedoed his business by taking it down this road?

Amazing how much drama can go on in a community as geeky as we have with WordPress, eh?

Until something bad happens and they loose a bunch of their data, that is.

Our office here at SuccessCREEations is almost exclusively a Mac office so we run Time Machine backups hourly on our work computers to an external hard drive. Not only that, but we also back up every single computer off site via JungleDisk every night.

Redundancy is a good thing!

Two Recent Examples

I was reminded about need for backing up your WordPress site by recent examples that happened to people I know.

In the first case, Viveka Von Rosen’s site was attacked by a hacker. I wrote about that last week when I explained how to protect WordPress from hackers.

Also last week, Cheryl Smith had her site go down for, um, other reasons.

Fortunately it worked out well for both of them. But in both cases it could have been much less stressful if they were backing up their sites regularly.

That said, here are three easy way to back up your WordPress site.

1. WP DB Backup Plugin

My primary backup for years has been the WP DB Backup plugin. You can set this plugin to automatically backup your WordPress MySQL database and email it to you. A Gmail address would be great for this.

As a note, at this writing the plugin page says it’s compatible through WordPress 2.9.2 but I’ve not encountered any problems using it on version 3.0.

That works great if you already have all of your theme files and your uploads in your possession like I do. But if you don’t you might need a more substantial backup system.

2. Automatic WordPress Backup Plugin

The Automatic WordPress Backup Plugin is an option to back up everything on your site. It will also send the backups to your Amazon S3 account. (And if you don’t have one they have a video on the site to show how to set it up.)

Amazon S3 is the same service that my JungleDisk backs up our computer to. And I’m also using Amazon S3 to host all the videos on New Media Profit Path as well. I’ve really been surprised how inexpensive it’s been for me. I’ve got several Gigs of storage and it’s still under $1 a month.

To me, that’s mighty inexpensive insurance!

Unfortunately this method does take some technical skilz to set up. If that’s not you there is another option.

3. VaultPress

If you’re looking for worry free backups then VaultPress may be the right answer. You just install and turn a plugin, activate it (which is easier than it sounds) and VaulPress will take care of everything else for you.

Their starting price of $15 per month is not insignificant. But if your business depends on your WordPress site then $180 a year is a very small price to pay to make sure that you don’t loose any of your critical data.

So there you have it. Three easy ways to backup your WordPress site.

How do you backup your site?

Would your business survive your website being shut down, even temporarily?

It Happens

That’s exactly the situation that my friend Viveka Von Rosen found herself in recently.

Fortunately we were able to help her out, rescue (most of) her files and get her back up and running relatively quickly. But that isn’t always the case.

Turns out Viveka could have done some things to better protect herself. Fortunately she learned her lesson well and she’s in much better shape today than she was before the attack.

Have You Really Been Hacked?

A lot of times people come to me saying, “My site’s been hacked,” when it really hasn’t. With WordPress sometimes plugin conflicts can cause issues that seem to the user like a hacker has messed with something. This is most common when upgrading to a new version of WordPress if a plugin hasn’t been made compatible with the new version yet.

While that can cause your site to crash, it’s not caused by hackers.

Not only that, but most of the sites I’ve seen that have been hacked weren’t just taken down by them. Most of the malicious hacks I’ve seen involved injecting some code into the site, usually with the end goal to redirect site traffic to some other website.

The Symptoms

Without going into the gory details, Viveka’s case was a little different. Her site actually showed an all white screen with an error message along the lines of a plugin conflict and the hacker just wanted to crash her site. Turns out he was into stealing something else.

When I did some troubleshooting I was able to get her site back up and running in fairly short order. In Viveka’s words:

I must add here, that it only took Chris 45 minutes to decipher and fix what was a rather sophisticated hack!

While I’d never promise to be able to recover a hacked site that quickly, I do have a good track record recovering hacked WordPress sites.

Here are some things you can do to minimize the chances you’ll end up getting hacked and maximize the chances to fully recover quickly should your site crash (for whatever reason).

1. Use Strong Passwords.

I honestly think this was Viveka’s biggest mistake. Again in her words,

This is what got me – I just used numbers and letters and the password was – well – kinda obvious.

Make your passwords not only hard to guess, but make them more difficult for sophisticated hackers to break as well. Randomly mix in special characters (found on the number keys with the shift button) as well as numbers and upper and lower case letters. Here’s what Wikipedia says about password strength.

Both WordPress and cPanel will tell you how strong your password is. Stronger passwords offer better protection.

It also makes them harder to type in. That’s why I use 1Password to manage my passwords on my Macs. I can use really strong passwords and I don’t have to remember them or type them in. 1Password will auto fill web forms for me. It’s the best of both worlds: good security & user friendly.

2. Keep Your WordPress Updated.

One of the most common ways WordPress websites get hacked is because their owners don’t keep their software up to date. What happens is that older versions of WordPress can have know security weaknesses. These weaknesses are fixed by newer releases of the software.

But if you don’t update your software, you leave yourself exposed.

This also holds true with plugins and themes. Besides, the newer versions of WordPress make keeping everything up to date remarkably easy. There’s not much of an excuse to keep you from updating things.

3. Backup Regularly and Often.

A good backup can cover for a ton of other issues by making it possible to revert back to how things were before your site crashed. When it comes to WordPress you need to back up your

• Database
• Theme Files
• Plugins
• Media Uploads

There are several different ways to handle backups and I’ll cover some of those in a future post.

But the point is backup early and backup often!

Bottom Line

I don’t believe any site is completely “hack proof.” A determined hacker with enough resources can break into most anything. Just watch an episode of NCIS!

But if you do these three things you will greatly reduce your risk of being hacked and make it much easier to recover if you do run into a problem.

Between the new support for custom post types and the new navigation menu system you’ll want to upgrade your WordPress install as soon as possible!

Here is a video that highlights some of these amazing new features. Try to wrap your mind around the possibilities.

You can open an account with them for free. And if you already have an account at WordPress.com then you automatically already have a Gravatar account. You can upload your image to the Gravatar site and have it show up on all WordPress sites that have Gravatars enabled.

Gravatar Public Profiles

Taking the concept one step further, last week WordPress announced Gravatar Public Profiles. Now you can fill out a complete profile including links to select social media accounts, and even personalize it with a background image.

The end result can look something like my profile which I think looks pretty sharp, though granted I’m a little biased.

Why Set Up Your Profile

One reason you’ll want to set up your profile at Gravatar is because it becomes an easy reference for you web identity. Not only can you enter your profile info in HTLM along with select social media profile links, but you are allowed to enter personal links to sites that relate to you.

That way your Gravatar profile can give a quick snap shot of who you are on the web that is presented in a clean, easy to read quickly format.

• Menus – including dropdowns – can be arranged via drag-and-drop
• Multiple menus can be quickly customized
• Individual blog posts can be listed anywhere in menus just like pages
• Category links can be included in menus
• So can links to tag pages
• Off site links to any URL on the web can be included in navigation menus

As long as the theme your site is using can support the new WordPress menu system you can do all of this straight from your dashboard without any programming at all.

Increased Flexibility

This feature is going to increase the flexibility of WordPress sites in huge new ways. From what I’ve seen of this new menu system WordPress has done an excellent job with it. Creating and modifying menus are intuitive and easy to do with your mouse. This is yet another reason WordPress is the best web publishing platform for small business websites.

Here’s a video I posted on ChrisCree.TV where I show how the WordPress menu feature works and give a taste of what it can do.

I picked up tons of little tidbits. Here are a few in no particular order.

Forward Looking

The WordPress core development team seems to be very forward looking. While there was some talk about where WordPress has been, the focus of the presentations was definitely on where the platform is going. On the technical side the big focus seemed to be “WordPress as a CMS.” Some of the features that are either planned or were talked about included.

Custom Post Types – To allow custom options beyond the current post, page and attachment. Some examples I can think of could be photo galleries, or data entry forms.

Improved Media Handling – WordPress 2.9 will have built in oEmbed support so you can just paste the url of the content you want embeded (from supported sites) and WordPress will automatically detect the content on that linked page and display the it on your site. Not a good explanation but it will make embedding videos, etc. much easier.

Better Main Navigation Control – There was some discussion about improving the main navigation controls to make it easier to exclude pages, reorder links, and including links to non-page links (on and off site.) Matt Mullenweg asked the users which plugins they were using for that functionality. He said that one big way WordPress adds functionality to the core code is by getting with plugin authors for plugins that already do it.

Google Wave For Collaborative Note Taking

There were two tracks at WordCamp Orlando. Jesse Peterson and I were going to be attending different sessions but wanted to share notes so we could get the most from the conference. I suggested Google Wave might be a good way to do that so I shared an invite him.

In one of the early sessions Matthew Simantov saw us using Google Wave and took it a step further by creating a wave for everyone to share their notes on. It was a good idea and made it easy for folks to have collective notes from the event.

Matt Mullenweg is a Nice Guy

As the founder of WordPress I image Matt Mullenweg gets pulled in lots of different directions. Even so, he manages to do a good job of being a nice guy. I’m glad I got the chance to shake his hand and thank him for all he’s done to steer the WordPress ship. Without him doing what he’s done my company here, SuccessCREEations, Inc. wouldn’t exist.

Not bad for a guy just 25 years old!

We even got him on Google Wave Saturday.

(photo credit: seanosh)

Orlando is a Nice Town

The more time I spend in Orlando the more I want to move there permanently. Everyone I ran into this weekend was uniformly nice. This includes the folks from Voce Communications who sponsored the event and carried through to the ladies at the front desk of the hotel I stayed in Friday night.

Even getting a full dose of the notorious Orlando traffic on I-4 wasn’t enough to dissuade me. I found a radio station that is playing non-stop Christmas music through the holidays to keep my mood up. Turns out they even stream their broadcast too! I’m listening to Christmas music while I type this.

I fully intended on attending the after party Saturday night but in one block walk to my car I realized I was really tired and still had a 4 hour drive back home that night. I decided to plead not-as-young-as-I-used-to-be and just head home rather than to the party first. It was a rainy drive home but very much worth the trip.

All in all it was a wonderful weekend. I can’t wait until I head up to WordCamp Atlanta next month!

With its free code and famous 5 minute installation, WordPress is a great platform for the do-it-yourself website and folks looking to have a top notch website on a very tight budget. Since WordPress installation is so straight forward should you go ahead, dive in and start using WordPress on your own?

In my opinion it depends.

That’s the way I started years ago. But one thing you should consider is how much time you want to spend figuring things out and searching through the WordPress forums for answers. I’ve spent many hours in that maze finding answers to all sorts of problems.

It really depends on how much time you have available, what your budget is and most importantly what your goals are. The good news is you have options.

Doing It Yourself

The least expensive, most time consuming way is to do everything yourself. It can be a great way to go if you have a very tight budget and lots of time. I see this as the right answer for the hobbyist and people who really want to learn how the back end of WordPress works.

That was me when I installed my first WordPress blog. I had outgrown Blogger so I moved over to WordPress 1.5 and loved the freedom. That was back when WordPress was considered to be just a blogging platform.

I spent hours and days figuring out the best ways to set things up and get things done with WordPress. While WordPress does a pretty good job “out of the box” with things like SEO, it turns out there are a whole bunch of things – settings and plugins, etc. – that can be adjusted behind the scenes which make a big difference in how effective your site is at attracting traffic.

It was my hobby and I loved it. Unfortunately most people don’t have that kind of time available to get their website up and running as effectively as possible.

Middle Ground

The next step up I recommend is to hire a reputable service to do the basic installation and setup for you so you know it’s done right. They take care of the stuff that’s left out of the “5 minute install” and make sure those important back end settings are optimized.

Then you are free to focus on creating content for your site because that should be one of your top priorities. The content on your website is the biggest attractor to bring people into your site. Too many website owners starting out get caught up in the aesthetics of their sites and don’t leave themselves enough time to create quality content. And then they wonder why they have so little traffic!

Hint: Pretty does not attract the audience. It’s nice sure. But mostly it’s, um, pretty.

If you are looking for a good cost effective way to get your WordPress site up and running quickly one service I recommend without reservation is The Website Habitat by Dawud Miracle. I’ve know Dawud and his work for years and he really knows his way around WordPress. I know he sets his client’s sites up the right way.

The only down side to a middle ground solution like this is that in order to keep the cost down you typically have a limited selection of choices on how your site design. It’s not a big deal for many, especially if you are looking to get your site up, running, and optimized as quickly as possible.

The Full Monte

The other alternative is to hire a firm like SuccessCREEations to create a custom solution for you. Our New Media Hub is a the answer for people who need a completely custom website that showcases their business and draws in traffic from all their social media outposts.

Of course the most valuable part of that package is access to my years of knowledge and experience with the things it takes to make your website a success. It may not mean much coming from me, but the truth is I’m really good at this WordPress stuff & I can equip you to make your site much more effective so it brings in more business and you make more money.

What’s the best way to get started with WordPress? Depends on how important earning money from your site is to you.

With a few glaring exceptions, these days most companies have moved away from treating Mac users like inconvenient step children. (Can you hear me Intuit? Your Quickbooks & Quicken support for Mac is horrid!)

And since Mac users make up a disproportionate number of the technology early adapters I’m surprised that Google Chrome’s Mac version is so far behind Chrome for Windows.

Even now when you go to the Google Chrome for Mac web page they say it is still in development. But if you’ll give Google your email address they’ll shout at you when it’s released. I did that. Months ago.

This past week I finally got tired enough of waiting to check it out for myself that I went to the Chrome for Mac developer download page and got a copy for myself to take it for a spin.

Here’s the thing: It’s a fantastic browser.

Strengths of Google Chrome

Speed. The first thing I noticed is how incredibly fast Google Chrome is. I mean it’s crazy fast. With everything. When you launch it, it barely bounces in the dock twice before it opens. Most web pages load way faster than with Firefox or Safari. And it shuts down quickly too!

When you’re on the web all day long like I am, saving a couple seconds on every single page load adds up to a big increase in productivity by the end of the day.

Accurate rendering. I ran Chrome through the Acid3 Test & it passes. Unlike Firefox. That means you see what you’re supposed to on the web with Chrome.

Easy to Set Up. When I first installed Chrome on my Mac it gave me a choice to import my bookmarks and settings from either Firefox or Safari (or neither). It brought all my bookmarks and saved passwords over seamlessly. They’re are a bunch of Themes you can choose from to customize the look of your browser. I chose one that looks like brushed metal. Seemed chrome-like to me.

Weaknesses

Still in “development.” Since Chrome for Mac is still in development you shouldn’t be surprised if you find some bugs now and then. I’ve only seen a couple problems since I started using it. For example one time a text box on a form wouldn’t let me enter anything. But I am writing this post using Chrome.

No bookmark management yet. I have way too many bookmarks in my browsers so I organized them into folders. With Chrome for Mac all bookmark folders are at the bottom of the rest of the bookmarks under “other bookmarks.” So to get to a bookmark in a folder I have to scroll down the bottom of my list, go across to a fly out list of folders, then up to the appropriate folder, and finally across to the bookmark I want.

I’m looking forward to the manage bookmarks feature being turned on so I can rearrange them for an easier workflow.

No 1Password Integration. Yet. This is a big one for me, and the primary reason why Chrome won’t be my default browser on my Macs anytime soon. 1Password is a fantastic tool for managing website login credentials for your Mac. It syncs your logins across browsers and even syncs between my desktop & my laptop.

1Password was one of the first programs I bought when I made the switch to Macs, and with the number of websites I got to every day between social media sites & client sites it is a huge productivity saver for me. Until Chrome for Mac actually comes out of development I don’t expect the good folks at 1Password will invest too much time integrating with it.

Bottom Line

At the end of the day Google Chrome for Mac is an excellent browser. It’s even tempting to make it my default browser. Google seems bent on raising the bar for web browsers and the winners will be all of us consumers who will have better tools to access the web.

But for now I’ll stick to Firefox, even though it is slower. With all the extensions I’m using on Firefox (especially 1Password) it is still a more versatile tool over all for my work needs.

Combine that with its power Search Engine Optimization (SEO) control and I’m confident your competition will soon be using Headway even if you’re not.

Why Listen to Me?

First here’s a little background about me before I get into this review so that you can decide if I know what I’m talking about or not.

I’ve been working with WordPress for going on 4 years and it’s been a significant part of my full-time income for over a year and a half. In addition to consulting on new media strategy and training I have built dozens of websites for clients with WordPress, WordPress MU, and BuddyPress.

If you Google the term “WordPress support” (as of this writing at least) you will find our WordPress Support page on the first page of results. Pretty much the only pages that rank higher are for the various WordPress help forums and the like, which means that SuccessCREEations is about the first place listed where someone can pick up the phone and get personalized help to with their specific WordPress problem. And trust me, we do get calls!

My recently launched all-video site ChrisCree.TV is gaining attention as a go-to source for folks to learn about how new media can help them grow their businesses. I speak at national conferences and have contributed to books and periodicals as an author on new media and blogging topics.

I have worked extensively with, and am an affiliate for, several of the most prominent premium WordPress themes and regularly recommend the most appropriate one directly to my clients depending on their specific needs. I know several of their developer/owners and consider them friends. And of course I am using an affiliate link to Headway in this review.

For those of you who don’t know me, reviewing a premium WordPress theme is not something I usually do. Look through the three years of archives here at SuccessCREEations and you will not find blog post reviewing any other premium WordPress theme. Not even the ones with higher affiliate payouts. That’s how impressive I think Headway is.

But enough of my credentials. Feels too much like bragging anyway. On to the review.

A Theme Framework

The first thing that struck me when I saw Headway is that it is much more than just a WordPress theme. Headway is an entire theme framework that makes it easy to quickly build vastly different looking sites.

Usually it is pretty obvious when sites have the same theme. With the exception of different colors, headers, and a few other relatively minor changes they often look a lot alike.

But Headway makes modifying page layouts so simple that it is really easy to quickly create a very unique design for your site. For example, compare the front page here at SuccessCREEations with the Headway site, Legal Practice Pro, and John Haydon’s site and you’ll find 4 very different looking web sites.

Yet all of them are Headway sites.

Now I routinely take premium WordPress themes, modify the CSS style sheets and images for a custom look and feel. But Headway makes it easy to change nearly everything right from the WordPress dashboard without needing CSS skils.

Total Control

Headway gives you total control over the look and layout of your site from the WordPress Dashboard. Here are just some of the things you can change on the fly:

• Website width
• Header
  • image or text
  • and placement
• Main Navigation Position
• Breadcrumbs
  • turn them on or off
  • adjust display position
• Post Meta Data is fully customizable
• Featured Posts
• Excerpts
• Comment Avatars
• Font Types and Sizes – for 13 different site elements
• Colors
  • for 37 site elements
  • by hex, RGB, or slider
• Navigation Customization
  • Link Order
  • Which Pages Included
• SEO
  • Page & Post Title Tags
  • Keywords
  • Descriptions
  • NoFollow options
  • NoIndex options
• Native Post to Twitter

The list goes on.  Headway has a section to add custom scrips to the header or footer, assign an rss feed url (great for Feedburner), designate a favicon, and add an affiliate link back to Headway if you happen to have one.

And that doesn’t even get to the best part of all…

Of Leafs and Tables

Headway introduces truly simple-to-modify modular content areas between the header and footer.

The analogy they use to describe what they do is a dining room table. Most of our dining room tables have the ability to make them bigger when you have guests. All you have to do is add a leaf or two and your table gets bigger so you can seat more people.

In the same way, Headway has a Layout Editor where you can add more page elements by adding more “leafs”. Just click the “Add a Leaf” link in the Headway Layout Editor and a menu pops up with the option to add any of 8 different kinds of leafs to you page layout.

Simply choose the one you want based on the type of content you want displayed in that page element and click the “Add” link. Headway adds that element to the page for you.

Then you can click the “edit” link on the leaf to customize the exact content within that leaf.

On each leaf you can also use your mouse to set

• Width
• Height – exact height or fluid
• Alignment – left or right

Either with a click, or simply by dragging an edge of the leaf in the layout editor.

You really need to watch the page layout demo video on the Headway site to appreciate how much they have just simplified layout design for WordPress users with this feature.

The first time I saw it my jaw dropped.

Because Headway allows you to have a completely different layout for each page of your WordPress web site if you want. All managed right in your dashboard. No more messing with php files, css and html.

Just click and drag your mouse and you’ve got a brand new layout – in seconds!

Sidebars Made Simple

Did you notice in the image above that one of the leaf options is for a widget ready sidebar? With Headway you can now add sidebars on the fly. No more need to go edit your functions.php file to get a new sidebar.

So now you can add a widgetized area to your website pretty much any size wherever you want. And you don’t need any programming skills to make it happen.

Skin Your Headway

They’ve built in the ability to add skins to customize your Headway theme. I haven’t had a chance to play with the skins yet, but the theme is set up so that you can download and install a skin for your Headway theme and have your own customized look in no time.

That’s going to be really attractive to users who want a little more customization but lack the time or ability to do the little bit of css work involved. Plus I can see a secondary Headway skin market for designers to create custom Headway skins.

Who is Headway For?

Obviously Headway makes creating custom layouts easy for people of modest technical means. WordPress beginners will love the ability to make their site look exactly the way they want without having to pay a designer to make the customized changes they want.

But I completely see how Headway will be perfect for someone like me too. Sure I can do everything that Headway does manually. But I can’t customize layouts anywhere near as quickly manually as I can with Headway.

Headway is perfect for smaller design and WordPress customizing shops, single designers, etc. because it speeds up the design and layout process so we can be more productive and more profitable. Just create a skin for your client and you are ready for delivery.

And here’s another juicy tidbit. The good folks tell me they are already working on a WordPress MU compatible version of Headway. That’s got me really excited. To be able to truly manage all my client sites in one place and give them completely completely different custom websites from within the same theme framework will make my life so much easier!

Bottom Line

Headway is a fantastic new theme. I’ve said before that it’s a game changer & I completely believe the bar for all WordPress premium theme developers has been raised a little higher with it’s release. Their price point is competitive with other premium WordPress themes out there now. Bottom line, Headway is a bargain that is sure to give the other custom themes a run for their money.