You’ve probably noticed I haven’t posted much this week That’s because I’ve been working on the the back end of the site getting ready for a major theme change and redesign. And believe it or not you’re already looking at the new and improved theme, and that’s what I was hoping for.

I didn’t want to change the look or the feel too much because I really liked the feel of the site and many readers did too. Unfortunately the theme I was using was getting old and breaking that much more with every wordpress upgrade, it was getting to the point that the band aids needed band aids. Not to mention the fact that I was running the back end with 53 plugins, now pared down to a svelte 27.

When I was looking for a new theme I really thought the best choice would be to hire someone to make me the site I want while still keeping the looks and feel of the old theme. Then I ran across two options that needed a second more serious look. The first was a theme called Thesis. This theme had a lot going on for it, much of the coding could be done on the fly and it was a good looking long term solution. After more research though every site I saw using the Thesis seem looked exactly the same and that was no good for what I wanted.

Then I found Headway and my choice was made for me. Like Thesis, headway is more of a framework than just a theme. But Headway has a lot more under the hood. Aside from being able to customize the css very easily with hooks they took editing to a whole new level. If you want you can work on the site through the admin panel but using the visual editor is the way of the future.

With the visual editor all you need to do is be on your home page or any page for that matter and click the editor tab that only the site owner can see in the upper right hand corner. Then you can change any aspect of the page on the fly while it’s live. From fonts to sidebars you can do it all. You can design your blog visually instead of working through the back end, saving and then going to see if the changes were right. With Headway you know instantly.

One of the biggest reasons for the change was that I wanted to really change the layouts of certain pages without going nuts with the back end css. I have wanted to change the Gallery and Video pages forever and now with Headway it was done in a matter of 30 minutes. I still need to change the css of the actual Gallery and Video plugins I use but knowing the layout can be whatever I want and changeable to suit my needs is a huge plus.

I still have some tweaking to do after a full day of site changes but I think I have it pretty much wrapped up. Play around with everything and let me know what you think.

If anyone reading this is looking for a theme that will last you a lifetime ( upgrades are free ) and will be infinitely customizable then you might want to check Headway out. The link below will take you to their site which has some great videos explaining how it all works. The link isn’t an affiliate link, I am just so happy with this theme that I wanted to give them some link love.

Headway Themes