to say that this tiny blog is my attempt to stop others from wasting their $87 on the Headway Theme. For if you are not able to use the theme as you had hoped, and even if you have a civil correspondence with them, you will not get your money back.
Simply put, why spend so much money for a supposedly "drag and drop" theme, when after the most superficial of layers of design, it isn't drag and drop at all. You will spend many hours trying to figure out what to do to make your blog look and work the way you want it to look and work....you may or may not receive much help on the Headway forums...but the help you do receive will probably be geeky and technical and hard to implement for non-geeks. And non-geeks are the most likely to be drawn to Headway in the first place, looking for that "drag and drop" ease.
I have tried many themes, mostly free or modestly priced. This being WP, I spend many, many hours-no matter what the theme-tweaking it to look and work just so. Headway was no easier to use than these other themes and the folks behind it seem to be most interested in making money and in gathering a group of supporters and admirers around them, rather than backing up their product with integrity. I was hesitant when I read before purchase that they didn't give refunds. But I did believe the "language" at their website that assured customer satisfaction and that they would do everything they could to make it work for everyone who purchased it...not so.
I have had my own business for more than eight years, and I can't imagine treating a dis-satisfied customer the way I (and others) were treated. If so few purchasers are unhappy with Headway, as the people behind it have written to me and posted on the forums, why wouldn't you give refunds, like Thesis and other similar themes do, to those few? From my perspective, Headway does a good job of selling their theme to people like me who have a vision for their blog that they don't know how to technically manifest. Perhaps people like me who have created lovely blogs at Blogger for many years and find the challenges of Wordpress hard to make "headway" with. From all the reading I did at the Headway forums, it seems to be very much appreciated by geeks. That is well and good, just please stop promoting it as easy and drag and drop....when from a non-geek perspective it is complex and difficult to use for anything beyond the most basic sort-of blog design.
So, I am forging ahead with trying to figure it out myself. Well, myself and the wonderful people on the Autofocus forum (my new and unusual theme), and the plugin forums and all the places I am finding helpful people who try to speak non-geek (or help us to understand geek).
If you don't agree with me, please don't comment here. There are plenty of places around the web for you to add your voice to those that find Headway useful. This little blog is my attempt to stop others-like me-from losing their money. If Headway gave refunds, if they had attempted to understand the situation from anything other than their defensive and entrenched position, I wouldn't have felt it necessary. But if this stops someone from squandering precious money on something that won't help them in the way they had hoped, I will feel it is worth the time and effort.
Wishing everyone success in their Wordpress journey! Until I had to go to Wordpress for my new venture (oh, if only Blogger allowed for paid membership blogs!) I had no idea how wonderfully simple Blogger's interface was and how large its scope.
8/15/11 Update
Just wanted to add a note here for those looking for a recommendation of a theme to use instead of Headway. Tho' I admire and like so many things about the Autofocus theme I was trying out when I first posted, I have returned and am staying with a theme I tried briefly before Headway. That is the free Suffusion them by Sayontan Sinha. I have found it to be so versatile, very user-friendly for most designs, and it has allowed me to bring the vision of what I saw in my mind for my blog into reality.
The forum is very helpful, in both giving answers and tweaking help and guiding you in learning how to figure things out on your own when necessary. Very happily recommended!
http://aquoid.com/news/themes/suffusion/
