Are Theme Frameworks only suitable for Designers?

Firstly, thanks for the comment Chris. I appreciate the time you took to make contribute such a long comment :)

You also made some very good points.

I checked my email and I purchased headway on 28th December 2009. I have heard very good things about headway being developed more recently, though I'm sure that it works much the same way as it did a few months ago.

Again, I do like headway, I just found that some things were overcomplicated, particularly copying certain elements between pages etc. I'm more used to creating templates etc and customising things that way.

Though I think you are right. I am perhaps set in my ways a little because I am used to doing it the 'old' or 'hard' way. And perhaps it was 'over complicated' for me so that it was easier for beginners.

I have to disagree with your opinion of pasadenaviews. It's been skinned really well, the header in particular has been done well. Though I can tell that it is using thesis or headway. The fonts, layout, menus etc all look like a framework theme.

Obviously this doesn't matter one bit if the target audience doesn't notice this. However, this site does illustrate my point. Other than changing the header and a few colours, most headway and thesis sites look much the same. You can tell by the font sizes, family, colour, layout and menus etc.

You do make some very good points about thesis and headway giving users more control over how their theme is designed. If a novice feels daunted using a theme because of all the code etc then they will feel a sense of freedom and control when they use a framework because they understand how everything is controlled.

But again, even though they can move things around and change colours etc, most of the designs look similar. Which is not usually a problem for a lot of people as the text is easy to read and the content is laid out properly.

However if they are looking for something different an off the shelf solution might be better. It's worth mentioning again that most premium themes now come with their own options page to change certain details of the theme. They don't offer you the wealth of options a framework does though.

Sunday341 looks good. How have sales been so far?

Once again, thanks again for the long comment. It was good to hear from someone with a lot of experience with headway. I did use headway for a few weeks (even had it at wp mods at the start) and thought it was a good framework.

LOL - I got so much to say on this! Where to start?

Background:
I am a moderator on the Headway forums and have very little experience with Thesis.

Re: Your experience,Kevin
If you used Headway last year it's quite a different animal this year and improving all the time. I do find it a little unfair when people judge Headway, Thesis or any other software based on old experience.

Re: Novice unfriendly
Agreed. Basically, I do agree with the premise of your article. That is a reasonable generalisation.

However, Thesis and Headway, we must remember, exist for the very reason that WordPress is difficult for novices to make themes for it and there's plenty of novices who do want to "DIY", but don't want to have to become coding ninjas.

Both Headway and Thesis do an admirable task of making that a bit more approachable. Builder is another, by the way.

So yes, if you're a novice who doesn't want to put in any effort - Headway, Thesis etc are a waste of money and you would be better off buying an off-the-shelf theme (and hope it's not a popular one that is being used all over the place!). But if yo do want to do it yourself, keep reading.

Re: Hard to learn
I found Headway like Macs. Often it does things the easy way but I'm so in the habit of looking for the hard way, that I make it hard for myself. (I do have an example that doesn't spring to mind - hopefully will before I finish writing)

As an experienced WP designer/developer, I was ready to ditch Headway after the first day because I found it did everything a different way and I was a bit set in my ways. Obviously, I persevered! I do think all frameworks are hard to learn because you have to get your head around each dev's way of doing things.

I think Headway, once you do attune to its way, is great. I just love that so many things are already done for you, and that there's very little limitations on the layout - no other framework can claim to make layouts as easy as Headway. With Headway I can spend more time on design and less on development.

Likewise the novices. Maybe they will have to learn a bit of design, terminology and custom CSS, but they won't have to become developers.

Re: Headway complicates things
Not sure what you mean there. But I have used it so much, so am familiar with its way.

Maybe it does for the experienced developer because they are looking for the "hard" way, but I don't think it overly complicates things for the novices - but could make it less complicated.

Headway still uses a lot of language only experienced folks are familiar with. (As does Thesis). Eg Your novice will be saying "What the heck is a wrapper?!"

Re: Cost (or free vs premium)
Lol. Cost is nothing! Free may be all well and good, but it usually comes with limited support. Plus it devalues design. People see a hot free theme and then wonder why a designer can't do a hot design for a couple of hundred bucks.

Plus they also assume that that's what they are going to be able to make themselves using Thesis or Headway with very little effort.

I did a Skin for Headway (Sunday341 in the Marketplace) and it took dozens of hours of work. I will have to sell heaps to pay for the time I spent developing it.

A nice theme does cost money, serious money.

And and average one, still costs. The least I would charge for a theme done with Headway would be about $300. It would look reasonably nice, but still have that "Headway look"

If a novice can do it their self for just $87 and a bit of time, then they're going to be pretty happy.

Re: Headway limitations

From my experience with novices on the forums and Headway, it falls down in three places:

1) Expectation
Headway (and every other premium framework) paints itself as much easier to use than it really is.

2) Documentation
There's a large gap between many user's ability and the documentation for Headway. It assumes quite a bit of knowledge. We are working on that tho - and it is one of my assigned tasks to develop stuff to fill the gap.

3) Customization
Headway still has quite a limited element design set. For example, want a line under your nav bar? Easy! Want a line above the nav bar - sorry, time to learn CSS. I actually think Thesis still does a better job of giving users broader customisation options than Headway.

What alternatives do I recommend
When someone can't come to grips with Headway, I send them to places like Squarespace.com and Wix.com. I don't see much point in sending them to any other WordPress theme or framework because I think they will always want to poke, pull and prod it. And if you want to do that in WordPress, you're always going to have to get your hands dirty.

For wannabe developers, and anyone who's serious about learning to develop for WordPress, any framework is *not* the answer. Frameworks tend to be full of hooks and lack design elements. Much better to tear up someone else's free hot looking theme first. Grab your fave theme and see how they do it. You gotta get right in and dirty. Then move onto free frameworks, and then - if you haven't written your own by that stage - look at the premium ones.

Overall
I am continually surprised by the work that novices do do with Headway. For example, I love this site http://www.pasadenaviews.com/ Not a single line of custom CSS! She has got a little custom HTML in the easy hooks, but really just links. And yet her site doesn't look like a Headway site nor has she had to learn CSS.

Remember too, WordPress itself is user-unfriendly. I know Matt and the guys are working hard to address this - with v3 making some good progress. So, any novice who uses WordPress is going to struggle somewhat. And if they want to start customising - then they'll struggle a lot-what if they don't have the right attitude and patience.

Again, Thesis and Headway exist for the very reason that WordPress is difficult for novices to make themes their own themes. And both do make that task a little easier.

There are plenty of novices out there who do want to cut their own sites - as witnessed by the sales of premium themes.

Headway, Thesis, Builder et al are all trying to make that easier for them whilst also still giving power to the hardcore developers.

What is the alternative? Pick apart and customise a free theme? For a novice? Probably not.

Nope. If you're a novice who wants to use WordPress (and that's key here), wants to make your own theme without having to become a coding ninja, but is willing to learn a little bit about the backend of themes, then grab Headway or Thesis, or Builder etc - they are made for you.

Hi Danny,

You make a very good point about support. Support tends to be very good with the framework themes. Generally speaking, there is little to no support with free themes. Plus support for themes from themeforest is patchy (depends on the designer).

I purchased the developer license of Headway last year and built a few sites with it, so I know that framework well. The visual editor was easy to use, however I must admit headway complicates a lot of things. I'm so used to just manually editing templates myself but many things had to be copied from page to page using the visual editor, which was a real pain.

Perhaps this is because I am used to editing code myself and don't know the framework inside out. A beginner may not have this problem.

Interesting post, and raises some great points. However, as a non-designer or developer and just a "simple blogger", I'd have to disagree that frameworks aren't for ordinary WordPress users.

Yes, there are a ton of great free, ready-built templates out there, but you tend to find support for them is very lacking (which, fair enough, they're free - but if you get stuck on something, good luck!).

You're also limited to the design of a standard template - one sidebar, two sidebars, no custom header, same design as everyone else, etc.

With a framework, you can really go to town and separate your blog look from everyone else's. I use Headway (previously Thesis, but the coding aspect of it sucked for a non-tech guy like me) and although I now use some CSS, I managed to get a great (and different) looking site up with just the basic Visual Editor. With my new use of CSS (something that was a pain in the ass with previous themes), people have mentioned how the design stands out from others.

At the end of the day, you get what you pay for. If you're running a business, you wouldn't go for the quick fix cheap-and-easy approach - why would you do that if you're serious about blogging?

Even if you're not serious about blogging, frameworks can still offer great benefits. I'm mainly talking about Headway here. My wife is a sometimes blogger, but she loves how she can mix things up with no coding. A couple of clients also love the flexibility of the theme, and they're technophobes.

What's interesting about Nicholas Cardot's point is that he's heavily pushing Elegant Themes at the minute, so perhaps (only perhaps!) there's a slight bias against any other theme? ;-)

Points are all well-taken. Thesis has enormous power if, and only if, you know how to use it. BUT....

You read all over online that newbies should get Thesis. And, interestingly, a fair number (by NO means all!) of those recommending it are also those who make their living by designing for Thesis. Downright incestuousThe newbies don't know that, they find out, and are stuck. Rock + hard place and so forth.

Not just my opinion. Follow #thesiswp for awhile, and the evidence is there

If the purpose of getting a framework is to limit your blog's design range to a few factors, because your interests lie elsewhere, then a framework makes sense. Then you'll live with the menu of customizations given to you, and not have time to be curious beyond it. But what a newcomer to WordPress (such as myself) needs is to begin the learning curve, the sooner the better. It's easy to think a framework will ease that transition, but all it does is postpone it, since the frameworks have their own learning curve. I elaborate in a blog post: http://bit.ly/90EKbZ

Skins are something which are missing from the thesis and headway communities, so it's good to hear that Headway is releasing some.

All of the thesis skins I have seen though have cost in excess of $50. When you add this to the cost of the thesis framework itself it makes it quite expensive for a design. Another few hundred dollars and you could get a custom design created somewhere.

I think that novices can still get a lot of use out of a theme framework - and even make it look better than the standard output - with a little help from an active community. I know that for themes like Thesis and Headway, the user communities are incredibly active, and you can find a code snippet or someone willing to explain it to you for nearly anything you want to do. So while they may not be able to do it "by themselves", I think that with the support of forums, tutorial sites, etc. the average or novice WordPress user can really get a lot out of these theme frameworks. Headway is also now offering skins to help users get up & running even faster - some are paid, some are free, so it may be an additional investment, but the benefit is that with a framework, they can add a sidebar, or customize a page template, whenever they want - without paying a designer or developer on an hourly basis to make simple changes.