This week has flown by! It’s already Friday of my first week out here at the Headway World Headquarters, and we’ve made tons of progress! We’ve pushed out a survey to the community, an important bug fix release (which included several security fixes as well as big hitting features the community loves). We’re also working on the next major version of Headway, which I can finally say will be 3.0. We’ve been roughly working on this since January (maybe even a little before!) and are almost to a point of being able to get a beta out into developer customers hands. Clay has been pounding away at this release and still get out new features and bug fixes throughout the year as we’ve needed it. It’s a very exciting time here at Headway and I’m super excited that Clay and Grant have brought me on.

This week has been filled with Headway related things, whether it’s working with the guys on Headway things, or emailing and working with clients to get their sites up and going so that can get to making money with their businesses. I don’t think I’ve ever had a job as fun as this! I can’t wait to see what the next couple of months bring me!!

Speaking of next couple of months…Are you in need of some WordPress work done? I’m currently scheduling clients for September and October. If you or someone you know is looking for some WordPress work, or are looking to create a new site, Contact me over at my business site, SurfCubes. You can also check out the services page to see what types of things I’m currently offering. And if that wasn’t enough, I’ll be announcing a deal for the last couple of weeks in August and ALL of September to get you started with your own site. Be on the lookout for that soon!

What is the site you might ask? Great question! Headway Toolbox is going to cover all things Headway and WordPress! We’re going to start with a Headway Bootcamp, where you will be able to learn about all things Headway. Over the course of 3 days, you’ll be learning everything there is about Headway to get your blood pumping for the new year! Best part of it all? You get 8 hours of training for just $20.00 bucks!! Can’t beat that!

Some people have asked what it will cover, so I thought I’d take a few minutes to let you know! Just a taste of things it will cover will be Using the Visual Editor, Understanding Headway Settings, Creating Templates for fast page creation, Using Custom CSS, Using the Leaf API, Using the Skin API and More! If you have specific questions throw them in the comments below and I’ll make sure I get them answered.

Headway Bootcamp is just the start of the Headway Themes Toolbox though. Over the next couple of weeks we’ll be launching the full site and scheduling some more webinars for you as well as getting up some free content up as well. So make sure you signup to receive updates about Headway Themes Toolbox.

In your Header file you need to add this:

[php]<?php wp_enqueue_script( ‘jquery’ ); ?>
<?php wp_head(); ?>[/php]

Then you need to add the following to your functions.php file:

[php]function load_jquery_google() {
wp_deregister_script( ‘jquery’ );
wp_register_script(‘ jquery’, ‘http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4/jquery.min.js’);
}
add_action(‘init’, ‘load_jquery_google’);[/php]

Feel free to change my function name with whatever you want to use.

Now the only thing you have to do is call your javascript using the no-conflic mode. Basically instead of using the $ shortcode you would do this:

[js]jQuery(document).ready(function({
// you code here
});[/js]

Hopefully this was useful for you!

This screencast runs about 19 minutes in length. I hope you enjoy!!

What I found though was a package from Automattic containing all sorts of WordPress goodies. The thing I found the coolest however was the certificate that Matt and the gang included. If you don’t get the “joke” behind it, I encourage you to read up on the debate and watch this video over on Mixergy. There’s a part in there where Chris says,

I’ve done great things with WordPress since 2006. I have been arguably one of the top three most important figures in the history of WordPress. You, Mark Jaquith, and myself, are the three people that I am talking about.

It’s pretty interesting to listen to if you haven’t heard it already. Either way a big thanks goes out to Matt and the team at Automattic for sending a bunch of these out to people. I’m sure like myself they are??grateful??for their leadership in developing a quality project.

In the package you’ll notice that it contained a T-Shirt (it’s long-sleeved). Unfortunately the shirt that I got was a Large and I need an XL. So I’m going to give it away here completely FREE! It’s a little tricky though because you can only apply if you need a large shirt. What you need to do is this, comment on this post about what your favorite feature is in WordPress 3.0. You can include a link to a screencast (you can use Jing!), or a story. The more creative the better chance you have at winning. You will have until the Tuesday Sept. 7th at Noon EST to get in the running. I’ll then choose a winner and contact them directly to get their address to send it to them. ??Good luck!

Headway has this awesome feature called a Visual Editor. It allows you to click on the area you would like to change some CSS properties of and change them very easily. Like I said, it’s great for the DIYer. There are a lot of other awesome features that Headway has but I won’t touch of them in this post. I want to touch on an issue that has been bothering me for the past few weeks.

There are people in the Headway community that do not understand CSS, PHP, or even how WordPress works. They people who started off as a DIYer to create their own site, but they’ve started taking it one step further. They are starting to charge clients to build sites on WordPress and Headway. These sites are all ordinary, cookie cutter sites that their clients could do themselves with the use of the Visual Editor.

Let’s take a moment so everyone understands what I just said. People that charge clients for sites designed with just the Visual Editor is wrong. They are NOT designers. They don’t understand basic web standards, how the site is going to look in various browsers, or how code works. What gets me is the fact that they charge almost just as much as real designers.

Where does the problem lie? Well it could start with the developers of Headway. Ultimately they are in the business of making money and so they are going to create a quality product that meets the need of their customers. But why do you want to display the same cookie cutter sites as quality examples of sites designed with the Headway theme? Is this because real designers haven’t used Headway to design sites? Is this because you aren’t going after the designers but you’re going after the DIY crowd?

Update: After thinking about this in greater detail I decided to rewrite the above part. We as in the Headway community should be highlighting what can be done with Headway and educating other Headway developers so that Headway sites are not cookie cutter sites. I would think as a Headway developer you would want to try new things with the theme. Clients are going to ask for things that the Visual Editor just can’t do and those developers are going to need to understand that it can still be achieved with CSS and PHP.

How can we fix it? There’s good news though. We can fix this. Instead of highlighting the cookie cutter sites, let’s highlight the great works that people have created. Let’s show the WordPress and Headway communities what can be created with Headway if you go above and beyond just using the Visual Editor.

Please stay tuned for next week when we take a look at creating a child theme. And don’t forget, if there’s something you’d like to know more about, please comment below.

Code

Below is code from the screencast.

.htaccess file

User’s Conf file

And without further ado, here is the first video of the series.

[wpvideo BQtfIEY1]

Now if you haven’t already went and updated your WordPress install, you should go do it now!