Should I get Headway theme, or visual builder style plugin?
Hi guys,
Currently i have Thesis, but it's too advanced to code my layout. Don't get me wrong, I can get in there, figure out stuff and make changes, but I want a visual designer. I like the idea of being able to design a page, for instance, that has a large full-width box, then a thinner full width box, then my blog with left and right sidebars. For example.
Thesis isn't even designed to have more than one sidebar. And I've heard there's better support for Headway. Actually apart from a couple of fans in the forum there is no support.
But, I don't want to sacrifice the speed that Thesis gives me
Currently Thesis has 4 CSS files which they combine together into one. Although I can use a plugin to combine CSS and JS which would also be a benefit with any scripts for extra plugins. I guess this would have the same effect and maybe even better as i would still have had to get the plugin.
The other thing is their blocks I believe mostly add their code to the existing code base whereas I've read that Headways blocks are similar to plugins.
And Thesis uses CSS variables which reduces the amount of code. Because of all this their CSS is something like 16kb whereas the demo site came up around 50-60kb...
I ran a pingdom test on the official Headway and Thesis demos and there was a 2 second difference and the requests went from 7 for Thesis to about 26 for Headway although it looks like a couple of them were exras like analytics.
If I use a plugin like Visual Composer, then I'm limited to the layout I have in Thesis. Unless maybe I can create just a dummy blank template and do my design in something like Visual Composer but that probably wouldn't work either.
What are your thoughts?
Thanks!
Jason
Do you think Headway would be faster, slower, or about the same?
Currently i have Thesis, but it's too advanced to code my layout. Don't get me wrong, I can get in there, figure out stuff and make changes, but I want a visual designer. I like the idea of being able to design a page, for instance, that has a large full-width box, then a thinner full width box, then my blog with left and right sidebars. For example.
Thesis isn't even designed to have more than one sidebar. And I've heard there's better support for Headway. Actually apart from a couple of fans in the forum there is no support.
But, I don't want to sacrifice the speed that Thesis gives me
Currently Thesis has 4 CSS files which they combine together into one. Although I can use a plugin to combine CSS and JS which would also be a benefit with any scripts for extra plugins. I guess this would have the same effect and maybe even better as i would still have had to get the plugin.The other thing is their blocks I believe mostly add their code to the existing code base whereas I've read that Headways blocks are similar to plugins.
And Thesis uses CSS variables which reduces the amount of code. Because of all this their CSS is something like 16kb whereas the demo site came up around 50-60kb...
I ran a pingdom test on the official Headway and Thesis demos and there was a 2 second difference and the requests went from 7 for Thesis to about 26 for Headway although it looks like a couple of them were exras like analytics.
If I use a plugin like Visual Composer, then I'm limited to the layout I have in Thesis. Unless maybe I can create just a dummy blank template and do my design in something like Visual Composer but that probably wouldn't work either.
What are your thoughts?
Thanks!
Jason
Do you think Headway would be faster, slower, or about the same?