Headway annoys me

I’ve had to help maintain a few blogs that were built on Headway and it’s unbelievably frustrating to work with. I’m sure there’s some great things about it if you spend the time to get to know the ins and outs of it, but it’s pretty annoying to work with.

Today I spent some time migrating a blog away from Headway, and realized it’s even more annoying that I thought. I was trying to move some SEO data (meta descriptions and titles) and hunting down where Headway stores data was frustrating.

Instead of storing the data for posts in ‘wp_post_meta’ or ‘wp_posts’ like one would expect, Headway creates a new option for each post in ‘wp_options’ and stores everything as a searialized array under that option. I’m sure there’s some explanation on why it’s done this way, but it’s frustrating to work with if you’re used to traditional WordPress standards.

Again, I’m sure there are great things about Headway. I know they’re successful and have a strong customer base, but I find it frustrating to work with, and can’t personally recommend using it.

Posted by Jason Bahl

Principal Software Engineer at WP Engine in Denver, CO. I love problem solving and working with WordPress. I'm the creator and maintainer of WPGraphQL. I'm passionate about Open Source software and the web. When I'm not writing code, you'll find me spending time with my beautiful wife Rachel and my 2 sons Andrew and Blake. I also enjoy playing and watching soccer.

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