I am on your membership site course which includes access to Headway or one of the other themes you offer. After watching your video I am pretty much sold on Headway. I was still in two minds until now. I think I would prefer to install from the 1.7 version so just wondering when it is due for release? Great post, thank you.

~Marcus

Thesis has some powerful features but not everything is controllable through the admin. Until v1.8 comes out you have to know CSS and HTML to even add a header image. Plus using a free plugin Thesis Openhook simplifies things, removing the much of the need to know basic PHP. That said I use it every day and know how it works and like it. But it just makes a few things too difficult for the average user, like adding a page template is a chore.

Headway has many more inbuilt controls for design and look and feel, and with the Visual editor (and now with inbuilt styles) and is much easier to change how it looks. Like any software though there is a learning curve on how to use it and what the options do, so it can be overwhelming at first (just like WordPress itself can be). It has custom CSS and hooks that can be used to have finer control and therefore completely customizable, but it may take some getting used to.

Hope that helps a little!