Things have been very busy for us at Headway Themes. Clay and his team have been hard at work building the latest and greatest version of Headway. Today we are proud to announce the release of the long-awaited Headway 3.6.

Headway 3.6 is one of the largest releases since Headway 3.0. Headway 3.6 not only includes powerful new features, but we’ve taken a step back and found areas where we could optimize speed and areas where we could improve usability. We’re confident that you’ll enjoy Headway 3.6.

Thank you to all of those who participated in the Headway 3.6 beta! Without you, Headway wouldn’t be what it is today.

What’s new in Headway 3.6?

Headway Templates

The most important addition in Headway 3.6 is the Headway Template system. We understand not everyone wants to start from a blank canvas. Sometimes people want to switch fonts, change a few colors and start blogging.

We’re not stopping with the addition of Headway Template functionality. We’re also participating in the creation of Headway Templates. The official Headway Templates you see in Extend are only the beginning of the ones we have in the works. Look for more in the next week or so. We will continue to push out new Templates each and every month.

We’ve never been satisfied with our previous attempts at skin and child theme functionality, but we believe we’ve hit the nail on the head with Headway 3.6′s Template functionality. All Templates are .json files that fill in Headway Grid and Design Settings for you. This means you can edit every single part of a template using Headway! Try that with a child theme which locks you down to what another developer feels you should do.

Anyone can export Headway Templates straight from the Visual Editor. This is perfect if you want to transfer your design from one site to another, make a simple backup, or even share or sell your Templates. We are excited to see what the Headway Community creates with Headway Templates.

New Design Editor

After building out the new Headway Template’s system we felt the Design Editor was lacking in areas. We took another look at the Design Editor and we found many areas to improve on. To start with, we moved the Design Editor from the bottom of the Visual Editor to the right-side. This allows you to quickly navigate through elements and your customizations.

We have a few more surprises coming for the Visual Editor, but we did not want to delay this release so those will be coming out in a separate update.

New Blocks and Block Updates

We have a few new blocks that we’d like to introduce with version 3.6.

Social Block

The social block is a block that allows you to add the various social media networks’ icons to your site. Upload your own icons or select one of our predefined sets.

Image Block

We split the slider/image block into their own blocks. So with the image block it allows you to place images onto the Grid with ease.

Listings Block

Have you ever wanted to be able to list out post titles, custom post types, taxonomies, authors, etc.? Use the new Listings Block to allow you to do just that. Drag out a region on the Grid and select the Listings Block.

Content Block

Finally we have made some updates to the content block. If you are a long-time Headway user, you will be glad to know that you can now use the Content Block in Column Excerpts (called Small Excerpts in version 2.x). Column Excerpts allows you to select a number of columns as well as a number of posts you’d like the Content Block to display.

Upgrading to Headway 3.6

With the release of Headway 3.6 we moved away from our home-built e-commerce backend we called Surge to Pippin Williamson’s Easy Digital Downloads. While you will not feel much difference on your end, there is one inconvenience we simply could not avoid: you will need to update manually to 3.6. We have a clear and simple guide on how to re-install/upgrade Headway manually in our documentation.

Please accept our apologies for the extra time this requires. We know your time is valuable!  With that said, if you follow the instructions provided in the above link, the process of upgrading is safe and simple to accomplish.

Headway 3.6 is a remarkable release. It’s packed with features for everyone from the designer to the developer. We know you are going to love using Headway 3.6 as you start to build new sites, upgrade old sites, or just want to start tweaking a few things on your existing sites. To download your copy of Headway 3.6 visit the Headway Dashboard today.