Headway Visual Editor not Loading in the Browser

This is one of the most common problems found in Headway theme, i.e., many people faced the same problem while loading their Visual Editor (VE) - it would either took forever to load the visual editor (you see the loading icon circling continuously) or freeze with no reason. If you are having the same problem with your visual editor, you might want to check the following list first before downgrading to lower version of Headway.

1. Check Your Web Hosting Server Configuration
   The first thing to check is the server configuration with your web hosting company. The minimum server requirement by Headway is to have PHP 5.2 or greater and MySQL is version 4 or greater so that the visual editor can run smoothly without hiccup.
   
2. Bad Installation
   If you click on visual editor and got the following error message, it could be due to bad installation.
   
   Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING, expecting T_OLD_FUNCTION or T_FUNCTION or T_VAR or '}' in /home/content/99/5630199/html/change/wp-content/themes/headway-209/library/visual-editor/visual-editor.php on line 8
   
   The best way to get rid of this error is to delete all your files and redo a fresh installation. If you are getting error message that you are having wordpress already installed, you need to clean up your database first as it contained previous information of your installation but do a backup of the database before doing so.
   
   Once you have done the backup, you can log in to your CPanel and go to Database > PhPMyAdmin and select the database for example “_wrdpl” to clean up. Make sure you select the right database if you have few databases in your PhPMyAdmin dashboard. Click on the database name on the left panel and you will see a list of files appear under the Table. Go to the bottom and click “Check All” to select all the files and select “Drop”. Click on “Go” button to proceed with the deletion.
   
   If this is too technical for you, seek help from your web hosting company.
   
3. Do Not Use Internet Explorer
   It is officially stated in the Headway Forum that the Headway visual editor is incompatible with Internet Explorer browser. If you are trying to load your visual editor in IE regardless which version, it would just freeze. So you have to use other browsers like Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari or other Linux browsers which are based on Gecko and WebKit engines.
   
4. Do Not Use Javascript in Header & Footer
   Try not to add in any javascript code in the header or footer, it is well known to cause visual editor to hang without any reason.
   
5. Plugin Conflicts
   Try to disable all your plugins first before loading your visual editor, if it works that means one of your plugins is causing the problem. From what I had experienced, I realized those copyrights or images protected plugins tend to cause this problem. A good example is WP-Copyright-Protection plugin, after I installed this plugin, I realized my visual editor started to behave abnormally. When I clicked on my visual editor, it was able to load immediately but all the visual editor interfaces and navigation bar would disappear. The left hand panel and top panel were blank but the URL showed that it was in the visual editor mode (?visual-editor=true).
   
   On second thought, it does make sense that all the visual editor navigation bars were not showing because the purpose of WP-Copyright-Protection is to protect the site by disabling all editing so that visitors are not able to copy the images or text from your site. However, it is not smart enough to recognize that the owner is trying to edit the site. As a result, it could be quite tedious as I have to deactivate this plugin every time I need to edit my site in visual editor mode.

Hopefully the above will give you some ideas as why your visual editor is not loading properly and how you can take the correct step to rectify the problems immediately without pulling your hair out.

You are welcome to leave a comment if you are facing similar problem with your Headway Visual Editor. Most importantly, tell us your solution if you have resolved the problem. Many thanks in advance!