Vital For Virtual Real Estate Emporers, Sensational For Site Flippers And Ideal For Internet Marketers!
The WordPress Theme That’s Fun, Feature-Rich And Flexible!
WordPress is a wonderful platform for website builders, and for Google in particular it seems to be the virtual equivalent of a cake with an endless variety of tasty and unusual ingredients. Yet for those of us who need something adaptable enough to be served up quickly to the search engines on almost any occasion, and often with the minimum of notice, the icing on the cake can sometimes seem a little flawed.
Yes, we’re talking WordPress themes. These can make or break a site, and for search engines and surfers alike make the difference between encountering a flat and tasteless mass-produced sponge or an enticing confection that’s been specially created for the event.
However, with the right theme, it is possible to satisfy the surfers and feed the starving search-bots without spending hours slaving over a hot keyboard. As both a site seller (‘flipper’) and someone who builds and maintains a large number of my own WordPress sites, I’ve spent many hours trawling through themes in the hope of finding something that would fit the bill. For me, this would mean…
- A WordPress theme which made proper use of the HTML H1 tag, wrapping it around the page or post title instead of the blog title, which oddly is what’s usually done with it.
- A WordPress theme which demanded no editing of CSS or other theme files in order to change the site’s appearance. Not only would this make light work for me, but it would make life much easier for clients, thereby eliminating many support queries and freeing up even more of my time.
- A WordPress theme which would instead make use of custom fields whenever I was selling digital products, allowing me to quickly insert or edit a price just once, yet display it in several instances throughout the theme – on the post, on the front page, and in archives. I’d also be able to add a payment button next to the price on the post at the same time.
- A WordPress theme which would allow me to test the effect on surfers of different layouts – putting the navigation in the footer for example, using a variety of widgetized areas to test the placement of monetization links or experimenting with the number of sidebars.
- A WordPress theme which would include the image gallery and magazine layout that buyers of ‘flipped’ turnkey sites seem to expect as standard, yet allow me to begin some of my own sites by testing the traffic-attraction powers of various keywords with a simple, bare-bones ‘blog’ style configuration that can be prettied up once it’s confirmed that it’s getting an audience. Less time wasted on beautifying sites few are yet seeing means more time to spend on traffic building and promotion.
- A WordPress theme which would allow me to easily eliminate the sidebar on some pages, so that I can embed wider content. I’ve spent time in the past editing various theme templates to accommodate things such as an Amazon aStore, football league tables and Forex charts. This is time that could be put to better use elsewhere.
- A WordPress theme which included easy image management. Once an image was inserted in a post, it’s thumbnail would show up on the front page, in archives or wherever I wanted it to, without the need to create a custom field. Sites which relied on semi-automated plugins such as Amazon Autoposter for much of their output would then need far less time to maintain.
- A WordPress theme which allowed theme images to be uploaded from the WordPress admin, eliminating the need to mess around with FTP.
- A WordPress theme which allowed excerpt length as well as image and video thumbnail dimensions to be configured from the theme’s options page.
- A WordPress theme which showed only the date that the surfer was viewing the site, with none of the posts showing dates which would make their content seem like cyber-history two weeks after publication.
I’ve found a seemingly infinite number of bad themes during my search, and substantially fewer good ones. Some of these were very good, but all lacked at least one of the things that I felt I needed. It soon became clear to me that the WordPress fairy was not going to be waving her wand over my keyboard and giving me my ideal theme any time soon.
So I built my own.
Now available as the Abundance theme, it’s stark naked in it’s default form, but is readily capable of both the ‘bare bones’ configuration and the ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ look.
I’ve got my custom fields for price and payment buttons too, which makes creating WordPress sites that offer digital products that much easier, and editing and maintaining them even more so. I primarily use DownLoadGuard code inside my own payment button fields, but I’ve created sites for clients which use PayPal code in the field, as well as two sites which have used the payment button code from WHMCS (a system usually used in conjunction with hosting reseller accounts) in order to integrate it with WordPress. Furthermore, where a digital product had two options (e.g. a choice between PDF and video, or between personal use and resale rights) there are enough custom fields coded into the theme to cater for both. You can also display payment buttons and prices at the bottom of pages instead of posts, in which case your prices will not be shown on the home page or anywhere else on the site.
There are several widgetized areas available too – a widget bar which spans the full width of the central sheet, the Signup Box (traditionally where subscriber code goes, you can put anything you like there), two sidebars beneath it, a 468 x 60 banner area above and below the content area, a top bar with room for three widgets and a footer bar with room for four more, and on the posts pages, a 336 x 280 banner area inside the content on the top left.
Use of all these widgetized areas is optional as none of them have any default content. If there isn’t a widget dropped onto one, it won’t be displayed. Likewise with any of the theme’s featured areas – tick a box on the theme options page and the area will be displayed, leave the box empty and it won’t. The options page gives users the opportunity to easily edit the appearance of the theme without having to mess with any of the theme files and the first image that appears in every post is displayed on the front page and in archives without the need to create custom fields. This means that aside from the occasional addition of article content, sites which use additional plugins like Amazon Autoposter to generate affiliate posts can largely be left to look after themselves. Video thumbnails are also an option.
The latest version of Abundance is compatible with WordPress 3.0, allowing you to easily replace the theme’s horizontal menus with the new WordPress configurable menus. It’s also possible now to use flash in the header area if you want to.
In addition, there are page templates to expand the functionality of the theme still further. There’s the ratings page template, which gathers the top ten posts with the highest ratings (assigned using custom fields) and then lists the linked titles in order from the highest to the lowest, then there’s a ‘no sidebar’ template for wide embedded content, a squeeze/sales page template and a blog-style page template for the times when a magazine look isn’t appropriate.
There are also various other options too numerous to mention, all of which can help create a different look to each site every time. Show horizontal navigation menus above or below the header (or not at all), sidebars left or right, replace the default sidebar list-bullet image… the combinations are virtually endless and the possibilities almost unlimited.
In a nutshell, the Abundance theme was created to suit me and my way of working and to make life easier for clients. Would these things suit you or make life easier for your clients too?
- A Search Engine Optimized theme that makes proper use of the H1 tags?
- Extensive theme options which eliminate the need to edit theme files?
- Custom fields for easy insertion of prices and payment button codes?
- Simple image management to help make semi-automated sites more ‘automated’ than ‘semi’?
- Video thumbnails instead of images if you need them?
- Dateless posts that don’t immediately look like ‘yesterday’s news’?
- A theme that will display fancy headers, horizontal navigation, multiple sidebars, widgetized and featured areas, yet does not insist on it?
- An assortment of page templates – ratings, sidebar-less, sales/squeeze and blog – to add to your site’s functionality?
- Time freed up to make more money, play with the kids or snuggle up with your partner?
That all sounds very appealing, but there’s more. Purchase of the Abundance theme includes…
- An illustrated user guide
- ‘The Keys To Affiliate Profits’ – a 129 page guide to affiliate marketing by the late, great, Barry Richardson
- Favicon generation software to complete your site’s branding
- Free updates for the life of the theme
You can see the theme in action at abundancetheme.com where it demonstrates itself with short pieces about the various features, and also at the demo sites below, where the theme can be seen in a variety of configurations from basic to busy…
Discover an abundance of free time, an abundance of features and an abundance of opportunities to earn more money, more quickly. Choose one of the licensing options and hit the appropriate button below to buy now.
Select the Abundance single user licence to allow you to use the theme on any websites that personally own.
Price: $59.00
OR
Select the Abundance developer licence to allow you to include the theme with any websites that you sell.
Price: $129.00
You’re welcome to ask any questions via the contact form.