As if it wasn’t already feature-packed enough, the latest version of The Abundance Theme offers a facility for uploading theme images straight from the WordPress admin instead of via FTP. In addition, you can now use an image in the central sheet area, tiled across, down, both or not at all.

It’s no longer necessary to edit theme files in order to configure excerpts if the default configuration isn’t appropriate for your needs. Now you can define excerpt length as well as image or video thumbnail dimensions from the theme’s options page.

A ninth widgetized area has been added – this spans the full width of the central sheet and sits below the header and above the content.

It’s now possible to show a single left and right sidebar on either side of the content. Of course, you can still opt instead to show your sidebars on either the right or left if you prefer.

With a growing base of satisfied users, it’s not unusual to randomly encounter the Abundance theme strutting it’s stuff and posing in a variety of configurations on those WordPress websites lucky enough to have found it.

Now that it’s discovered video there’ll be no stopping it – watch as it demonstrates it’s widgetized areas, video thumbnails, page templates and more. It even goes as far as to expose something that most WordPress themes will keep under wraps until they’ve got to know the casual surfer better – the theme options page.

Totally shameless. No doubt there’ll be a sequel.

In contrast, the Abundance theme uses a simple script to draw the first image from each post and then re-sizes it – a major time saver if you’re using something like Amazon Autoposter, because it means that you don’t have to open and edit every post in order to add a custom field. If the script can’t find an image in the post, it then looks for a custom field and uses that instead. If it finds nothing, it simply displays nothing.

It takes a matter of minutes to do, and – preferably in combination with a little article content or something equally substantial – also makes a fast and easy way to produce an Amazon affiliate store using the output from a plugin such as Amazon Autoposter. Thumbnail images from such posts will automatically show on the site’s front page.

The Abundance theme recognises that sometimes a magazine is overkill, and allows you to publish the equivalent of an unillustrated pamphlet instead. It’s likely to be more profitable than just parking a domain – or worse, doing nothing with it – and doesn’t take much longer.

Gone is the need to repeatedly edit and upload CSS sheets until you’re either happy with the result or just prepared to settle for it – the color picker makes changes possible in seconds. This last is probably obvious, but what many website flippers fail to realise is that the little things that make life a bit easier for them will often make things a lot easier for their buyers. This in turn will make life easier for the website flipper – with less support requests from newer site owners asking how to FTP their stylesheets etc or desperately asking for help because they’ve overwritten parts of them, a startling increase productivity is possible.

It’s surprising how a seemingly minor feature can make a big difference to the bottom line.