Recommended Resources

We have put together what we think are the best resources for new and seasoned bloggers looking to take their blogs to the next level. We have put together a list of resources for:

  • Email Marketing
  • Web Hosts
  • Recommended Blogs
  • Stat Tracking Tools
  • Advertising Programs
  • Photo Sharing
  • Social Media Marketing

If you believe we should add a resource to our list, please let us know in the comments.
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Professional Web Hosting

Have you ever had to deal with a poorly managed hosting provider? The kind that has your servers crashing, or maybe even causing you to lose data?

Losing data (your blog posts and design) is a nightmare that many bloggers have. Commonly, servers will crash in mid-step when making changes to your blog. This will undoubtedly cause you, or your webmaster, to have a throbbing headache. Knowing that server crashes and data corruption is a problem, you’ll want to do something about it.

We’ve worked with almost every major hosting provider out there over the last couple years, and have learned quite a bit when it comes to identifying the strengths and weaknesses of blog hosting.

Here is a list of five things that Unique Blog Designs looks for when working with a hosting provider:

  1. Daily data backups
  2. Great customer service – both on the phone, and via email
  3. WordPress support and “one-click” installations
  4. Great bandwidth and robust server response
  5. Easy to use admin panel (C-Panel or Plesk)

To be honest, there is only one provider that we recommend for WordPress users. That would be Bluehost!

Bluehost has all five of the characteristics outlined above, and they are extremely inexpensive when it comes to pricing, too. We strongly recommend that you migrate to BlueHost, if you want to make things easy on yourself!


Are you a designer or developer?

Unique Blog Designs is calling on all blog designers and developers for partnership!

Partnership? Yes, you read correctly, Unique Blog Designs is actively looking for the best blog designers and developers to submit their work for cash prizes.

Submit your name and email address below to be invited to work on our upcoming projects:


UBD Developer Updates

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WordPress News

Announcing the arrival of the much anticipated WordPress 2.8!

What’s new in WordPress 2.8?

  • New drag-and-drop widgets admin interface and new widgets API
  • Syntax highlighting and function lookup built into plugin and theme editors
  • Browse the theme directory and install themes from the admin
  • Allow the dashboard widgets to be arranged in up to four columns
  • Allow configuring the number of items to show on management pages with an option in Screen Options
  • Support timezones and automatic daylight savings time adjustment
  • Support IIS 7.0 URL Rewrite Module
  • Faster loading of admin pages via script compression and concatenation

The release of 2.8 has many people in the blogosphere excited… But Why?

WordPress 2.8 looks very similar to 2.7 but the developers have really listened to what the community has been asking for, by making it faster to use and improving the ability to incorporate widgets, video and last but not least, easily select different themes!

That’s right, now you can browse a library of free themes directly from the WordPress Dashboard, and install it from there as well.

One of my favorite improvements in the 2.8 update, is the complete re-design of the widget interface. You can now drag and drop widgets and save there settings all in the Wordpress dashboard. This should cure most of the difficulty installing widgets.

To learn more about Wordpress 2.8 update you can visit the Wordpress.org development blog.

Here’s a quick video overview of everything in the new release:


Download Money Theme for free.

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New Themes

Unique Blog Designs announces NEW WordPress theme store, with a twist! We are “dropping the bomb,” so to speak, on THEME WARS!

The goal of Theme Wars is to build a bridge between the brightest design minds in the WordPress field, and connect them with WordPress users who want amazing themes.

We have enlisted the help of the WordPress development community to get the site going, and hope to make a big impact in the world of WordPress.

Sign up below to receive a special 15% off code upon the launch of the site!

Theme Wars will be launching Tuesday, July 21, 2009.


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Affiliate News

First of all, we’d like to say thank you, to all of our current affiliates who are working hard and helping people create effective landing pages and affiliate sites!

Right now, you can sign up for Affiliate Theme affiliate program and start making money today! Our affiliate theme program highlights:

  • 30% commissions payouts (anywhere from $30-$60 per sale)
  • 60-day return cookies
  • UBD designed banners, swipe files, and text links that are optimized for conversion
  • An amazing resource center full of video and written tutorials, and podcasts with some of the top internet marketers including Yaro Starak, Jeremy “Shoemoney” Schoemaker, John Chow and many, many more…
  • Full affiliate support with our support forum managed by Unique Blog Designs and other successful affiliate marketers