When I started blogging back in early 2006, blogging was something I just did for fun.   I found it was a good way to interact with others on ideas and topics that were important to me.  Unfortunately, after a year of spending money out of my own pocket to cover hosting and other blog expenses, I knew something had to change in order for me to keep blogging.  At that point I set out to monetize my blog with the intention of having it at least cover my monthly operating expenses.

Since then things have taken off for me and I’ve been fortunate to expand my reach and have a few websites which cover topics that are important to me.   You all know about this website, WordPress Hacks, where I write about my love for WordPress, but what you probably don’t know is that my primary website is actually a website which focuses exclusively on Celiac Disease.

I have been very fortunate to have Celiac-Disease.com really grow over the past year and it got to the point where I felt that I needed to continue that momentum with a new and completely custom blog design.   Blogging in the medical profession requires trust and the combination of a category-killer domain name with a completely custom design.   Once I’d decided to outsource the custom design and contemplating which designers to work with, I decided to go with the team over at Unique Blog Designs.

I’ve gotten to know a few of UBD’s designers over the past couple years and have heard nothing but great things about them from their past clients.  The only complaint I had ever heard was something along the lines of “all their themes look the same”, but what people fail to understand is that internet websites have design trends and people generally want the same things that successful websites are using.   UBD works with a number of very successful bloggers, so the styles will be similar, but they are always customized to that users needs.

While I was going through the design process, they took my ideas and ran with them, creating what I feel is an incredible design, and they were able to make happen pretty much anything I came up with happen.  As a result, I feel like this is my own personal custom blog design, even though I worked with the UBD team to have my vision created. To see some of the designs UBD has done in the past, check out their recent clients page.

For your reference, here is how Celiac-Disease.com looked before the transition (you’ll notice it is a modified version of the theme I use here at WPHacks.com):

And here is how Celiac-Disease.com looks now that the new unique blog design is live:

New Celiac-Disease.com Homepage

Note: If you notice some similarities between the before and after pictures, that is because I specifically requested that they use the same general setup as was previously used on the website when building the core setup of the unique design.

If you’ve been considering generating new interest in your website by getting a custom theme design, there is a fairly standard process that UBD follows (and in my experience, most custom design companies I’ve worked with follow this process as well):

How the process works:

1. Once you’ve hired Unique Blog Designs to build you a custom theme and gotten the paperwork out of the way (which includes a questionnaire designed to get a feel for what you are looking for), you’ll have your initial consultation where you can discuss what features and design elements you are looking for.
2. After your initial consultation is completed, you’ll get in contact with a designer who will present you with the first draft of your new blog design, which is constructed based upon your interview and questionnaire answers.  This gives you a chance to share your thoughts on the design, what things you’d like to change, etc.  Depending on the package you purchased, this will continue for a few more drafts, until you are satisfied with the design.
3. Once you’ve got a design you are happy with, the final step is to code your unique blog design into WordPress and have it installed on your website for you.

That’s it!  Just make sure you aren’t in a hurry, as the entire process can take at least 30 days, and often longer depending on how many drafts you need before you are happy with your unique blog design.

Overall Impressions:

Through the relationships I’ve built running this website and being an active member of the WordPress community, I’ve had the chance to work with a number of great people.  I am pleased that I can now add the Unique Blog Designs team to that list!  The entire process was very professional and the results speak for themselves (in my opinion).  The final design was exactly what I had originally envisioned and includes all of the functionality that is needed for that website to continue to grow and expand its reach.

There is definitely a very good chance I will find myself working with Unique Blog Designs on another custom design for one of my websites in the future, and I would gladly recommend them to others who need to give their website a fresh or more professional design.  Just make sure to allow a good amount of time!

Over the past week we’ve had a good response from the affiliate marketing topics we’ve covered, so I wanted to draw your attention to what I’m now using to build my affiliate marketing landing pages with WordPress.

In the past I’ve gotten to work with Unique Blog Designs and have always enjoyed their work, so I have to admit I was excited when I saw that they have released some new affiliate landing pages for WordPress.   This new theme package, known as the Affiliate Theme, is an affiliate marketers dream!

With the purchase of this premium WordPress theme you get 6 different landing pages, 30 different header graphics built into the affiliate landing pages, and lifetime theme support.

Here are the features listed by the creators of the Affiliate Theme:

• Choose From 6 Layouts to Improve Conversion – If you are an experienced affiliate marketer, you are probably familiar with manually updating multiple layouts in order to split test your affiliate landing pages. With WordPress, it is easy for you to input all of your affiliate offers and tracking URL’s and then easily change the layout for the purpose of split testing. We have built six (6) effective multi-post layouts. Say goodbye to the days of wasting time re-creating variations of the same landing page, review site, or blog. Save time (and money).  This theme would also work brilliantly with the LP Jumper plugin.
• Optimized for your PPC and SEO Campaigns – Once you have set up Affiliate Theme, driving targeted traffic is, of course, the next step. That is why we coded Affiliate Theme to improve the SEO (search engine optimization) over the standard WordPress theme. You write the headlines and page copy, Affiliate Theme takes care of the rest! Proper use of header, alt, title and META tags can go a long way in improving your search engine ranking and quality score. Also, save time by integrating tracking scripts from the Theme Options panel.
• Built-in Color Picker (Perfect for every niche) – Our advanced “Photoshop-like” color picker makes it easy for you to change Affiliate Theme to any color scheme you want! Red for dating? Blue for web hosting? You will be amazed at how effortlessly you can rebrand your Affiliate Theme. You can change the color of everything from post headlines to button rollovers and site background.
• Lifetime Access to Resource Center and Support – Need help using Affiliate Theme? Excellent! Watch over a dozen video tutorials, browse and search through our extensive knowledge base, and even post your questions to the Affiliate Theme support forum. Watch tutorials and read articles on everything from how to use Affiliate Theme to creating specific types of affiliate websites.
• Need to test more? Change everything you need – Want to try a larger call-to-action button? How about changing the size of the product image? Button color? Font-size? Keywords in the title? Don’t worry about going back to Photoshop or hacking code to change any of that – Affiliate Theme allows you to change all of this and more! We wanted to make it as easy as possible for you to build dynamic sites that require no skill to modify.
• Hate coding? No problem. Love it? Great – Coding newbies, rejoice! You will be able to take full advantage of the powerful Affiliate Theme Options Panel, allowing you to change the layout, logo, colors, fonts, background, header graphic, even rollover button color – all without touching a single line of code. If you are a code-head, you will Dig the clean XHTML + CSS + PHP, fully commented source code. We even have put together an advanced customization guide for people who want to get extra friendly with Affiliate Theme.

Pretty much everything is done for you, allowing you to avoid touching code and giving you the ability to create an affiliate landing page using WordPress in under 5 minutes!    Here is the control panel so you can see what I’m talking about:

And here are a few of the templates which are included with the Affiliate Theme:

Affiliate Theme (Dating Version)

Affiliate Theme (Ringtone Version)

Affiliate Theme (Make Money Version)

Affiliate Theme (Acai Berry Version)

You can view the live demos of each of these landing page themes here.

My favorite part when I learned of this new affiliate theme was the price.   You have the following three purchase options: Single-Use ($97.00), Multiple-Use ($147.00), or the Developer’s Pack ($197.00).

If you’d like to learn more about the Affiliate theme, or are interested in purchasing a copy for your affiliate landing pages, you can get additional information here.

Funny enough, just a few days after Brian Gardner released his first exclusive theme (moving a portion of his business model more towards a custom blog design), Unique Blog Designs (who is known for custom designs) released their first premium WordPress theme known as the Citrus theme.

So, does this new theme live up to the great reputation Unique Blog Designs has earned itself?   For a first premium theme, I have to say yes.   Here are the features you get with Citrus theme:

• 6 Colors – Pink, Light Orange, Green, Red, Blue, and Dark Orange.
• Advertising Management including 125×125 Ad Blocks
• Two unique layouts – a “landing-style” news page and a two-column “blog-style” interior page.
• Change your theme’s color, layout, featured posts, and advertising – all without touching a single line of code.
• Clean, lightweight code means fast loading times.
• Extensive support resources available.
• Search engine optimized, out of the box.

Here are some screen shots of the lime green version (my favorite):

Citrus Theme Homepage

Citrus Theme Post Page

As with many of UBD’s themes, the comment section is by far my favorite part of the theme, but the flexibility of different homepages and great design also make this theme very appealing.

If you are wondering about pricing, it looks like UBD has gone with a VERY competitive pricing setup.   The prices are: Single-Use ($79.00), Multiple-Use ($99.00), and Developer’s Pack ($149.00).    As you can see, the single-use package is competitively priced, but for only $20.00 more you get multple uses of the theme (including all of its color combinations), and for about double the single price you can get the developer’s pack.

Check out the new Citrus Theme.