Nate Whitehill dot ComStrategic Business Blogging & Internet Marketing

I was lucky to meet the founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, at Blog World Expo last year.

Matt is one of the founders of Automattic, the company that makes WordPress. I wrote an article over a year ago about how Matt was changing the web at age 21 with the massive popularity of WordPress as the bloggers’ platform of choice.

I first started using Wordpress back in November of 2006, almost two years ago. It is amazing how far WordPress has come in the past few years, both in regards to its software and how widely used it is being used. Major companies like Sony, General Electric, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal are now using WordPress for major sections of their websites. That’s quite the list of clients. Read More »

This article is a guest Post by Jon Waraas. Jon runs an affiliate marketing and SEO blog at www.jonwaraas.com.

Lets get some backlinks for your site so you can start ranking for that term you always wanted and make some cash money.

In this blog post, we will be going over a two different ways to gain backlinks such as blog comments and Wikipedia links. These two methods work the best for sites with less competitive keywords in Google, the reason is because it takes some work to get these links. Read More »

I made an announcement yesterday on the UBD blog that we just released our first premium Wordpress theme - the UBD Moneymaker Theme. The theme was developed in association with Phillip van Coller - an excellent blog designer. Phillip was the winner of our design contest back in April.

Perfect theme people who are not comfortable editing source code

If you are not comfortable editing source code, this is the perfect theme for you. All of the plugins are built into the theme and do not require separate installation. For example, we directly integrated the UBD Block Ad Plugin, so you can manage and rotate your 125×125 block ads without having to even install the plugin.

Excellent design, awesome functionality and FREE. We think you’ll like it.

Learn more here….

I am happy to announce that my long-time friend and business partner, Matt Blancarte, has unleashed a new design for his personal blog, Matt Blancarte dot Com. I have known Matt since we were juniors in high school, so it is cool to see his new brand materialize online.

Matt has been working with UBD since its August 2007 inception, but he has been blogging since July of 2007. Matt’s blog focuses mostly on design, business, and personal development. Matt just posted a detailed write-up on the process and functionality behind his new design.

In addition to being UBD’s lead designer, Matt will be speaking on the “Blog Design Makeover” this year at IZEA Fest, a convention for bloggers and online advertisers. IZEA Fest will be held on September 11-13, 2008 in Orlando, Florida. In addition to speaking at the event, UBD will also be exhibiting at the event with a booth.

Several other well-known bloggers will be speaking at the event including Jeremy Schoemaker, Loren Feldman of 1938 Media, John Chow, Neil Patel and Michael Brito, among many other famous faces.

Head on over to Matt’s blog and let him know what you think of the new design. Congratulations on the new redesign, Matt!

I wanted to make a formal announcement that our first Wordpress plugin has recently been released. It is called the UBD Block Ad Plugin and it allows you to manage, format, and automatically rotate your 125×125 block ads.

Block ads are the same ads you see on the right hand sidebar on sites just John Chow, Shoemoney, and TechCrunch.

This plugin is cool because it makes it much easier to manage your block ad inventory. You can edit and preview how the ads will look before they go live on your Iit is also widget-friendly. Best of all, this plugin is FREE for everyone to use and enjoy. You can see the plugin in action on my right sidebar.

UBD co-developed the plugin with Alex King, who is well known for being an original Wordpress contributor, as well as the plugin author of ShareThis, Twitter Tools, and Popularity Contest.

We will be releasing many more plugins in the future. Subscribe to the Newsletter (see the right sidebar of my blog) to stay up-to-date with all of our new new plugin, Wordpress theme, and blogging tool releases.

You can learn more about and download the UBD Block Ad Plugin by clicking here.

Thanks to Israel Lagares, aka Fat Man Unleashed, for sending me this awesome t-shirt.

Israel started Fat Man Unleashed in May of 2007 - a few months after I started my blog (January of 2007). UBD redesigned Fat Man Unleashed in October of 2007. Back then, FMU had only around 400 RSS subscribers. Today, Fat Man Unleashed has nearly 4000 readers! Talk about an online success story!

Israel recently started a social voting site specifically tailored to the health community called HealthRanker. HealthRanker has received mentions on many top blogs and is quickly becoming an authority in the social media circle.

Congratulations goes to Israel for creating two very popular and highly-trafficked websites! Make sure to check out Fat Man Unleashed and HealthRanker.

P.S. - The UBD Block Ad Plugin is here!

I wanted to make a few quick announcements. First of all, my team and I have been hard at work redesigning the UBD site and fully integrating it into Wordpress. I am happy to announce that this is now complete - our new company website runs off a single installation of Wordpress.

Wordpress serves as a great platform for not just blog content, but showcasing a portfolio, an e-commerce store, or even a forum. In the next few months, UBD will be releasing premium Wordpress plugins, tools and themes that will help YOU use your blog more effectively.

Our First Wordpress Plugin

This Friday (June 13th), UBD will be releasing its first Wordpress plugin co-developed with the renowned Wordpress developer, Alex King. Alex is one of the original contributing developers to Wordpress and has authored many popular Wordpress plugins, including ShareThis, Twitter Tools, and Popularity Contest.

We will also be releasing a free theme within the next week from the UBD design contest winner, Phillip van Coller.