About Nate Whitehill
Hey everyone, my name is Nate Whitehill and I have been blogging and involved with social media
since January of 2007.
In August of 2007, I co-founded Unique
Blog Designs (UBD).
We launched our business with the redesign of John Chow and Jeremy
Schoemaker (Shoemoney) - who are two of the top 100 bloggers in
the world.
My business partners, Matt and Josh, and I now operate
UBD as a full-time blog design and marketing operation. To date, we have worked
with over 500 clients including enterprise clients such as Yahoo!, MySpace, and Nike.
Read more »
Ooh the simplicity. I thought you would have hyped-up the fact you did John’s theme
That really is awesome! I love the design of the Unique Blog Designs site, it’s slick and stylized – very visually appealing!
John’s new site looks very clean too!
I agree. I’m sure you’re going to get lots of signups for new designs. It might new wave of JC followers to get a fresh look by changing their misty themes.
me included. haha
Again Nate, great job. Here’s to all the success you deserve.
Great job on John Chow.
I can see that the first post both here and on John’s site is barely above the fold, depending on the resolution it takes a scroll down. Do you think this above the fold thing is overrated, regarding the first post?
That’s hot! Need to get me one now
Looks fabulous!
I honestly do not like the way your site (and now John’s) have so much stuffed right on top. I can’t even see the first post when I come to the site!!!
Most web browsing folks are still using 1024×768 max. With that screen setting all I see is a header and a bunch of ads. That makes me go elsewhere.
Exactly. Not a big fan of this top part.
But the other are excellent. Especially, they are great on John’s blog than over here,
The ‘average’ size tracked across my sites is 1280×1024, followed by 1280×800, then closely behind, 1024×768. I myself am running a 22″ 1680×1050.
These days if you haven’t got 19″ or more – it’s safe to EXPECT trouble…
I think you have a very distinct design aesthetic, Nate. I think it’s very professional without being to stuffy. They are strong headers to be sure but I think that these days someone like John Chow has a lot of different items that he has to promote and your header gets the job done admirably.
The only thing that I think about John’s site (and this is not not something to do with your design) is that he shows so many posts on the front page that I rarely scroll down to the absolute bottom of the site. And therefore I miss the footer completely. But it certainly is a nice footer.
Having your design on such a high profile site is going to just keep giving and giving. Considering the advertisers are paying $500 a month I think you just made many thousands of dollars on promotion for your business and it will just keep bringing in traffic day after day.
Unique Blog Designs is going to flourish, get ready for it.
I agree your designs are very nicely done, they all fit tons of stuff into a blog without making it look cluttered. Also good job on doing Johns theme cause without it I may have never found your blog.
Awesome buddy, start getting ready for a lot of orders
You landed John Chow! That’s one way to get your name out there quickly.
Very nice work.
Nice Job. A bit busy up top, but those were most likely the specs given to you. You should be rolling in cheddar soon with work like this!
Nice job Nate!
john chow looks great. i love it
Great Job over at Chow’s
Great job man.
How much do you charge for a exclusive custom theme (not the $79 listed there)?
According to the site he charges $599 without hosting and consultation, and $699 with both.
- Sahil.
The design is nice, but I find the top fold very busy. I would have preferred a little more use of whitespace. But besides that nice work.
Nate congratulation!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Dude, the new Johnchow.com site looks super sweet!
Vary Naaaice, Haie Faaaaaaive!
ac
p.s. I’m excited to see what you are going to do with CarZi.com next
Haha – TechZi, too?
LOL!
This is a big pull. CONGRATS!
Without doubt excellent designs nate
I can’t say I’m very impressed with JohnChow.com. It’s a MAJOR clusterf–k up top and none of the ads go together at all. Perhaps rotating them or something.
But congrads on the new site and best of luck. I’m sure you’ll pull it off Nate, you always do.
Awesome site redesign over at johnchow’s site…!!!
They’ll be coming for you now Nate…
Great job Nate! Very clean and very appealing. Bout time John got a custom design! Now you’ll have to watch out for everyone trying to use that design so they can be like John Chow.
Congrats on getting John’s business, that should provide a pretty big boost to everyone involved..That being said I’m not a fan of all the ad placement…Looks a bit cluttered to me.
Hey Nate, great job on John’s design!
And congrats on launching UBD
Hmm, I bet this doesn’t thrill the buyer of the 468×80 “Custom Blog Designs” banner on this site since their banner is immediately followed by your post about “Unique Blog Designs”.
Matt, since the “buyer” of “Custom Blog Designs” and the developer of “Unique Blog Designs” are the same person (Nate) it’s probably no contest. (Either that or it’s win-win!)
Nate, I just enlarged the John Chow “recent example” under Design Services on your Unique Blog Designs website, and the so-called “posts” are simply HILARIOUS! I hope everyone catches that – it will be their chuckle for the day!
Oops, I didn’t realize that, thanks for pointing it out to me cbb.
Great job! I found it a bit busy up top. I know it only went down like 120pixels, but visually it seems busy. Maybe I’m just too used to seeing the old version. Definitely a more profitable design. In that regard kudos! Hope you can handle the new business you’ll no doubt get.
awsome job it looks amazing!
That design looks awesome!!
You’ll be getting lots of orders now. Get ready! Nice job on the design!
Great way to promote your biz Nate. That’s a pretty wild design, but it fits JC perfectly and that’s what’s important.
Nate- the site looks great. You’ve really found a good way to increase John’s ability to monetize the site while still keeping it functional. I hope you got a nice commission from the extra money he’s making from the new buttons.
In my opinion, the most important aspect when starting a site is to make sure it looks unique and also has a beautiful design. I believe in branding and uniqueness and it;s nice seeing more people have the same dream. excellent project. I’ll check back frequently to see what’s new. I don’t need design services since I make my designs, but it’s always good to see a well designed theme.
Definately made John Chow look like a pro now.
Agree the top is real busy though… you can’t see anything without scrolling down.
Looks really nice, shows you put alot of work on it
Cool site with great designs! Thanks for link
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Excellent design, but nate will you please let me know, i still have doubt, cz people are using themes from wordpress and getting more than pr 3 for their blogs as well as rankings, too. any special importance, i m curious to hear from you.
I agree with the above poster about John’s site – you don’t really need to scroll down to the bottom to find something you want to read. I guess he’s opted for the ‘magazine feel’ for his site; something I see becoming increasingly popular with blog sites and for good reason. I’m definitely thinking of changing my design very soon to comply with the idea of a magazine styled site. It’s just the way to go.
Unique indeed! How I wish this will be brought to the attention of those who are into web design. These blog designs are in fact far better than the other web sites I’ve seen before.