[Legal] Copyright on recipes

I thought this pdf might be useful for food bloggers troubled by the ins and outs of recipe copyright as we sometimes are at Tomato. It's for Australia but the principles should apply to most countries. We all are influenced by various chefs and cookbooks and it may clear up some confusion (or make it worse)
The important thing is that you can't copy a recipe from another site or book (unless perhaps its creative commons) without permission. However, if the recipe is generic or very simple it is unlikely that copyright can be infringed.

(Blogger) IE View Issues?

Had a question re: my blog the other day and while helping me out with the answer, two fellow food bloggers noted that when they view my blog in IE, my right sidebar is at the very bottom, as opposed to on the right side of my posts. Anyone have any idea how to fix this so it view properly?


This post was written by Sweetnicks from Sweetnicks

[calendar] august turns to september

It's the end of August, which means it's time to turn the page on my calendar to September! Lots of events happening in the next week or so. I have as many as I could find in my sidebar at the delicious life, but here are a few reminders...

First off, just this past Monday, August 29 - Dine and Dish no. 4 rounded up with a whole team of Rachael Rays around the world showing off what their cities have to offer for $40 a day. Thank you to D&D's first celebrity host, Sam of Becks n Posh for the creative idea and the awesome roundup! Dine and Dish no. 5 will be announced this week over at The Delicious Life, so stay tuned...

Today, Wednesday August 31, is the end of the month, so it's time for EotMEoTE no 10. Jeanne from Cook, Sister! has...
challenged us cats
to put on our hats
and cook and post
about eggs on toast!

Today is also World Blog Day 2005. Just a good chance to show off five blogs that are different from you that you like!

In case you didn't know, Is My Blog Burning (the site) has been re-designed and re-purposed. The official re-launch of the site is tomorrow, Thursday September 1, 2005, but you can take a peek now. And remember all those launch parties we used to have in the Bay area waaay back when the internet was popping?! We're having an IMBB.com launch party...Friday, September 2, 2005. It's BYOB - bring your own BEER, baby!!

Friday September 2, 2005 is also the official "Go!" from Owen at Tomatilla for Paper Chef Battle 11. There are some crazy ingredients this time. I nominated very small fish :)

Monday may be the Labor Day holiday, but that doesn't mean a short work week excuses you from Wine Blogging Wednesday, September 7, 2005! This month, Clotilde from Chocolate and Zucchini would like to drink like wine for chocolate!

It's a little ways off after that until Sugar High Friday, September 16, 2005 - Elise from Simply Recipes hosts the dessert buffet of custards!

And keep your eyes and vegetables peeled for the next Is My Blog Burning? no. 19 (though Clement sure has a lot of summarizing still left to do from no. 17 tasteTea, and Linda from At Our Table is still rounding up no. 18 Summer's Flying, Let's Get Frying!)


This post was written by Sarah from the delicious life

[Domain Names]

Hey everyone:

I've been reading many posts here that reference buying a domain name, at least obliquely. I'm thinking about buying one (mostly because everyone over 35 looks at me blankly when I say the "blogspot" part of my address), but I don't know how, where, or for how much. Any words of advice?


This post was written by Shauna from Gluten-free Girl

[Comment code]

I've found that when I post comments to people running Moveable Type I often end up with a "Page cannot be displayed" error. I use IE as my browser. Has anyone else noticed such a problem?

This post was written by Kevin from Seriously Good

(Misc) After Buying a Domain Name...

I broke down and bought my domain name last week (www.sweetnicks.com) and set it up so if someone types that in, it will automatically forward to my blog. Easy enough. The problem is that if you go to my domain name, and then go to the links on my side bar for other blogs, when you navigate to them, it will still show my URL in the browser window. Not a HUGE deal, but when I want to refer to someone's link, it's not helpful. Is there an easy (laymen's terms) way to rectify this?


This post was written by Sweetnicks from Sweetnicks

[Humor] Doonesbury

A millstone, errr, milestone, in food blogging: Doonesbury

This post was written by Kevin from Seriously Good

{general} How to get folks to read a new blog?

I started my blog a while back as a part of my food business web page. Due to a recent accident, I've had some enforced inactivity, and have been enjoying reading the international community of food blogs. I've made an effort to upgrade my efforts...now how do I get people to visit and leave comments? I notice that the overwhelming majority of comments are posted by other bloggers and I've tried leaving comments where it seemed appropriate, not just to get my name known. Is there any other way to get more exposure?

This post was written by Alyce from Mantia's Musings

[Traffic] Stat Counter

Just FYI - I added a stat counter to this site today. I made the statistics public.
The visitor count is starting as of about luchtime today.


This post was written by Sam from Becks & Posh

[Ads] Selling Ad Space on Your Blog

Just curious what my fellow food bloggers have found to be the best way to make some $ with your blog? I've been running adsense and have looked at a few other advertising programs but have not exactly made a killing with them. That's not my main goal, but it would be nice to make some extra $ each month for doing something that I love doing.

What really prompted this question is an e-mail I received this morning from a potential advertiser. They were inquiring about rates & ad formats...neither of which I have! I'm just wondering if it's best to go through some kind of ad service or if I'm better off just selling ad space directly?

And btw, I checked out the FoodBlogAds but only have about 300 visitors a day so I'm still a ways off from being able to try it out.


This post was written by Jeremy from A Cooking Site

[RSS] problems?

One of my readers sent me a nice email which alerted me of a problem I apparently have...

I've been having a lot of trouble with your news feeds, though--both
the standard Atom feed provided by Blogger & the FeedBurner feed that
you've provided a link to.

For some reason, they list the previous ten posts as New every single
time you post a new entry. I can't figure out why--it doesn't happen
with any other blogs (I track almost 800 feeds in my reader,
NetNewsWire for OS X) and your blog DOES validate on
feedvalidator.org... It's kind of a mystery.

Anyway, I thought I would let you know about it so you could maybe
check your code or check with Blogger or something. I've also
reported it to the maker of NetNewsWire in case he can figure out
what's what.

(And while I have your ear, I'd like to request full post feeds
rather than summaries if possible--I like to read blogs right in my
feed reader rather than loading everything again in a web browser.)


So I managed to change the last request to full posts feeds, that bit was easy.
Does anyone have any clue how I can go about tracking down the other problem.
About RSS feeds, I am virtually clueless.
Thanks

This post was written by Sam from Becks & Posh

Creating hot links when posting a comment

When posting a comment on someon else's site and wanting to direct them to a specific link how do I make it "hot" ? I see other people's comments that do direct linking, but mine end up as one you'd have to copy and paste.

In looking at my signature to this post in HTML, do I just do the same and how do I do that on someone else's post when I can't control whether I'm in HTML or regular typing the way I can here? Does that last sentence make sense to anyone?


This post was written by Ruth from Once Upon a Feast

Wordpress, anyone?

I'm considering upgrading from Blogger to something more robust. Have looked into Moveable Type, and its easier to use hosted service (Typepad).

I've recently found out about Wordpress, a new platform which has similar features as Movable Type, and their hosted service. Has anyone here played with this yet?

This post was written by Professor Salt from You gonna eat that?

Categories - How to make

Chewy Chocolate Gingerbread Cookie Recipe

Follow the above URL and see how this blogger has handled her index of recipes. I am going to try this. It just needs to be updated with each new post. I would also back date the post of the specified index to begin with the date your blog began.


This post was written by Carolyn from 18thC Cuisine

template test

I have added something to the Food Blog Scool 'create post' template. I hope it doesn't confuse people. I will see how we call get on with it and might add further, advanced features, if it seems like we are all able to handle it. Jen pointed out to me (and I had been noticing the same thing), that is annoying: We can't click through to the poster's site automatically when they ask a question, especially a Q related to their site's look. Not everyones' registered user name matches their blog name, so its not always easy to work out who wrote the post.

So I have added the following to the post template, and I hope you will all find it easy to replace Sam and Food Blog Scool with your own name, blog name and url whenever you create a post. If this doesn't make any sense at all, please ask. You just need to change things, you don't need to delete anything - where ever it says alt= the following words are invisible in the published post. At least I think they are. Let's see...

This is what the template will look like:

<span style="font-size:75%;" alt = "this changes the font size, making it smaller or bigger. You can edit the percentage number on the left, default at 75%, to make it bigger or smaller for your post">

Replace this line with the main body of your post

This post was written by Sam <alt = "change Sam to your own name"> from <a href = "http://foodblogscool.blogspot.com/" alt = "change the food blog scool url on the left to your own blog url ">Food Blog Scool<alt = "change words Food Blog Scool on the left to your own blog name"></a>


</span><alt = "end of font size">

This post was written by Sam from Becks & Posh

[Archives] ordering top to bottom

This question came from Ruth at Once Upon A Feast

My question is how do I change the archive list at the right bottom of my blogger site to start with the most current? Since I only started at the end of May, it’s not an issue now (there are only 4 months worth), but this is just the beginning of what I hope to be a long-term journal.

Peek-a-boo Comments in Mozilla

I use the peek-a-boo comment hack from blogger to hide my comments on the active page. Unfortunately, this hack doesn't work in Mozilla. Is there a way that I can hide comments in both Mozilla and IE?

Thanks for the awesome posts about cross-browser compatibility. My blog looks great in IE, but terrible in Mozilla. With Mozilla gaining steam, I'm going to have to work on it.

William

Word Verication Option on Blogger

Thanks to Tana of Small farms, I went to check out some blogger settings.
I found out about the word verification option.
(found under blogger->settings->comments)

I have instigated it for this blog, hopefully it will get rid of the spammers.
Lets see.
If it doesn't work, we can add a registered users only option.
(where only blogger registered commenters can leave comments)
Failing that we can go one stage further and only allow blog members to comment.
I would prefer not to have to go that far.

But we'll take it one step at a time and see if this first step eliminates the spammers successfully.

[Blogger] Categories?

Ironically, I wasn't sure how to categorize this question about categorizing posts. I want to do it, but I'm not sure how. Please help!

[calendar] in the next couple of weeks

There sure are a lot of food blog events popping up all over the place! I have as many as I could find in my sidebar at the delicious life, but I thought I'd put a little reminder here...

Thursday, August 18 - oi! that's today! Stephanie of Dispensing Happiness is hosting the first Blog Party! Cocktails and hors d'ouevre, all around!

Next Monday, August 22 - Dine and Dish has its first celebrity host, Sam of Becks n Posh. You can Be Rachael Ray for a Day, showing off the good eats around your city for under $40.

Wednesday, August 24 - Andy of Spittoon is hosting the July battle of Does My Blog Look Good in This? Photos and links to original posts should be emailed to him by the 24th.

Jeanne from Cook, Sister! has woven together a wonderful Harry Potter-esqe story incorporating everyone's July eggs on toast. The end of August is coming up shortly...Wednesday, August 31 for EotMEoTE no 10!

Rachael from Fresh Approach Cooking has also announced the Really Big Cookoff, but I am a little unsure about the date - as I don't see one anywhere on the post. Rachael, help?

And keep your eyes and vegetables peeled for Paper Chef, Sugar High Friday, Is My Blog Burning? (though Clement sure has a lot of summarizing still left to do from tasteTea!), and Wine Blogging Wednesday (hint: think chocolate ;) )in September!

chow ciao, y'all! - sarah

hosting memes: make excel do the dirty work

As we all know, hosting a meme can sometimes involve quite a bit of work by the host in putting together summaries. Sam wrote about this previously in "Hosting a meme - be careful what you wish for!" For the Eat Local Challenge month, I came up with a way to track what was going on via an excel spreadsheet. It's pretty geeky, and I wouldn't recommend it if you are not an excel junkie. But it is possible to enter the information for your participants and then have excel build the code for you.

By making a formula in excel using an ampersand, you can make excel combine text. In the example below, the formula =A1&" "&B1 is used to create "tom jones".


this formula can be copied into every cell of the C column, and the result will change in each row.

Things get a little more complicated when you try to do entire sentences, but it is possible. In the participant list that I created, you will notice that there is a pattern to every single blog listed. It's something like NAME from BLOGNAME (LOCATION). < reference =" '"> BLURB < / a >

The images below give you a clue as to how I built this in Excel.



Now, most people don't do their posts quite as uniform as I do. Different people like to have the post links within paragraphs and stories. You could still use Excel to do the main work, you would just have to be a little more creative. In the end, I was able to take all of the data from the "code" column and paste that straight into a blog post and it worked fairly seamlessly. I also cut and pasted all the urls from the "trackback ping" column to ping everyone I needed to.

For me personally, building the data in Excel and tracking it this way was much easier than trying to proof all of my code in html and typepad.

Other benefits to doing the meme post in this manner include:

* Easy ability to sort the blogs however you want them sorted
* You can see where there are blanks that need to be filled in and deal with that.
* You know that if the code is correct for one entry, it will be correct for all entries.

I have posted the actual excel sheet here if anyone would like to play around with it. Document password = "geekcode". If you'd like to try this method and need help, feel free to email me at fogcityblogATyahooDOTcom.

This is probably one of those things that only works for A-R freaks like me, but thought I'd put it out there in case it can help anyone else in the future.

(Blogger) Side Bar Help

I made these very nice dashed lines to separate the sections on my sidebar. They show up in my Preview, but even though I've made sure to republish (now at least three times!), they don't show up in the final product. Any thoughts?

[Typepad] Cool way to handle bulk photographs

I hope this helps some of you. You might have seen the option of uploading an entire Zip folder of photographs to your site. I use this frequently now, but there is some lag time between getting the folders loaded into a public album and editing and captioning the pictures.

I created a hidden photo album called "Reserve" where I upload files. Once they're all uploaded, I go through the list, one by one. I change the titles, add captions where necessary, and then save (not save and publish) the picture. Leaving the window open, I then clone the photo into the appropriate public album.

When this is done, go through the list and delete them all.

Et voilà!

Now, go stick a pin in the Food Bloggers Global Map.

FoodBlogAds

So I'm not even sure how I found this site, but it seems that if you have more than 1000 visitors a day you can make money having FoodBlogAds.

Looking through the list of blogs one could post an ad on, I see a few of my fellow pupil's sites. (I wont out anyone, but there are at least six Food Blog S'cool participant sites that I see on first glance)

For those of you doing this, I have a few questions! Such as, how did you end up at that site? Did they contact you? And, does it seem like a good thing? Im super curious.

Thanks to everyone who answers!

Rachael

Cross-Browser Compatibility

Several weeks ago, Jen from life begins @ 30 posted some interesting statistics here on the most common screen resolutions in use today.   She also offered some useful suggestions for how to see what your blog looks like in resolutions other than the one in which you normally work.   A related question that I have been thinking about lately is how my blog appears to those accessing it through other browsers running in other operating systems.   I recently came across a very useful tool for answering this question, one that I do not think has been discussed or mentioned on this site before (please forgive me if I somehow missed it).

The BrowserCam website allows you - normally for a fee - to see how any URL appears through any one of 65 different browser/operating-system combinations.   The available operating system options include Macintosh OSX 10.3, Red Hat Linux 8.0, Windows 2000 Professional, Windows 98, and Windows XP; the browser options encompass all of the most popular ones (IE, Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, Netscape, Safari, Konqueror), and include certain older versions of these browsers as well.   The site is far from perfect, but it is fairly intuitive; you simply type in the URL, check off the browser/operating-system combinations that you want to see, and specify the resolutions (640x480, 800x600, and/or 1024x768) in which you are interested.   You then get thumbnail images of what the website at the pertinent URL looks like in each of the specified instances.   There are other advanced services and features available as well.

The service is not cheap; it costs $19.95 for 24 hours of unlimited access, or $59.95 for a full month of unlimited access.   Notably, however, BrowserCam will give you one free 24-hour trial period in which you are permitted up to 200 screen captures.   I signed up for this earlier today, and I personally have found it extremely valuable.   I was fascinated - and in some cases horrified - at how some people out there have been seeing my site, despite the fact that it looks perfectly normal on the computers to which I have immediate access.
So, after an iterative process of tweaking my template a bit and then running another screen capture, I was ultimately able to improve the percentage of browser/operating-system combinations in which my blog will appear at least more along the lines of what I intended.

I suspect that many of us are not hardcore enough to require ongoing access to this service; I certainly am not.   But if you're just setting up your template, if you have recently made a substantial revision to your layout, or if you're simply curious to see how your site looks to your readers, you might find even a single session to be helpful.   And given that the first session is free, there's really no downside.


P.S. Just to be clear, I have no affiliation with BrowserCam; I just found the tool to be quite helpful, so I thought I would pass along the information to the rest of you.

Unwanted comments

I just got an advertisment comment of some sort on my most recent post. I can't figure out how to remove it. Is there a specific section in blogger? How do I prevent something like this?

Rose

The (First) Really Big Cook-Off

Hi Ev'Body!

I posted the recipe for The (First) Really Big Cook-Off (yes, that is the name. Thank you all for your suggestions.) - the idea, again, is that we will all make the same recipe and see how it gets interpreted.

I hope you will all join in.

Have a great weekend!

Rachael

changing domains

My blog is currently at http://fogcity.blogs.com. I am considering changing to http://www.lifebeginsat30.com. Typepad will allow me to change over all links, and none of my old links will break. But I am still wondering if there is any downside to this ... ie., am I going to lose my rankings, etc, because my links will be diluted between two urls?

Does anyone who's done this have advice?

Right now I just have http://www.lifebeginsat30.com as a forward.

Thanks -

(Blogger) Help with Comments

Anyone know how I can put that thing on the sidebar where it shows bits and pieces of recent comments left?

Professional Help?

Has anyone ever paid someone to fancy-up their blog? I just turned mine into a carnival of colors in an attempt to fix something and am totally over it.

If you have, or know of someone who would do such a thing, or you are that savvy, will you let me know? I imagine there are lots of kids who would love that info. Thanks!

Rachael

[Multiple questions] Help needed ASAP

Forgive me for breaching the posting etiquette, but I am rather desperate. I have a big article coming out in the newspaper this week, and I need to institute some things on my Typepad-hosted blog before Wednesday. I can do all this stuff easily in regular HTML design, but Typepad is confusing and difficult and counter-intuitive. Argh.

First, and most importantly, I cannot figure out how to add in the Google search code.

2) I want to add a Paypal button.

3) Is it possible to add in keywords in Metatags?


Thank you in advance for ANY assistance you can provide.

Get Funky

Sam asked me to post this.

Meagan of I Heart Bacon and Eliz of Yum are hosting a real and Virtual 40s - 70s Party on Aug. 15th. In conjunction with this much-anticipated soiree, I'm hosting a Does My Blog Look Tacky in This photo contest. We encourage everyone with fond (or not so fond) memories of Jello Salads and Pimento Loaf on Ritz Crackers to join us for the social event of the season.

[Blog Promotion] How to Promote a Blog

Hello everyone. I just received my invitation to join today and am very happy to be here. I've been working on my cooking blog for a few months and really think it's starting to take shape.

I wanted to start a topic where we can discuss ways of promoting our blogs. What techniques have you used or have you considered using?

What do you think about:

-Directory submissions
-Word of mouth
-Search engine submission
-Pay Per Click (like Google Adwords)
-Link exchanges
-E-mail marketing

I look forward to discussing food and blogging with everyone!

[Meme]

Check out Monkey Gland's It's the end of the world as we know it....and I feel hungry? Meme.

re-routing url addresses

My question is: I want to change my food blog's address (from
cabbagesandkings.typepad.com to nathaliebouffe.typepad.com, or
possibly nathaliebouffe.com (do I need to pay money to get the
'typepad' outta there?)). Is it possible to make a painless
changeover without having to re-upload all of my pictures? I've been
told that other people's links to me will be lost, which makes sense
if the address changes, but will the pics go too?

Posting on behalf of Nathalie at Cabbages & Kings/Cheeseroom Reveries

Another Blog Event! Whoo-eeeeeeee!

I have an idea for an online food event, and I invite all of YOU to participate!

It's super simple. Every month, a new recipe will be announced and you will have 7 days to make it. The recipes will be chosen based on suggestions from readers, in the comment section. (Rules to be explained more in depth when the first recipe is announced/when I think of some) The dish will be something interesting, that doesn't involve baking or any specialized equipment (and yes, a grill is specialized, since a lot of people don't have one) And we will skip all recipes that call for esoteric ingredients like fennel pollen, temple rice and/or loquats, so everyone around the world can join in. Then, everyone will make the SAME THING.

Yup. That's the idea. Have everyone make the same dish, following a recipe as exactly as you want, or getting all kinds of fancy, then submitting your photo of the completed dish (with any changes, or just noting you followed it exactly) for a fun look at how one recipe can be interpreted in a million different ways.

There will be no judging, just a monthly round up, and hopefully, a lively discussion on what makes a recipe work! (If this sounds a lot like the comment section of Epicurious, that is where the idea came from for sure.)

If this sounds fun to you, please check out (this same post) on my blog Fresh Approach and add your dish suggestions, (And suggestions for a name for this, since I'm stumped!) then go back there on August 12th for the announcement of the first recipe!

Thanks ev'body!
Rachael

[Blogger] Running out of photo space

I hope I am posting this query right ~ first time and all. Anyway, I am having issues with posting photos to my blogger acount. I suspect that I have run out of allotted photo space. Is this possible? Is there a way to circumvent this without paying for it (starving student here)? Or do I need to start deleting photos from old posts?