Saturday, December 29, 2007

Not All Posts Shown in Label Filter

Anyone knows how to show all posts or have a 'older posts' link to see more posts once we click on filter to see posts of a particular label?

E.G. when i click on my label "What's Cooking", it only shows 20 posts, but there are actually more posts under this label, same goes for every other labels. I am using blogger.

Any help? Thanks in advance!

This Post was written by rokh from Tham Jiak

Blogrush?

Anyone had positive or negative experiences with Blogrush? I just added it to my blog (You can see it near the bottom of the left hand column on Herbivoracious.com.) It is one of these blog syndication deals where in exchange for showing their widget with other bloggers posts, they will show your headlines at other blogs and send traffic your way. It seems reasonable to me so I thought I'd give it a try, but am curious about other's results or problems. I'll post an update in a few weeks and let you know how it is working for me.

This Post was written by Michael Natkin from Herbivoracious.com.

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Has Anyone Else Noticed This???? Custom Headers Now Easier in Blogger

I was playing around with a test template yesterday and noticed that Blogger users with the "new" style Blogger page element layouts can upload custom headers very much like any other image. (no need to have your photo or graphic hosted elsewhere) No fuss, no muss, just be sure you've got the size and cropping you want.

Go to customize your template, page elements, then your header and then edit. A "configure header" box will pop up with the customizing option.

I think it's a fairly new feature and don't recall seeing anything here at FBS on it. Of course, it could be real old news and something I just missed, but in case it is not, I wanted to share.

Faith from Blog Appetit (which still features its regular old rounders4 uncustom header)

PS: Blogger is doing that thing with showing every draft it auto-saved. If you've posted recently to FBS you may want to delete your unneeded drafts from the posts page.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Question on Resizing Photos:

Hi all,

I've noticed that when I resize photos to 500px (the size of my "post" column in my blog), they lose a lot of the quality of the image and tend to look more pixelated. I've been trying to crop the photos to 500px rather than resizing them, but I'd like to solve this problem (sometimes I like the whole photo)!

Would it help if I was using Adobe Photoshop (Elements, probably, for price reasons). I'm currently using Picasa or the Microsoft photo editing software for my (very minimal) photo edits, but I wonder if it's the quality of those programs that is messing up my pictures.

Thanks in advance for any advice!


This post was written by Katy from Sugarlaws

Monday, December 17, 2007

Losing Post Photos When I remove Drafts...

I recently decided to clean house and deleted drafts sitting in my posts list.
The result was I lost the all the uploaded photos in the published post.
Please take a look -
THE RITZ Paris? ? ?
I'm not aware of any information on this drafts thing but I'm wondering what happened and what to do in the future.
Has this happened to anyone else?
HELP!
again...

Carolg
Paris Breakfasts

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Comment spam advertising food sites

I have been having a rash of these comments. I'm not letting them publish on my blog, but I've seen them on other blogs:

____________
Maybe you can help me out with something…? I want to order all of my food online from now on because of various reasons, but I don’t know where to go for quality food. I have tried 2 companies so far, xxxxxx, and and xxxxx, but I wanna get others I can try out. Do you know of any? The main thing I’ve ordered so far is steak. I guess you can say, I’m a steak junkie. LOL!!! From what I have found out (from what I have ordered so far) I think I am able to regulate the quality of beef I buy. I hate going to a store and getting that crappy slab of beef that I have to cut down until there is like nothing left. Hahaha!!!! (its so true though) Anyhow, sorry that I made this comment so long. If you can help me out or point me in a direction where I might find more quality foods online, I would greatly appreciate it. Have a good day or night! (depending on when you read this) LOL!!!! ______________________

This is nothing more than advertising for the sites whose names I've removed. I know that one of these sites has been receiving a lot of bad press due to customer complaints. Please don't fall for this and let this type of comment publish on your blog. (This type of thing makes me glad I went to comment moderation.)


This Post was written by Kalyn from Kalyn's Kitchen


Monday, December 10, 2007

(Misc) Just a suggestion or two...

Now that the finalists for the Food Blog Awards are up and we can breathe a little, just wanted to make a little suggestion. When combing through the hundreds of nominations we received this year, and verifying their eligibility, there are a number of sites that a) don't have visible contact information and/or b) don't have accessible or visible archives. When I discover a new site, I like to go back through the archives and see what I missed. As far as contact information, I know that spam is sometimes an issue, but what about a contact form? Just a suggestion. :)

Cate from Sweetnicks, Well Fed and Mad About Martha.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Local Copyright Issues

Hey everyone,

Hoping you could help me decide the best way to deal with a copyright issue that popped up recently with a local restaurant. The restaurant used a photo from my Flickr account in an emailed newsletter. The photo is copyright protected under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic License. I really don't know if this falls under commercial use or not since they don't charge for their newsletter, but they were using it to promote the restaurant. In either case, it was certainly lacking attribution.

How do I bring this up with the restaurant without seeming like a jerk?


This Post was written by Derek from Gastronomic Fight Club

Has Blogger got the bugs - AGAIN?

Hi folks,

I was wondering if any of you were noticing an irregular notification of your comments via email. I have realized that today I am not receiving many of the emails notifying me that there have been comments left on many posts. I really rely on this as when comments are made on older posts and questions are asked it gives me a chance to respond. Does anyone have any ideas if Blogger has the bugs or the blues?


This Post was written by Meeta from What's For Lunch, Honey?

Sunday, December 02, 2007

Thanks -- Made the switch!

I just wanted to say thanks for all the advice I got on my post about switching from blogger to wordpress! I made the big jump this weekend, and after probably 18 straight hours of a self-imposed crash course in css, I'm thrilled with my new self-hosted blog!

Thanks so much to everyone who responded to my earlier post!

This Post was written by Katy from (New and Improved) Sugarlaws!

Friday, November 30, 2007

Switching from Blogger to Wordpress?

So, I started my blog on Blogger a few months ago and I think it's growing steadily. I think that I eventually want to move to my own domain name and publish on Wordpress, rather than using the blogger website and having the ".blogspot.com" address. So, a few questions:

1. Am I right that in the long run, I'll do better with my own domain and wordpress rather than using blogger? i.e., am I just putting off the inevitable if I continue to use the blogger platform for a few months? I am decent at understanding/writing html, so I've been able to customize the blogger site to some extent, but I want to be able to have separate pages for a recipe index, blogroll, etc!

2. Am I better making the switch now, when my blog is still new, rather than when it's been around for a while and I'll be disrupting a larger number of readers (hopefully!)?

3. Am I going to lose readers if I make the switch, or is it pretty seamless?


This Post was written by Katy from sugarlaw.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

(General) Ideal Posting Frequency?

Hi everyone -

What are your thoughts on posting frequency and how it affects your traffic/readership? In other words, let's say I get three full stories drafted. Should I post them all the same day? One a day for three days? One every other day? Does it even matter?

Looking forward to your comments!

This Post was written by Laura from The Fro Fro Blog


Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Blogger Formatting

Hi Ev'body...

I am super frustrated at Blogger and hoping one of ya'll can help me out.

Every post I have written lately has been automatically formatting as double or triple spaced.

When I write a phrase, then hit "enter" ONCE it naturally goes to the next line, but when I look at the HTML the word "div" appears in brackets at least twice before and twice after every word.

I end up going back and manually deleting the "div", which is taking ages and getting me all grumpy.

Does anyone know if I somehow set this up to happen in formatting? Can I UNDO that? What are my options.

Thanks so much all!

Rachael


This Post was written by Rachael from Fresh Approach

Monday, November 26, 2007

(Misc) 2007 Food Blog Awards

Just a note to let you know that we have put the first of many announcements up this morning re: the 2007 Food Blog Awards. We have moved up the schedule slightly this year, to keep it away from the holidays as much as possible. Let the fun begin!

Written by Cate of Well Fed Network and Sweetnicks.

Thursday, November 22, 2007

It's a great feeling...

...to go into work at a restaurant that's just been awarded its first Michelin star. So excuse me for feeling really chuffed this morning. Thanks to all my friends in Food Blog S'cool who gave me so much encouragement over the past year or so.

This Post was written by Trig from Aidan Brooks: Trainee Chef.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Invitation to be a Fo*dBuzz.com "sponsored" blog

Hi everyone-

I recently received an invitation from Fo*dBuzz.com to be a sponsored blog (replace * with an O, obviously). I want to find out if any of you received such an invite, if any of you have chosen to be sponsored, and what your experience has been. I'm nervous about this... I have mixed feelings about my posts being syndicated on other sites, namely I worry that it might cut into the actual traffic to my site and that someone else is making profit by running ads on what are essentially my posts hosted on their site. Yet it could be a good way to get some new readers. The site looks legit, though I've never heard of it before. It looks potentially really interesting, actually. Still, I'm nervous about this. Any feedback or suggestions?

Here is part of the original e-mail:

Foodbuzz would like to sponsor your blog, and invite you to join other food bloggers as a Featured Publisher in our Foodbuzz Publisher Program.

The basic benefits include promotion and exposure of your blog on Fo*dbuzz.com, above-competitive compensation for ads, community networking, and ad campaign management.


What are some questions I should ask or things I should look out for to make sure this is worthwhile for me?

This Post was written by Tovah (aka Isaiah) from Gluten-Free Bay

Just a guy named Yuri

This morning I woke up to the following comment on one of my recipes:


IP Address: 193.239.152.85
Name: Food for Heaven. Cooking recipes
Email Address: sally@foodforheaven.com
URL: http://www.foodforheaven.com
Comments:

I've made this soupe today and was really impressed. It was perfect!
Thanks for your tasty recipe!

Cooking is also my hobby, so we are kind of tasty-friends :)


I almost always check the URLs of comments before they post, and sure enough, this one turned out to be an aggregator, using content from my site and Kalyn's.

The nerve! First throwing up a Wordpress site with our feeds, and then leaving comments on my site to promote it?

When I demanded that Sally take down my content, I got this from "Sally Moore":


Hello, Elise.

I thought it would be great for you to have your recipes on my website. I added link to your website after every recipe, so people could read the whole entry at elise.com
But if you don't want to promote your website this way, it's your choice. Food for Heaven is becoming a great portal.

I won't post your materials anymore. I thought you're kind of woman who prefer friendship and collaboration. I was wrong.



Yeah, right. Turns out in the long header of the email, it was actually sent by a guy named "Yuri Zakharov", confirmed when I got another email from Yuri himself with the same IP address.

So, just a warning to everyone, the sneaky aggregators are trying to promote their stolen goods on our own sites, leaving happy, friendly comments from people with happy, friendly names.

If you've received any comments recently from FoodForHeaven, you should know that it's just a guy named Yuri who thinks we are stupid enough to buy into it.


This Post was written by Elise from Simply Recipes

Friday, November 09, 2007

Sidebar photo not showing up but link working

Hi, I had linked a photo (a jpg logo) in my sidebar to the relevant post - the link works but the logo/photo is not showing up. Why is that? How can I remedy that?

This Post was written by Sra from When My Soup Came Alive

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

show/hide the blogger navbar

It has been bothering me for a while that my email address is in full view at the top of the page whenever I am logged on to blogger or google. I do realize that it is only viewable by me and that others see their email addresses at the top of the page. However, if I were to log in to blogger or google on a shared computer in a public place, anyone could easily take note of my email address. I get plenty of spam as it is and don't really like the idea of adding even more.

Also, it has come to my attention that the "next blog" link may turn up a blog with really questionable content. I really dislike the idea of linking to unknown drivel. (I don't mind linking to drivel that I KNOW about... ;-))

I have searched and searched for a way to disable the "next blog" link and change the navbar so that the user nickname rather than the email address shows.

I did not find anything about that other than some hacks to remove the navbar entirely. I'm reluctant to do this as it is likely to be a violation of the blogger TOS.

However, I did find a very nice little javascript at Derya's WebResource.axd. I have modified it a little so that the words change depending on whether the navbar is visible or not. The nice thing about this is that it cannot be construed as a violation of the TOS because of the visible link to the blogger navigation bar.

I thought others who have their blogs hosted by blogger might like to use this "show/hide the navbar" option. Here is the coding to copy and paste somewhere above <head>:

<!-- Show/Hide navbar header coding begins -->
<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">
var showHeader=false;
function ShowHideNav()
{
showHeader=!showHeader;
var nav=document.getElementById("navbar-iframe");
if (showHeader)
{
nav.style.visibility="visible";
nav.style.display="block";
}
else
{
nav.style.visibility="hidden";
nav.style.display="none";
}
var nav=document.getElementById("warning");
if (showHeader)
{
// when the navbar is visible, the phrase after innerHTML will be seen
document.getElementById('warning').innerHTML="Please be wary of "next blog" link - there is questionable content on many blogs";
}
else
{
// when the navbar is invisible, the phrase after innerHTML will be seen
document.getElementById('warning').innerHTML="to search the blog; sign in and out of blogger; etc. etc.";
}
var nav=document.getElementById("showit");
if (showHeader)
{
// When the navbar is visible the word will be "Hide "
document.getElementById('showit').innerHTML="Hide ";
}
else
{
// When the navbar is invisible the word will be "Show "
document.getElementById('showit').innerHTML="Show ";
}

}
</script>
<style type="text/css">
#navbar-iframe {
visibility: hidden;
display: none;
}
</style>
<!-- Show/Hide navbar header coding ends -->


And here is the coding to copy and paste somewhere below <body>

<!-- Show/Hide navbar body coding begins -->
<small><span id="showhide" onclick="ShowHideNav();" title="Please be wary of "next blog" link">
<b><u><span id="showit">Show</span> Blogger Navigation Bar
<a href="http://derya-webresource.blogspot.com" title="derya-webresource.blogspot.com">...</a>
</u></b><br />
<span id="warning">to search the blog; sign in and out of blogger; etc. etc.</span></small>
<!-- Show/Hide navbar body coding ends -->


The result is the following phrase when the navbar is invisible:

Show Blogger Navigation Bar
to search the blog; sign in and out of blogger; etc. etc.


that changes to this when the navbar is visible:

Hide Blogger Navigation Bar
Please be wary of "next blog" link - there is questionable content on many blogs


The words "Show" and "Hide" are housed in a span with the spec id="showit". To change those words, go to the first piece of coding and look for var nav=document.getElementById("showit"); and see the notes below.

The second phrase is housed in a span with the spec id="warning". To change those words, go to the coding in the header and look for var nav=document.getElementById("warning"); and see the notes below that.

I hope this all made sense!!

----------------------------------------------
This Post was written by Elizabeth from blog from OUR kitchen (I also have a blogger blog where you can see this script in action. Look for the link just below the header.)

edited 7 November to add comments in the coding

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Check Posts for Unwanted Drafts

Something is up with this blog and autosave. Every time it autosaves it is saving as a draft so there are multiple drafts of all recent posts on the post screen. If you have posted recently take a minute and delete the unwanted drafts. My short post below generated four autosaved drafts, only one of which was the complete post that I published.

FJK

Digital SLR recommendations

I'm finally fed up with the limitations of my point and shoot camera and plan to upgrade to a digital SLR in the near future. I'm looking seriously at the Canon Digital Rebel XT 8MP and would like to hear from anyone who uses it. All opinions welcome, as well as thoughts on any other digital SLRs on the market. I'm planning to learn about shooting in RAW so I prefer a camera that supports that format.

I would also like to hear thoughts on macro lenses or all-purpose lenses that might do well with macro shots, as well as lighting equipment.

Is that too much to cram into one question??? :-)

Thanks so much!

This Post was written by ANDREA from ANDREA'S RECIPES.

Saturday, November 03, 2007

Camera opinions sought

I know this has been covered before, but the posts I found were a bit old and they keep coming out with new cameras....

My trusty Olympus Stylus 410 has died and I am looking to replace it with something else that I can keep in my pocket, whip out at restaurants, take on exotic trips, photograph food, friends and gargolyes and generally use as an all purpose camera.

What would you recommend and why?


I've been flirting with a Canon Power Shot SD 800 or 850 with image stablization

OR the Pansonic Lumix DMC-TZ3 with a monster 10x zoom

or the new Sony cybershot dst100, but I'm open to other suggestions.



If you have any experience with these cameras I'd love to hear about it. If there is another camera you'd swear by that fits my needs and pocket, I'd love to know about it.



Thanks


Friday, November 02, 2007

Picnik for photos

I think that the subject of how to edit photos to include copyright notice 'watermarks', frames, and the like has come up here a few times. Someone asked me about a similar thing recently, so I thought I'd put what I told them here too.

There is a very nifty tool called Picnik that does these things very easily. They didn't have the text overlay feature before, and I requested it a while back (I'm sure they got lots of requests for this) and now they have it.

I've put up a quick and dirty demo of what can be done with the free version of the tool on my flickr page - integration with flickr is seamless, and they say they have Picasa integration too. (They have a pay version which I haven't signed up for yet.) The photo editing tools like sharpen, color correction and so on seem to be pretty good too. Not as robust as Photoshop of course..but there is a price difference. I do use Photoshop myself but this should be great for most users...I think I'll use it when I'm on the road without my laptop.

(I have no ties, commercial or otherwise, with the site, etc.)


This Post was written by maki from Just Hungry and Just Bento.

Thursday, November 01, 2007

Warning about Blogger AUTOSAVE!

Just want to let everyone who uses BLOGGER to be sure to save your work ELSEWHERE - do not rely on the "new and improved" autosave function.

Apparently, there is a "known issue" with it eating up work, rather than saving it. I just lost hours of work. Don't let this happen to you! * fingers crossed* it will be on the server and refreshe when I sign back in.

I also had trouble with Blogger not recognizing my name/pwd. Perhaps these are only coincidently coincident.


This Post was written by Jacquline from Leather District Gourmet (yes, it was lots of progress I'd made on my "Teach a Man to Fish" round-up! Wahhh!)

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Another Scraper

I have found another feedscraper that is jacking some of my content to drive their adsense.

URL = recipe dot wpbloggers dot com

You might want to see if your stuff is there. Google has been modifying it's algorithm to kill splogs and scrapers but this one is obviously put-putting along fine.

If you have stuff there, in the name of blog-swarm splog reporting, I suggest reporting to google adsense... They have this link at the bottom of their page to "report abuse" .. riiiiight.

Click the "ads by Google" and then keep looking for the "report violation" text link toward the bottom.

This Post was written by Nika from Nika's Culinaria

Monday, October 22, 2007

Quickie?

At the bottom of any comment section here, there is a link to take the reader "Home". Can someone tell me what the HTML code is for that function and where in the old blogger template I can insert it?

Thanks,

This Post was written by Jacqueline from The Leather District Gourmet.

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Problems with blogroll in wordpress

Hello,

I used wordpress to host my blog and it works well overall, though it will not display my blogroll. I have many links in the system though it just doesn't load in the sidebar (using widgets)

Has anyone had a similar problem?


This Post was written by Conor from Ithinkfoodisgreat.com

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Hits And Visit Depth On Weekends

Do you guys find that your hits go down but your pages/visit go up on the weekends? It seems logical enough, that fewer people are web surfing, but those that are have more time to visit deeply. Anyone have suggestions for how to drive more folks to your site on those lazy weekend days?


This Post was written by Michael Natkin from Herbivoracious.com (formerly The Vegetarian Foodie)

Friday, October 19, 2007

Creating a Drop Down List

Hi there. I'm trying to create a drop down list such that when people want to search for recipes they can by category (i.e. appetizers, vegetable dishes, main meals etc.). I tried searching the data base for drop down lists but came up with no posts. Can anyone give me some advice, please. :)

Cheers!

This Post was written by Heather Chase from The Culinary Chase

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

You say Entertaining I say Nightmare!

Just saying the word ‘November’ makes the entertaining challenged run for cover. From now until January 2nd (The official start of the January Diet Campaign) these poor souls are awash with anxiety and culinary hurdles.

The easiest way around this conundrum is to entertain in restaurants or have your party catered. This method is rather expensive. If you are entertaining challenged have one large party and bang out as many pay backs as possible. In this vein you could do “co-mingling” entertaining. In its purest form this is a pot-luck. You supply a clean house and beverages and let your guests bring the rest. Be forewarned that without guidance your guests might all bring a chunk of cheese or desserts. Don’t forget lots of saran to wrap all those goodies up and give back to your guests (keep the ones that you like- they owe you). A variation is the "orchestrated foraged" party. This uses more gas and ingenuity but by tearing around your fair city you can create an “I can’t cook but I can party! menu. With a little bit of planning (you’re the hostess you know when the party is) you can order some excellent items from Zabar’s to intimidate your guests. Nothing like a little smoked sturgeon to show you care. Just gather as many exotic pre-made ingredients that your budget will allow and don’t forget that ever popular crudités (that says healthy) and your party will scream “Look I’m entertaining and having fun!”

There are die hard foodies like me who would rather be spit roasted than use someone else’s candied nuts. We stubborn stupid cooks feel that each entertaining event puts our sauté pans on the line. Having been a caterer means that I can’t do pot-lucks or cookie exchanges. And each year the entertaining bar is raised. I want to give a party like I used to be hired to provide. I rent dishes, wine glasses buy snappy invitations with R.S.V.P.’s and pick special stamps. The guest list is a pot pourri of people. There are always those tiresome neighbors, the boss who thinks he knows it all, and special friends to talk to while the rest of them face off.

The thing I hate about entertaining is that I have to clean the house and do the cooking. Catering was so simple. I showed up with the food and the house was clean. I didn’t have to mingle just make sure there was enough food and the kitchen was spotless when I left.

When we entertain, invariably my Not So Silent Partner with wine glass in hand, will decide to give the newbie’s a tour of the chateau. Is our bedroom with its 14’ butterfly on the wall or my office with 4 6’bookshelves filled with cookbooks necessary for all to see? So I dutifully clean all the nooks and crannies wishing we could do a series of parties since I went to all this trouble. But the hardest thing for me to clean for guests is the kitchen table. You see our kitchen table is a living being dedicated to reading. Layers of food magazines, NYT book review sections, and catalogs grace the marble surface. It takes months to get the right mix of medium so that no matter when you sit down you can exhume a never read piece of literature to fit your mood. Did I mention the random scraps of paper that garnish like a sprinkle of parsley on a dinner plate? I digress into my own entertaining quandary.

What I wanted to discuss was not only the impending doom of Thanksgiving, Christmas, (Hanukah, Kwanza) and New Years; but a little known French holiday that will ease your entertaining woes and put you at the top of the 2007 social circuit. Don’t tell anyone but Nouveau Beaujolais is the answer! On the 3rd Thursday of November (a week before Thanksgiving) at 12pm the Beaujolais region of France releases its first wine of the season. Yes, the wine has been shipped to your favorite wine shop but they can’t sell it before 12pm your time. In some circles nouveau beaujolais is considered a precursor to how good the wine year will be.

All you have to do is round up 3 different vineyard’s wines put paper bags around them; label them 1, 2, 3 rent some wine glasses (red cups won’t do!) and away you go! The menu? What’s easier? Cheese, fruit, store bought paté (for that gourmet touch). If your French side is clamoring for attention you can make gougere or fondue. You will notice that no EVOO was spilled nor “chunked” potatoes were “smashed” for this event but it was oh, so easy!! Dessert? You’re off the hook- a wine party doesn’t need it! Voila! A party! Your guests vote on which Beaujolais they like the best and then after the fabricated award is given to the wine and the suspense is done you can continue to drink in earnest. Now the secret to this party is the date. No one is thinking of a party before thanksgiving and your party won’t get lost in the holiday shuffle. When your friends think back on their holiday season and the endless holiday buffets they “enjoyed” they will remember your party first with glowing nostalgia and a well done!


First Time Blog Event Host - question?

Hello everyone and thanks for help with calendaring, formatting, etc. so far. I'm tickled at how responsive this group is!

Because no good deed goes unpunished....here's another question.

  • Am I meant to wait until the roundup - after the end date of the event - to post the entries?

It seems too long to wait. I'd rather post as they come in and then also do round up but that seems a little onerous, too?

At least some of my work is paying off already: The Boston Herald picked up my piece!

http://www.bostonherald.com/blogs/entertainment/green_world/?p=159


This Post was written by Jacqueline from Leather District Gourmet.



Thursday, October 11, 2007

Link Colors

Hi everyone!

I have a remedial question...hopefully someone can help!

How do I make it so when I create a link, it is automatically in a particular color?

When I make a link, like this to Google it is automatically purple. How can I set it to automatically be a different color? (This color) Right now, I do that manually with each link.

Thanks!




Formatting on Blogger

When the cricket club heard I was a food blogger, they asked me to set up a blog for the club. It's been a huge success, except for one thing - I can't format the players' stats. Does anyone know a way of importing to Blogger some kind of formatted grid? Which doesn't ignore all spacings?

I think if I can crack this, I'll find some way to use the knowledge on my food blog ;)

Thanks

This Post was written by Joanna from Joanna's Food

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Importing another blog's post into blogger?

My blog has been in an interesting state of flux for just over a year now. I was hoping that aligning myself with the local newspaper would provide greater visibility, and a slicker, more integrated page.

Oh, how vastly wrong I was. It's been nothing but trouble, we've shifted platforms twice, and on the new blog, I can't use any kind of formatting whatsoever. The so-called tech department can't or won't answer my questions, and I am completely fed up.

I want to move my posts back into Blogger, and have created a new blog to do so. But- how do I import all the new material over again? I'm really hoping it's not on a post-by-post basis. I've spent quite a lot of time trying to fix broken links from all the former moves, and the thought of harvesting individual posts is quite daunting.

I have failed my tribe, and am shamed. Please help. ;)


This Post was written by s'kat from s'kat and the food.

Monday, October 08, 2007

Is your content for free?

Hi Everyone,

First I'd like to apologize in advance in case this topic has been discussed already (I thought I remember something but then couldn't find it in the archive).

If not, here's my question: Lately, I have been getting requests through my flickr-account about using one of my food photos for free. One request came from a non-profit organization that makes text books for India. The people seemed to be genuine so I said yes.
The latest request comes from a pr company that produces a special customer magazine for Lindt. Although I'd be flattered to see one of my photos in such a glossy magazine (no matter how small), I feel a little bit irritated that even such a big player doesn't want to pay for content. That said, I try to make a living as a freelance journalist and photographer (not food though).

If there was an opportunity to work professionally with this company in the future, I'd see this as a good investment. However, this is rather unlikely and I feel like it's just another example for how to exploit freelancers.

What do you think about it? What would you do?


This Post was written by Eva from Sweet Sins

Saturday, October 06, 2007

Problem with Blogger Drafts, etc.

Hi Everyone,

Since a few months ago (corresponding to either my redesign or the new Blogger, or both) I have not been able to save drafts. I see the little balloon that says "Now Blogger saves your drafts automatically!" but for me it does just the opposite--not only does it NOT save my drafts automatically but it also does not allow me to do it manually.

Also, my blogger is set up so that I have to enter the string of letters to approve a post. The thing is that EVERY SINGLE TIME on my first attempt, blogger tells me that I've entered the letters wrong and asks me to do it over again. It usually works on the second try.

What's going on? Please help!

Thanks.


This Post was written by Emily Stone from Chocolate in Context

Friday, October 05, 2007

Social Media is a goodness. Whats your Digg Saturation?

Using "Social Media" is one way you can increase the readership of your blog.

What is social media?

One can say that the latest iteration of the popular web, called Web 2.0 by some, is driven by and predicated on the dynamics that arise from social media.

The Wiki defines social media as:

"Social Media is a term that is used for a broad spectrum of topics, and has several different connotations, however in the context of internet marketing, Social Media refers to a collective group of web properties that are primarily driven by the users. For example, blogs, discussion boards, vlogs, video sharing sites and dating sites." SOURCE

There are several sites, known by many, which make social media happen for blogs, including:
If you would like to get a sense for how many times your blog has been dugg, type the following into your URL field at the top of your browser and hit enter. Make sure to replace YOURBLOGURL with, well, your blog URL.

"http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Adigg.com
+YOURBLOGURL.com"

I had to put a break in that URL for it to show here, you will want it all on one line.

I am not a digg-master but I think the way to be dugg is to digg other sites yourself.

I have been stumbleupon'd MUCH more than dug and I understand stumbleupon better. In both case, using the service to recognize other blogs will help people find your blog.

Digg is not abundantly food blog friendly while Stumbleupon is relatively agnostic when it comes to topic.

Tastespotting, OMG, is food porn nirvana and if DRIVES TRAFFIC like a feverish madness.

Tastespotting traffic also seems to go deeper while stumbleupon, due to the nature of it's user interface, tends to just flitter across the surface of your site.

This Post was written by Nika from Nika's Culinaria

Saturday, September 29, 2007

Foodbuzz.com - What is it?

Has anyone else gotten a request to be "sponsored" by Foodbuzz.com from Ryan Stern, managing editor?

"Part of the Foodbuzz mission is to intelligently connect our growing audience of passionate foodies worldwide with the most compelling blog content available.I’m very impressed with the high-quality posts you have been producing on bla bla bla etc

In fact, Foodbuzz would like to sponsor your blog(???), and invite you to join other food bloggers in the sponsored Foodbuzz Publisher Network we are launching in conjunction with our site’s official launch in a few weeks.
We are finalizing the details of the program, but the basic benefits include promotion and exposure of your blog on Foodbuzz.com, above-competitive compensation for ads, community networking, and ad campaign management."

Hmmm...I can't figure this out

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

THANKS!

This Post was written by Carolg from ParisBreakfast.com


Thursday, September 27, 2007

Using a testbed

I've mentioned the subject of a testbed before, briefly, but this might be a good time to raise it again. Some members will be very familiar with this technique, but others will not have thought of it. Don't be scared - this is very easy to do and will make your blogging life much easier.

For most bloggers, preparing a post is a bit of a hit-and-miss affair. You lay out your text and photos, review (usually in some sort of preview mode) and hit the "publish" button. If you are lucky, it looks OK. But often there are layout issues that you have to fix afterwards and re-publish. If you have modified your template to make your page a non-standard width, things can get really bad because the preview may not map even closely onto the final product (the system may assume standard width). Google Blogger suffers from this problem.

The solution to this problem is a testbed. This is a device where you can try out ideas before you put them into practice. So, how to create one?

Simply build a parallel blog to your production version. Set it up with the same parameters as the real thing and copy across any customised template you've created for your blog. For added security, give it a name that nobody would search for and would not show up easily in any list. Try something like "nP56w7mytestbed".

Then make the testbed invisible. Remove any metadata you've added to your html code for identification and any code used by statistics monitors. Now, most importantly, go through all the setting options that your host offers and privatise the testbed blog. In Blogger, for instance, you want to:
Not add blog to the listings (Basic)
Not send pings (Publishing)
Disallow comments (Comments)
Disable blog feeds (Site Feed) - the most important one of all!!!
Restrict readership to yourself (Permissions)

The latter is not strictly necessary if you've removed the metacode, obscured the name, declined listing, removed pings and stopped the feeds. This reduces the chance of anyone ever finding your testbed to about the level of a DNA match. If you do "privatise" access you will pay the penalty of password entry each time you access your testbed from a new account of with a different browser. Your choice.

I can't emphasis enough the importance of turning off the site feeds. These are the source of almost all links to your website. Many people will be checking your blog not directly, but through a feed aggregator such as Google Reader. If you leave the feeds on, they may see your multiple publishing drafts.

Finally, deselect your testbed under your profile page, if your blog host has one. That way each time someone clicks on your name hyperlink they won't see a reference to your testbed as well as to your real blog.

All done? That really only takes about half an hour at most. Now you can compose posts in your testbed and publish them at each stage of drafting. Looking at the final product (as only you will be able to do) you will see exactly how your piece will look when finally published.

When you are happy, cut and paste the html code into your real blog. Be careful here to do this in html mode. If you are in a "wysiwyg" mode ("compose" in Blogger) you may lose hyperlinks, etc. Add a title and hit "publish". Results guaranteed every time. Obviously your host won't be over-happy about this as they are providing the resources without gaining any benefits. But no-one has complained yet. I've been doing this for ages and it really works.

This Post was written by Trig from Aidan Brooks: Trainee Chef

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Photos not visible

Hello Food Blog S'cool girls and boys,

I'm wondering if anyone would be kind enough to help me figure out why the photos for a particular post are not appearing on my blog. When I look at the html version, the code is there, but they're not showing up on "compose" mode or on the published blogger site.

The post is here.

Much thanks, in advance, to anyone who bites.

This Post was written by Sarah from Food and Paper.

Template design query

This is a really really basic question ... I use a basic Blogger template for my blog - how can I change the masthead to something more personal and appealing?


This Post was written by Joanna from Joanna's Food

Template design query

This is a really really basic question ... I use a basic Blogger template for my blog - how can I change the masthead to something more personal and appealing?


This Post was written by Joanna from Joanna's Food

Template design query

This is a really really basic question ... I use a basic Blogger template for my blog - how can I change the masthead to something more personal and appealing?


This Post was written by Joanna from Joanna's Food

Monday, September 17, 2007

[General Template Central] Social Bookmarking

Looking for a way to incorporate social bookmarking but don't want to clutter up your posts? I recently found a cool service called Add This

It's a little widget you can add to your template that will be visible at the bottom of every post or in a sidebar:

add this button
Actually there are three different versions of the button and also a button for RSS if you want one. Best of all it's free and easy to install, even on customized templates.

You can see what it looks like on a post on my blog here.

This Post was written by Amy from Cooking with Amy.

Sunday, September 16, 2007

A Particularly Outrageous Content Scraper

Thanks to Katie from Thyme for Cooking and Nicole from Pinch My Salt who alerted me this morning that the site below was stealing my content. (They both found it through Google Alerts because I had linked to their recipes in my post. This is yet another reason why it's so great to link to your fellow bloggers!)

http: //cooking-tips.googlelinks.net/

(I have put a space after the colon so it doesn't create a link for them.)

What makes this particularly outrageous is that this person has gone through many of my posts and changed the words "Kalyn's Kitchen" to "Chris' Kitchen." However they were not smart enough to change the html so it is still a link to my blog.

I have left comments on the posts that are mine asking to have them removed immediately. In looking around the site I found this list of posts with many titles I recognize from other blogs:

http: //cooking-tips.googlelinks.net/sitemap/

(Again, a space after the colon to prevent a link.)

I would recommend you look at the list to see if there are things of yours being taken by this jerk, and if so leave a comment. There does not appear to be any other way to contact them.

(Another Edit: Here is somewhere to report stolen material on a wordpress blog. I have now reported this site to Wordpress besides leaving the comments.)

This Post was written by Kalyn from Kalyn's Kitchen.

EDIT:
A very happy edit! In the time it took me to leave about ten comments on their site (I was actually leaving them immediately after they posted my stuff which probably freaked them out) they have started removing my posts. I hope everyone else who finds their stuff there will also take action.

EDIT AGAIN:
Spoke too soon. Even after they deleted the earlier posts I had left comments on they continued to post more of my stuff. Totally unethical and disgusting!

EDIT AGAIN:
It appears that many people have probably been contacting them today, because now the site appears to have no posts at all. Hooray!

Saturday, September 15, 2007

The Disappearing Act

My blog template seems to have disappeared - regardless of how many times I refresh my template and empty my cache (as directed by the very impersonal "blogger help group" - I couldn't find an email address to contact them directly), the template seems to have vanished. I have a back-up so I'm not too worried, but I desperately want the template to show up. And now I'm starting to worry that all my posts will disappear. Can anyone help?


This Post was written by Celine from Black.Salt

Food Blog S'cool Calender.

The calender is appearing in German. Can someone put it into English please. I'm trying to post the latest Hay Hay Its Donna Day and can't seem to hit the correct button.
In the mean time here is the latest Hay Hay Its Donna Day
http://www.trinigourmet.com/?p=1691

This Post was written by Barbara from winosandfoodies

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Recipe Use

Frankly, I'm not sure whether to be happy or annoyed, but I'm kind of both. I received a cryptic comment from one of my readers today congratulating me for having a recipe in her local newspaper. It was the first I'd heard of it, so I did a Google search on the recipe and found that it was not only in that newspaper but also in my local newspaper and several others around the country. A writer for the Gannett News Service used it in an article and considerately gave the blog's address. It's flattering, and I'm glad she gave the URL, if not my name, but I wish I had known in advance. I missed seeing it in my local paper by a week.

Now doing further research, I find that the AP also picked up the column in at least one newspaper, but completely cut the part about it being from my blog.

My question: Is using one recipe, without the surrounding chit-chat about it, considered fair use? I'm not really considering complaining; the original, uncut article was very flattering. But I'm just wondering if this is really ethical or not.

By the way, here's a link to the article as it appeared in my local paper.

This post was written by SusanV from FatFree Vegan Kitchen

Link to older posts

This might be a very stupid question. However.. I just realised that I don't have a link at the bottom of my page that says something like "older posts", where you can step back and forth between the posts. If someone wants to read older posts, they have to use the monthly archives. Is it possible to have both, and how do you add such a thing in Blogger? Does anyone know?


Anne
Anne's Food

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

[typepad] new posts not appearing on main page

For some unfathomable reason my main blog is no longer displaying new posts on the main page. I have added three since the 2nd and while they are linked in the 'recent post' list in the sidebar and show up everywhere else (individual pages, category archives, etc) they will not show on the front page.

I have done the following to try fixing it:
* verified there are no restriction on the categories published on the main page
* reset the above and republished, just in case
* tried featuring a new post, which should make it always the top post - it actually makes it disappear from sight although it is still there on the individual post page if you know the URL
* added posts
* removed the top post, and added it back when it made no difference
* republished the entire site 3x
* sent Typepad help desk mail and got a lame response (have you republished?) since I believe I told them I had in my help ticket... That was last night and if I get one non-helpful response a day, I will be here with a broken blog next month.

I haven't changed anything in the templates between the 2nd (last post that acts normal) and now. I can't think of much else to even try.

Does this ring a bell for anyone?
Got thoughts?
Want to laugh at my pain?

thanks!

This Post was written by kitchenMage from kitchenMage

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Changing your Header in NEW Blogger

Please hit me with a macaron if this subject has been covered in some obvious place I failed to find.
I want to change my header (finally) and I'm not sure if the info I found here applies to NEW Blogger.
Much obliged for any help and I'm ready to duck or eat any oncoming macs.
I did look in the dropdowns in the sidebar...

Thanks
carolg from Paris Breakfasts


Saturday, September 08, 2007

Blogger--FIrefox--Mac Problems?

A friend who reads my blog with Firefox on a Mac tells me that every once in a while his browser freezes up on the blog and he has to close it and start again; he has broadband. I compose and check my blog in Firefox on a PC and never have this problem. Has anybody had reports of similar problems?


This Post was written by Peter Cherches from Word of Mouth

Thursday, September 06, 2007

Comments in Typepad

I only discovered this morning Typepad have limited the number of comments on any one post to 50. Only a few of my posts have received more than 50 comments. I enjoying reading comments on other blogs and will now miss out on the comments over 50 on the very popular blogs.


This Post was written by Barbara from http://www.winosandfoodies.typepad.com/

Comments in Typepad

I only discovered this morning Typepad have limited the number of comments on any one post to 50. Only a few of my posts have received more than 50 comments. I enjoying reading comments on other blogs and will now miss out on the comments over 50 on the very popular blogs.


This Post was written by Barbara from http://www.winosandfoodies.typepad.com/B

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

New Site for Writers

I have just joined a social networking site for writers, musicians and artists. Check it out.

Great new resource for writers, Inked-In.

This Post was written by Jacqueline Church from The Leather District Gourmet.


Saturday, September 01, 2007

A Blog That May Be Copying Your Posts

(Note from Kalyn: I'm posting this for Karina from Karina's Kitchen - Recipes from a Gluten-Free Goddess. She has applied to join Food Blog School but can't post yet. Karina recently found a number of her posts copied entirely by the blog mentioned below. She also alerted a number of other food bloggers who also found that this blog had been blatantly copying their posts. Karina is sharing information about a site set up specifically to monitor this plagarising blog. Below is her notice about it.)

Hi Fellow Food Bloggers!

I thought it important to share this link:

Fish Creek House Watch

From the blog:

"Looks like Fish Creek House (INNside Innkeeping in Montana) is up to its old tricks again. It's amazing how many posts you find on the site where the content is virtually lifted, word for word, from other websites. Got any example of copyright or Creative Commons abuse? Send it along to fishcreekhousewatch@gmail.com."

The Fish Creek House/Innkeeping blog has been copying blog posts, baking tips, and recipes verbatim, along with food photos (many posts combine the text and photography of two or more blogs). They are posting these as their own work.

Over a dozen food bloggers found their recipes/posts/photos there this week. Many of those posts have now been removed. But many posts remain.

You would be wise to peruse the recipe and recipes/reflections archives at the Fish Creek House and INNside Innkeeping Blogs (I am not including the web link here because I don't want to help their search ranking; just Google them, you'll find them).

If you discover your work (or see the work of someone you know) send the link and alert the blog watch above.

Karina-
Karina's Kitchen

Friday, August 31, 2007

Epiphanous statistical analysis (that Crazy Egg again)

(I apologize ahead of time for the length of this post but I cant figure out if there is a "read more" option. If there were one, I would use it!)

This is a follow-on post to the one I did a few days ago on using Crazy Egg to get a graphical representation of your blog traffic hits over time.

I just wanted to share a couple of nano-epiphanies I have had after looking at where people click on my main page. Note that while a huge amount of my traffic links directly and deeply into the blog without ever going to the front page (google search and google image hits), the elements I have focused on here are shown on each and every page load (wordpress uses PHP to dynamically serve content). I have put the script in the footer php so that it monitors every page that includes that footer (as in every page on the blog).

Epiphany 1: Blogrolls DO matter and they get quite a lot more hits than I ever expected.

Crazy Egg Blog Analysis: blogroll stats


Epiphany 2: People really DO like to use the archive section for navigation.

Crazy Egg Blog Analysis: Archive stats


I looked at my gardening blog Humble Garden which uses a calendar as well as an archive section to see if there is a preference. As this is a brand new blog, sample size is not huge but perhaps there is an indication here that the calendar with clickable dates is a usable and useful design element.

Crazy Egg Blog Analysis: Humble Garden Nav


Epiphany 3: People DO use my search bar, a whole LOT. - if you have one, you better make sure it works! You can also see that people are browsing as well with the nav bar above the search box.

Crazy Egg Blog Analysis: search and nav stats


Epiphany 4: Put your search box near the top and near the "browsable" navigation bar at the top in case a person can not find what they want with their search terms.


Epiphany 5:
(Last one) Make sure to have a link at the bottom to the next page so that people can keep browsing without having to search and search for the archive or some other way of finding older posts. I personally go nuts when I am cruising a neat new blog and then cant find that older posts or next page button.

Crazy Egg Blog Analysis: next page nav at bottom


I hope I have not bored the pants off of you!

KD's 4th bday: Spongebob's scary pants


You can tell here that Spongebob Squarepants was not at all impressed with this post :-), his pants have been bored right off. These are the hazards of blogging.

This Post was written by Nika from Nika's Culinaria and Humble Garden.

Thursday, August 30, 2007

[Invite] World Blog Day

.

Hey ev'body!


A friendly reminder that tomorrow is World Blog Day

This post brought to you by Rachael from Fresh Approach

Monday, August 27, 2007

Photography in Restaurants

I love taking pics of the meals I have in restaurants to act as a sort of visual diary on my blog, however the lighting levels are usually frustratingly low, begging the question - to use flash or not? In my recent post here you can see a mixture of pics taken with and without flash - and even when I've fiddled with them in Adobe Photoshop the levels are pretty rubbish and the colours aren't true. Obviously the ideal would be to always take pics in full natural daylight, but does anyone have any tips to improve the quality of pictures when this just isn't an option?!


This Post was written by Fahara from Souperior

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Issue: Blogger Comments using Firefox

Hi and Happy Thursday!

I'm having problems with Firefox and comments. I use Blogger and blogger templates. Folks coming into Daily Eats on Firefox can't leave comments. When you try to leave a comment in firefox on dailyeats a program tried to download. Food Blog S'cool is using blogger there's no issue with comments.

Anyone else have this problem?
Is there a fix for it?

The site traffic on DE indicates only a 2% of my traffic is using Firefox. But that 2% could want to join in on the conversation and can't do so because of this problem.

Thanks Alanna for pointing this out.

any help is so appreciated!

Thank you so much!
Tery


This Post was written by Tery Spataro from Daily Eats

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Heatmap your traffic!

This is one for those of you who are stat-junkies.

I use statcounter and also have all the stats from my server but when I heard about Crazy Egg and how their service gives you a graphical representation of your hits, I thought I might like to give it a try. I found out about this from Darren over at ProBlogger.

I try all sorts of things like this, often to little effect. I have to say, I have learned a lot by seeing the hits laid over the page.

It will tell you if your ads are being hit, if people are clicking deeper into your site, if people are clicking your photos (I am guessing because they expect them to be flickr-linked OR to right-click to download, something you can not tell with this software).

Here are a few screenshots.

Heatmapping hits

Crazy Egg stats: heatmap

"confetti" annotation

Crazy Egg stats: confetti

All you need to be able to do is access your template and put the code you will get once you sign up for the free trial.

Let me know if you use this and if you have found anything earth shattering!


This Post was written by Nika from Nika's Culinaria

Saturday, August 18, 2007

Titles as LINKS =How To Do It?

I've been noticing in some Blogger blogs that the TITLES ACT AS LINKS.
Is this a trick of only BETA blogs?
If you're doing a search, it makes it more convenient to click on the title and just view that particular post etc.
For example if you look at,
http://muddyredshoes.blogspot.com/ you can click on any post title instead of having to search in the sidebar.
Whereas in my blog, http://parisbreakfasts.blogspot.com/ the titles are not clickable :(
If anyone knows a workaround, I'd love to know it. It's a useful little trick.
THANKS!
This Post was written by Carolg from http://parisbreakfasts.blogspot.com/


Thursday, August 16, 2007

How do you put Stumble upon etc. links on every post

I've noticed that some bloggers have "stumble upon", technorati, diggs and other similar links at the bottom of each post. I'd like to do the same, but am not sure how to go about it.

For example Stumble Upon says...

Installing StumbleUpon links within Blogger/Blogspot
Download this image or
grab another icon and upload it to your blogger account.
Login in to
blogger.com
Click on the template tab (to modify template)
Find the <$BlogItemBody$> tag
Cut and paste the following and replace **LINK TO
stumbleit.gif** with the image your uploaded:



Save
Template Changes
Republish your blog

So here are my questions....

1. where exactly do I upload the icon html to in my blogger account?

2. do I put the code they provide ....

a) between the <>

b) between the $$

c) replace the entire <$blogitemblog$>

Any advice would be welcome.

This Post was written by Ruth from Onceuponafeast.



Friday, August 10, 2007

San Francisco Bay Area bloggers e-mail list update (and volunteer event)

The San Francisco area food and wine bloggers have had several events in the past (picnics, a work day at the SF Food Bank), but the list used to send out invitations has not been updated in some time. Since an event is planned for later this month (details below), it seems like a good time to update the list of SF Bay Area food and wine bloggers. Note that management and distribution of the list is somewhat casual, so there is a chance that your address will be passed to several others. For example, when someone is planning an event, they will get the list from a previous organizer.

If you would like to be added to the SF Bay Area food and wine bloggers list, send me your name (or nickname, if you're trying to stay anonymous), e-mail address, and the name of your blog. Conversely, if you know that you are already on the list and want to be removed, let me know. Please use the subject line "Blogger list." My e-mail address is on this page.

About the event: Amy, Bonnie, Jen, and I are organizing a volunteer day for SF-area food and wine bloggers at Alemany Farm in San Francisco on August 19. We'll help out with weeding, planting, watering and whatever else needs to be done that day. If you did not receive an invitation but want one, please e-mail me (my e-mail address is on this page).


This Post was written by Marc from Mental Masala.

Thursday, August 09, 2007

[Ethics] Troll comments

Those of you who have guidelines that prohibit self-promotional comments on your blog might be interested in this one:

We got a comment today on a Drink of the Week post from last September. The comment itself was so ridiculous (suggesting the use of a top-shelf gin for a gin & tonic) that it raised my b.s. alarms and sent me into sleuth mode.

It took all of 2 seconds to track the IP address to a marketing agency, another couple of minutes to determine that the named brand was a client, and a few more minutes to determine that our purportedly male commenter was actually a female employee of the firm.

I can't imagine any of their clients -- some of which we were actually planning posts about, sadly -- would be happy to know about this, and I'm going to mention as much to the president of the firm when I get ahold of him.

In the meantime, be on the lookout for suspicious comments on any of your booze-related posts. Our 'friend' used the pseudonym "Aaron" and -- given that she's clueless enough to post from her work IP address -- she's probably not clever enough to think of other fake names.

This Post was written by Anita from Married... with Dinner

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Time for another round of advertising talk

Happy midsummer everyone. I'm looking at some redesign stuff that includes adding some *gasp* advertising to the site. I searched the archives here but the most recent discussions about ads are over 8 months old, which is darned near neolithic in Internet years.


I signed up for adsense, am going to sign up for blogher (which I'd rather use) and realize I am relatively clueless on the topic.

Who is using an ad network/service they love or hate?
Suggestions for someone just starting with ads?

Thanks!

This Post was written by kitchenMage from kitchenMage

(Blogger) How to Add More Tag?

I've noticed a few Blogger blogs recently have started using the "more" tag (you know, when you can "click here to continue reading"). I've been waiting anxiously for this feature to become available with Blogger ... how do you do it? Help!


This Post was written by Cate from Sweetnicks

Can readers read your blog? I decided to ask mine

Looks vs. Legibility

Everyone wants people to read their blog, but can they?

Lately I've been using Verdana small for all the text in my blogs posts. Previously, I was using Georgia normal size for what I called "real" posts, Verdana normal for any recipes in the "real" posts, and Verdana small (which I use for all photo captions) when I only wrote a few sentences about a farm photo. But lately I've been posting fewer farm photos with more accompanying text.

While I personally think Verdana small looks nice and is easy to read on my large desktop screen (which is the only place I ever see my blog), I started wondering if the type might actually be too small for some people to comfortably read. (Note: the space between the lines of type, or leading, is set automatically by blogger. I would prefer it to be slightly tighter on the Verdana small, but I think too loose is far better than too tight.)

After putting up a fairly long post and recipe yesterday, I went back and forth trying to decide if I should change the font and/or size or not. Finally I decided to see what my readers had to say.

I asked them to take part in a "five second survey," and so far 120 people have. Their responses have been interesting as well as helpful. I would have liked to have asked more questions (including their age, as several people have mentioned their "old eyes"--I think my readership is slightly older than I assumed), but I wanted to make this as quick and easy as possible to try to get more people to respond.

I did mention that any other comments and criticisms were welcome (noting that Anonymous comments were acceptable), and many people have taken the time to tell me extra things like where they're reading my blog (Google reader, laptop, etc.) and why they chose the answer they did.

Click here if you'd like to have a look at the survey and see how people are responding to what I think is an important question. And of course I'd love for you to take part if you haven't already!

This Post was written by Susan from FarmgirlFare.com

Sunday, August 05, 2007

Republishing content - should I?

I'm getting loads of requests from various recipe sites, restaurant review sites and sydicated food blogs to republish my content. As I make 100% of my living from writing I'm a little reluctant to give away my words for free, even in exchange for links. The latest is for www.chow.com which is pulling together content in Australia.

I was wondering what other peoples' experiences are with these types of blogs and whether they have found any benefits in terms of traffic or financial reward.

Should I be selfish with my content or share it with people who ask?

Saturday, August 04, 2007

[copyright] cease and desist?

I have just discovered that one of my photographs is being used on the front page of a restaurant's website. My website and my photos are clearly covered by Creative Commons licence that allows no commercial use and has various other specifications about how my work may be used by other people.

My first reaction was to write a hot-headed email to the owner of the restaurant demanding compensation. But once I had calmed down a little I didn't hit the send button. Instead I wondered what the best way to approach this problem would be. Should I send a physical cease and desist letter by regular mail instead? Does anyone have ideas or suggestions.


This Post was written by sam from food blog scool

Friday, August 03, 2007

Help with Photography

Hi everyone,

I'm a newbie here and I have learned so much from reading through past posts. What a wonderful resource for food bloggers everywhere!

I need help with photography. I have been posting for awhile and admiring the pohtography on other food blogs. I fear I cannot emulate them as I have but a humble digital camera from a few years ago. I cannot afford an SLR and do not foresee getting one anytime soon. So how can I make my cooking look good in the meantime?

I have a Sony 4 mega pixel digital camera and unfortunately for me and my readers this is how it's going to be for the foreseeable future. I've taken into account previous advise in terms of avoiding flash and using natural light, but my pictures are still sub-par.

I welcome all advice, as I am really at a loss where to go from here. Thankfully I have a good group of regulars who seem to be happy with my meager offerings, but I want to do better. I am but a housewife who can cook, yet I want to portray my food as the best it can be, but in the current circumstances I am at a loss.

All advice gratefully accepted!

Thanks,
Deborah

This Post was written by Deborah from The Humble Housewife

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Is there anyway to remove my Blog from their site ?

Hi everybody !

Few months ago I've notice many of my posts are featured in this site in the Food category I've wrote the site owner several times and asked him to remove my (Blog) and posts from their site and not to archive them anymore.
I've got an answer this week again :.."... then you need to switch it off.(your RSS)
...You submitted your blog for inclusion and it is included, we do not then remove blogs.By submitting your blog, you gave permission for it to be included..."
I realy can't remember me submitting my blog to their site.
Is there any way out ?
Thank you .

This Post was written by chanit from My mom's recipes and more

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Feed updates with Bloglines...

So after reading this post on the feedburner site, I went ahead and followed the instructions to set up the "one-click redirection" of the feed on blogger last week. I use bloglines to as my feed reader and have my own included so we can see how it comes across. However, bloglines is (almost) constantly showing updates on older posts, even though I have not edited them or touched them for weeks.

Anyone know why this might be happening? I just wonder why those posts are showing as being updated/new, but I've not done anything to them. Sometimes it will show 10-15 posts have been updated!

This Post was written by Joe from Culinary in the Desert.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Are you attending the BlogHer Conference?

I hope it's ok to post this. I'm going to be at the BlogHer Conference in Chicago (this Friday & Saturday) would love to meet folks from the Food Blog S'cool if you happen be attending.



There's a conference on photographing food that sounds interesting. Please email me at chiefeater at dailyeats dot com



here's a tip I've been using Flip Video to take videos, very inexpensive video recording device. I found using MovieMaker real easy. I actually like doing video more than writing.

Tery

This Post was written by Tery - chiefeater from Daily Eats


Tuesday, July 24, 2007

[Stats] Can I look at stats from the past?

I use (the free version of) Statcounter. Only I don't look at it with much frequency. Once in awhile I will check in and notice a day (in the past) with a huge spike in visits. Is there a way to look at that day and see where people were coming from? Im always curious.

Thanks.


This Post was written by Rachael from Fresh Approach

For those with career aspirations

Here's a link to a job writing for Chow.....

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/wri/378596971.html


This Post was written by Owen from Tomatilla!

Saturday, July 21, 2007

FeedBurner Integration for Blogger Blogs

A "By the way" for those of you who use Blogger as your blogging platform. Blogger is now integrated with Feedburner, so that if you want Feedburner to manage your feeds, it is now a very simple process to redirect your feed to Feedburner. See the details here .

Why bother with Feedburner? Feedburner gives you amazing stats on your feed - how many people actually subscribe to your feed, what feed services are pulling them (Bloglines vs MyYahoo vs Google Reader etc), how many people actually click-through your feed to your website, etc. Feedburner has an easy - "subscribe to feed using email" service, and many other services to help promote your feed.

This Post was written by Elise from Simply Recipes.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Print Option using Word Press

Hi,

Does anyone know how to set up a print option for recipes using Word Press?

Thanks!


This Post was written by Kelly from flavor a deux


Saturday, July 14, 2007

Cross Your T's and Dot Your I's: completing an image's alt and title info.

Without naming names, I surprised how many food blogs have incomplete image information within their code.

I'm not talking about the over-flogged need to have width and height dimensions specified, but instead the need to have the alt and title information for an image complete.

What's the difference between alt and title for an image?



Not much. The difference comes down to browser interpretation. Some are blind to titles, yet others are not. Filling them both out means your information will be picked up and displayed regardless.


Why bother filing out this info?



  • Mouse-over: hover your mouse over a photo. See the "pop up" that comes up on your screen? Those words are from your alt / title information for an image.


  • Better search results, aka Google Google Google: taging your image with information that describes its content gives you much better ranking in search results.

    Google search and Google image search are my site's #1 and #2 traffic referral, largely because I tag my information (post titles, using headings, and filing out my image data) appropriately.


  • Screen Readers for the Blind: I kid you not. I have received fan mail from visually impaired readers of my site thanking me for my clean code. Clean code means that their screen readers can make sense of what you are throwing up on a blog.

    My true motivation beyond Google to cross my t's and dot my I's is due to my screen reader audience. I want them to know what the images on a post are. Don't they deserve to be let in on the fun too?

    And yes, blind people cook. My visually impaired friend Randall would smack you upside the head with his frying pan (or his cane)if you were convinced otherwise. Besides, their sense of taste is probably more developed than ours anyway.


  • The icing on the cake / extra credit answer: Its all about context. Give me more of the story of your photo. This affords you another opportunity to give more information to your viewers.

    For example, my whisk image alt / title info tells you a bit more about the whisk image I included.

    Same with my coconut pie post. My alt / title info tells you that there is more to the image than meets the eye- hidden raspberries and chocolate.


If filing out this information seems fiddly at first, I assure you it becomes second nature over time. Having this information filled out for an image also says a little something extra about you. I'll leave the deciphering of that as an exercise for the reader. Try it out for yourself.

This Post was written by McAuliflower from Brownie Points Blog.

Feed Reader

I wasn't sure if this was already asked in the archives. I'd like to start using a feed reader to organize the blogs I read. There are so many different clients (Google reader, Bloglines, etc.) out there, I'm curious as to which ones everyone uses.

This Post was written by Amy from Nook & Pantry

Friday, July 13, 2007

[Blogger] A few geeky questions on blogging

Hi Blogger experts out there,

I have not dealt with templates, CSS and HTML for close to two years now and I’m just starting to delve into this as I’m giving my bog a major facelift.

Here are some of the obstacles I’m running into. I hope someone could give me a pointer or two.
1. How do I eliminate the space/gap between the header and the content body of my blog right now?

2. If I continue using the old template in Blogger, would I still be able to use the new sidebar features such as categorizing my previous posts by tags, inverted archives with the latest dates on top etc. If this is possible, how do I go about doing it? Any existing examples or resources that I can check out?

3. Lastly, should there be any reason I should switch to the new template even though I’m happy with the old one right now?

Merci mille fois guys!

This Post was written by *kel from Green Olive Tree

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

[Linking] My URL and Blog Name Are Different

For no logical reason, (other than its just too late to fix it) the URL of my site is different than the name of my site. The NAME is Fresh Approach Cooking. The URL (sadly) is http://www.freshcatering.blogspot.com/



I notice some people who (KINDLY) link to me from their sites, title the link Fresh Catering.



Since I'm not a caterer (thank goodness) and deeply regret (okay, maybe not deeply, but I do regret it) the choice of URLs before I realized what I was doing, I feel compelled to set this straight. I mean, I want people to know my blog as Fresh Approach Cooking, not the other title...



That said, is it rude to point that out to people who have linked to me incorrectly to please change it? Can I say something or should I just be happy anyone links to me in the first place.



Has this happened to anyone else? (Sam? Your URL is Becks Posh Nosh, right? Do people title links as such?)




This Post was written by Rachael from Fresh Approach

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

(photos) open question to headmistress Sam

Sam,

I have noticed recently that your images have become HUGE (~200-250k) compared to what they were a while back. My guess is that this is tactical (anti-scrapers or such) but I figured I'd ask why you are going for this kind of file size. I was going to send mail but I also thought that others might be interested in your answer and reasoning. Because you always have good reasons for such.

Thanks for enlightening me!

This Post was written by kitchenMage from kitchenMage

(Blogger) Things I've Discovered

There are a couple of things I've discovered recently with Blogger that I didn't realize, and (although I may be less techie than most!) I thought maybe other people also might not know about these options.

1. I wanted to add a copyright line to my feed, but I didn't want it to show on every post on my blog, just in the feed. Under SETTINGS/SITE FEED there is a box called Feed Item Footer. You can enter any text or html there that you'd like and it shows up in your feed, but doesn't show on posts. I put this notice in my feed because a site was stealing my entire feed and not only re-posting it, but listing me as an "author" for their site:

This feed contains copyrighted photos and text from Kalyn's Kitchen. If you are not reading this material in a feeds aggregator or by e-mail subscription, the site you are viewing may be guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact kalynskitchen (at) comcast (dot) net.

(Possibly everyone but me knew about this, but I loved the way it worked.)


2. Quite by accident I discovered that in new Blogger, once you post something it immediately assigns that page a permanent url (permalink). You can change the date, time, and even the title of the post, but making any of those changes doesn't change the permalink the way it did with old Blogger. This is something I thought other Blogger users might find it nice to know. This could be very useful for some people.

This post was written by Kalyn from Kalyn's Kitchen.

Blogger Glitch=I can't type in titles to my posts
Someone recently asked me to reset my Blogger RSS settings to the "long" form and suddenly I couldn't post titles to my posts.
I reset back to the "short" form but today I can no longer put anything in the Title window!
Anyone have a solution to this or experienced this Blogger glitch?
PROBLEM SOLVED!!!
It's a work-around
Simply go into Edit HTML mode and type in your TITLE.
The title window IS accessible there for whatever reason??!

This Post was written by Carolg from http://www.parisbreakfast.com/



Wednesday, July 04, 2007

[categorisation] Food Blogs

Some of you will know about the time Mario Batali declared

'I hate food Blogs'

This kind of upset me, because most of the food bloggers I know love him. Anyway - that's not the point of the post. The point is the blanket description "Food Blog".

What does that mean exactly?

Mario's gripe was mostly with some kind of restaurant gossip site as far as I can tell but the term food blog is such a large umbrella.

Now, as far as I can tell - my own blog is a pretty generic food blog because it contains a mix of everything. But other people might not like be banded with that name. What other names could we choose to call ourselves? I think we all chose food blog in the first place, so if it becomes a problem we have to be part of the solution.

Restaurant Review Blogs
Recipe Blogs
City Food Purveyor Blogs(I like this one for me - in fact I have a Bay Purvey section on my site already)
Food Style Blogs?
Diet and Food Blogs
Eating Local blogs
etc...


Has anyone got any ideas to help poor Mario understand that food blog is a very wide term and if he starts dissing it he is going to upset a few people including some of his most stalwart fans.



This Post was written by sam from becks & posh

Sunday, July 01, 2007

[Not so] New Pupils

I have been so behind with adding new pupils to the blog roll.
I apologize.
I have now caught up for 2006. You can find them in the new classes on the blog roll as follows:

Z 06 Zucchini
A 06 Arbroath Smokies
B 06 Bakewell Tarts
C 06 Cream Crackers
D 06 Dabberlocks

Next I will start work on the pupils who signed up this year.

This Post was written by a very sorry for being so flaky Sam from Becks & Posh

Saturday, June 30, 2007

Posting /Editing Problem

Hi everybody !
Since Tuesday, June 26, 2007 I have 3 problems with posting normaly :
1. refering to last Blogger Status here ,my compose mode in every new and old post in my 3 Blogs is still missing.I got only HTML mode to edit my posts. I wrote them, without any realy solution, also wrote to the Blogger Help group about that problem ,I know I'm not the only one. do you have the same problem ?
It's for 4 days now, my last 2 posts look terrible :-(

2. Some of the time (since june 29), there is a delay (of few hours)in time when you write a new post or edit an old one, until you can see it updated.

3.Since this morning My left side Bar (I have only 1 side bar)-the letters are smaller then always..(I mean all the lists) BUT , looking in the archive ,you can see them as they should be. any idea , please ?

I'll be thankful with any help , thank you !
Chanit
* I delet any cookies, temporary files, restart my computer and so on.. :-)





This Post was written by Chanit from My mom's recipes and more

Friday, June 29, 2007

[Blogger] Problems publishing via FTP?

Hey, is anybody else out there having problems publishing via FTP in Blogger (i.e., not Blogspot accounts)? I haven't been able to publish all day long -- figures that I've got three posts ready to go today. Every time I publish, it looks like it's doing it--indeed, the post has an ID--but then it tells me that it's taking longer than expected and never actually uploads to OWF. My other blog on that server is having the same problem. I'm trying to figure out if it's a problem with my account, Blogger, or Earthlink (where OWF is hosted).

This Post was written by Derrick from Obsession With Food

Monday, June 25, 2007

Hosting/Traffic Question

I have two food sites, one with my domain name pointed to a Blogger site and the other domain mapped to a Typepad site. Is there any drawback, with regard to traffic or page ranking, to do it this way, as opposed to hosting the site elsewhere?

This Post was written by Bill from Tea Guy Speaks.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Spam-swarm anyone?

I just today have deleted more than 200 spam.. thank goodness I have akismet and spam karma 2. I usually see maybe 5 in a day.

Was wondering if anyone else has seen a very recent bloom in spam?


This Post was written by Nika from Nika's Culinaria

Monday, June 18, 2007

Blog backup online

Has anyone used Blog Backup Online? It is supposed to keep daily archives of your blog, which would be really handy, but having never heard of them, I thought I'd check in with the crowd.


This Post was written by kitchenMage from kitchenMage

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Firefox 2.0.0.3 - glitch??

I downloaded the latest version of Firefox & now when I access blogger.com it goes into a Chinese format. Does anyone know a fix for this or a setting I can change? I live in Hong Kong so it looks as though the new version isn't picking up my English settings. Thanks!


This Post was written by Heather Chase from The Culinary Chase

http://www.theculinarychase.blogspot.com

Here's What's on the Menu at Blogher 2007 in Chicago

(Edit on 6-20-07, with some exciting news for those who live far away or just can't attend the actual conference. Blogher announced yesterday that there will be a virtual Blogher 2007 Conference using Second Life. You need to download Second Life and register to attend virtually, but it's free. Follow that link for more information.)

Many of you know that Elise, Alanna, and myself are writers for the site Blogher.org. Our job there is to spotlight food content we find on the web, an assignment that has us reading lots of food blogs looking for something unique. Besides running a website to spotlight women bloggers, the folks at Blogher produce conferences about blogging twice a year. (Men are welcome to attend the conference, too.) Some of you may remember hearing about food bloggers at Blogher 2006. This year the ladies of Blogher have allowed us to give a lot of input to create content specifically of interest to food bloggers. Last year I learned an amazing amount about blogging in two days, and this year there's even more food-related content. Below is a post I wrote on my blog about the conference offerings, which I thought would be of interest to FBS readers. (Full disclosure: I do get paid a very minimal amount for writing for the Blogher site. They have not asked me to post this notice here, nor am I being paid to do so.)

Learn About Food Photography
The talented Bea from La Tartine Gourmande and Lara from Still Life With and Cook and Eat will share some of the ways they get those fabulous photos, with Photoshop expert Jan Kabali leading the discussion and throwing in a few tips of her own.

Learn about Technical Tools to Build Blog Traffic
The lovely and generous Elise from Simply Recipes and Vanessa Fox from Google will do a repeat of their popular session from the March Blogher Business Conference about ways to help more people find your blog.

Relive the Menu for Hope with Pim
The charming and well-traveled Pim from Chez Pim will touch down in Chicago long enough to speak at a session on fundraising where she'll share her experiences in raising money through the popular food blogging fundraiser A Menu for Hope.

Hear Food Bloggers Dish About Foodblogging
There's sure to be a lively discussion when Shuna from Eggbeater, Alanna from A Veggie Venture, Susan from FatFree Vegan Kitchen, Nupur from One Hot Stove and Jasmine from Confessions of a Cardomom Addict talk about the ins and outs of blogging about food. That's a lot of food blogging talent, and I'm the moderator for this session, so if you're planning to be there, I'd love to hear what you'd like me to ask this crew of well-known bloggers.

There's more, including sessions about writing reviews, establishing a "brand" for your blog, Blog-to-Book, the business aspects of blogging, web design, and moving to a self-hosted blog, to name just a few. If you want to read about all the other sessions, check out the schedule for Day One and Day Two. Visit Blogher.org to register or get more information about hotels and venues.

Let Us Know if You're Coming!
There are plans to organize some kind of Food Blogger Meet-Up during the conference, although we don't know for sure where or when. I am also keeping an ongoing list of the bloggers who are coming in this post about the conference on my own blog. If you're coming to Blogher, leave a comment here or on my blog to let us know so we can include you in those plans.

This post written by Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen.