[Calender] Entertain MeMe

Save the second week of November for entertaining. Well, really, I'm just counting on you to entertain me!

I have a gift certificate to Williams-Sonoma and I need my food blogging friends to help me spend it. Sound familiar? Please write about your entertaining must haves and email a link to your blog sometime between November 7 and November 11. I'll post a wrap up by Sunday evening.

For all the details on the EntertainMeMe visit Taste Everything Once.

This post was written by Jennifer from Taste Everything Once

Culinary Confessions

David Lebovitz started it but I happily stole it. Rather than make it a meme, I'm offering it up to any and all food bloggers who care to participate. All you have to do is post your own confessions. Post whenever you want, there is no date for this.

I'm posting the image I used here, feel free to snag it, manipulate it to your liking, use your own or none at all:

Enjoy and remember, a little confession is good for the soul!

This post was written by Amy from Cooking with Amy

[Hosting] [Typepad] Hosting problem & moving to Movable Type

When I eagerly bought my domain name (from Go Daddy) I also signed up for a hosting package.

I'm now thinking it might have been the wrong thing to do. Firstly, am I correct that if I'm still using Typepad, I don't actually need to host the website, I can simply redirect the DNS settings at www.silverbrowonfood.com to silverbrowonfood.typepad.com ?

Second, I really want to upgrade Movable Type. My problem is that it looks a tad confusing installing it, so ideally I'd like to go with a host where it comes installed as part of a package - Go Daddy is not currently one of those companies. However, I'm concerned that if I try to move host, my site will collapse - is this unfounded?

So my questions are these
If I stick with Typepad, and don't do the MT option, do I need a host or can I redirect my DNS settings?
Has anyone tried installing MT themselves? How tricky is it?
Should I move hosts away from Go Daddy to another host that has MT installed as part of a package? Or, should I stick with Go Daddy and try to install MT myself or get MT to do it?

Silverbrow from Silverbrow on Food

[General] Posting recipes

My food blog mainly exists for me. I started it because I would make something really yummy, but when I wanted to make it again I could never remember where I got the recipe. Having a blog gives me a searchable, indexable place to make notes about what I make when and for who.

Now I have friends who read my blog, and sometimes they ask for recipes. Generally, I just scan the recipe into a PDF and keep it in a separate section of my site, then I pass on the URL to whoever asked for the recipe. I didn't start the site to post recipes, but I don't mind sharing, especially when it's something really good.

I'm nervous about copyright issues so I don't post recipes directly to my blog. If I wanted to post a recipe from a cookbook, magazine, or other site, what steps do I need to take?

This post was written by Sheri from Pork Cracklins

knives?

Hey y'all:

Okay, this isn't technically a blogging question, although I'm sure it will show up on my blog.

I want to buy a good knife. A really good knife. Believe it or not, all the meals I've cooked and posted on my blog have been with a flimsy Fred Meyer set I bought five years ago. And I've been meaning to buy a better one. But money, you know.

Now, since I couldn't go on my vacation to New York because of my stupid sprained ankle, I decided it's time to treat myself.

I'd like a good, solid knife, for chopping and slicing, etc. I don't care what country it comes from. I don't want to spend more than $200. (Even that...) I want it to last.

So, since this is the most food-savvy group of people I know, does anyone have suggestions? Fire away.


Shauna from Gluten-free Girl

(Event)Hay Hay It's Donna Day

Everyone is invited to participate in the Donna Hay cooking day on 19th November. Details of the event, with Donna's Self Frosting Cupcakes recipe, have been posted at Winosandfoodies.

This post was written by Barbara from Winos and Foodies

[Wordpress] gurus, please help

Howdy WordPress users (and maybe Movable Type folks, too):

I've got one niggling problem on my new Wordpress site: the background images intermittently don't show up. That is, I have a white space where the masthead photo should be, and a red background where my tiled .gif image should appear. I can force the error if you click on this URL with an extra dot and slash after the domain:

http://professorsalt.com./

Problem is, this error can also happen when the URL is typed in correctly. I have no idea why. Try again, with this link:

http://professorsalt.com

Any clues?

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

(Blogger) Sidebar Issues

Today, yet again, my sidebar is not only dropped, it's centered after it's dropped. I know sometimes the size of pictures can cause this, but yesterday it was fine before I posted, and then after I posted last night (with no pictures added), it dropped. Anyone have any ideas on something I might be missing?


This post was written by Sweetnicks from Sweetnicks

[Typepad] Problems with typelists - I think

I've recently bought a url and went through the process of mapping my domain from typepad. My blog address at typepad was. So far so good.

However, tonight I was trying to add in a new typelist and something odd happened. When I looked at www.silverbrowonfood.com it was different to silverbrowonfood.typepad.com, with the former not reflecting the changes I made to the typelist. Whereas when I looked at www.silverbrownfood.com/silverbrow_on_food/ it mirrored the typepad address. This had all been happening in Firefox so I shifted over to IE to see what happened there.

It gets even more confusing. In IE, the typepad address looks as I want it - that is, with the tag cloud. However when I look at www.silverbrowonfood.com and www.silverbrownfood.com/silverbrow_on_food/ neither reflect the changes I made to the Typelists.

It's 12.50am and I'm doing my head in.

Can't figure out template to suit Firefox/Internet Explorer

I'm going bonkers, I can't seem to get the formatting down to suit both firefox and internet explorer. Whenever I change template to look good on IE ( what I use), it looks bad on firefox. And when I go to change something on FF (only can do this on bf's computer, can't download on computers at work) makes it look crappy on IE. Friends have been nice enough to mention to me when posts are all the way to the left in firefox. Please help! I'm losing my mind over this!
M of Mona's Apple.

[Search Engine] Allowing spiders on archive pages

Just a quick question...

I get a lot of traffic from search engines piping people to my archive pages. In the past, I've let search spiders scan my archives.

The problem is that that's not how I want people browsing my page. I'd prefer they read the individual posts. I'd like to "drive" traffic a little more, but I'm hesitant to lose readers and others discovering my page from search engines.

Your thoughts?

This post was written by William from Never Trust a Skinny Chef...

How Much is Your Blog Worth?

Food Blog S'cool is worth $57,018.54.
How much is your blog worth?

This post was written by Sam from Becks & Posh

Food Blog S'cool in the News

Food Blog S'cool, Moveable Feast, Chez Pim, Man Who Cooks, She Who Eats, The Food Palate, What I Cooked Last Night, Esurientes, The Scent of Green Bananas, Chocolate and Zucchini, Food Porn Watch, Words to Eat by, Il Forno, Is My Blog Burning, Kitchenhand, and Cook Sister have all been written up in The Age, theage.com.au, in an article called, "Blog in, don't wait".

Congratulations to all! It's a great article.


This post was written by Elise from Simply Recipes

Mac to PC blogger issues---arrgh.

Hey, can anyone tell me if my website is showing up strange on a PC? It's fine here on my trusty Mac, with Firefox. But when I checked it at work today, all the links, my profile, and the extra stuff was shoved down to the bottom. We've been having issues at work, so it could be that. But if not,

then can someone tell me why?!

Thanks, y'all.

This post was written by Shauna from Gluten-free Girl

(for all food bloggers) Mealme.com

I noticed something that I thought was kind of fun on Food Porn Watch and thought others might like to do it too. (After all, you great food photographers have all those shots stored on your computers.) It's called Mealme.com and it's a site for anyone (worldwide) to submit a restaurant photo and review of that restaurant. You can tag it with whatever you want so other like minded people can find it. They only accept submissions of restaurant foods (no home cooked food), (and don't publish urls so it's not a way to publicize your blog,) but I thought it was fun. I submitted a photo yesterday (my very first ever restaurant photo, by the way) and they published it today.

This post submitted by Kalyn of Kalyns Kitchen.

[Photography] After Dark

The weather's turning in these parts and I'm really struggling to get decent pictures without natural light. Any quick and dirty tips on taking successful photos after dark?

I've tried overhead light and things turn out yellow. With a flash things are just scary. Any ideas from the pros out there?

This post was written by Jennifer from Taste Everything Once

Using Flikr account photos on Type Pad blog?

Hello. I have recently signed up for FLIKR but I don't know how to lead people there. Or how to put it on the right so that people can visit my photos when they're lonely.

Also sometimes people make a square collage of a number of photos...how is that done?

I am not really very computer literate, hopefully your answers can be really plain, Thanks!!

[calendar] upcoming, mid to end october...

hey hey all! just thought i'd pop in with some upcoming virtual food blog events as a reminder...the past few months, events have slipped right past me, and now with all this time on my hands, i have no excuse, LOL!

and of course, dine and dish shall be back up and eating very shortly as well (but will it be as fun as celebrity host sam's rachael ray for a day?!?!) . :)

THU OCT 20 blog party - the big game

FRI OCT 21 sugar high friday no. 13 dark chocolate

SAT OCT 22 cooking the old fashioned way

SUN OCT 23 is my blog burning? no. 20 souffle

MON OCT 24 slashfood the great pumpkin

TUE OCT 25 does my blog look good in this? no. 10 at chubbyhubby

MON OCT 31 end of the month eggs on toast extravaganza

MON OCT 31 the great pumpkin carve/cook-off

*phew* so much fun! so little flour! got to get to the market! ;)


:: this post was deliciously brought to you by sarah from the delicious life ::

Adding "Read More"

Your blogger template should already have most of what you need. But the key element is likely missing or commented out.

Add this bit of code in the <head> section in the top portion of your template:

<head>
... some stuff ...

<MainOrArchivePage>
span.fullpost {display:none;}
</MainOrArchivePage>

... more stuff ...

</head>

That should enable the read-more capability.

Then, in each post, you'll need to add two snippits of code. The first snippit goes where you want the break to occur and the second at the end of the post:

This sentence appears in main blog.
<span class="fullpost">
This and all following sentences appear in the archive until this appears:
</span>

I can't guarantee this will work because your template may be different from what I've worked with, but this did it for me.

This post was written by Kevin from Seriously Good

Redesign?

Has anyone had an entire site redesign? Green is my color, and I designed my green-themed site with a modified Typepad template, and then discovered Pim, who uses nearly the same template. Now that my readership is increasing, I want something that is a little more unique, but I still want people to feel comfortable when they return; we are so visually driven. I usually remember a site as soon as I go back, even if I can't remember the name. I was just wondering if anyone has been through this and can offer suggestions. Also, for anyone using Typepad, if you could offer some advice for a nice photo montage banner, I would love the help; I'd like to keep the site name there, but have the background a photo or series of photos; I think this would be a good place to start.

This post was written by Lisa from Restaurant Widow