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

[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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.



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



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.



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.



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.



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



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.

[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

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

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

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



"confetti" annotation



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

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/

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.

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.

[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

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