Food Blog Survey [US only]

Any US Food Bloggers and their US readers can help out Leena of Leena Eats by participating in her survey designed to explore how U.S. consumers use U.S. based food blogs and U.S. print food journalism. The results of this scientific survey will not only help Leena complete her dissertation for her Masters in Gastronomy, it will also provide results which I think our community might be interested in.

Please consider sharing the survey with your own food blog readers too.

The survey can be found here and only takes a few minutes of your time.

THANK YOU.


This Post was written by Sam from Becks & Posh

How to Fight Against Content Scrapers

Here is a great post from ProBlogger about How to Fight Content Scrapers. Much of this information has previously appeared on Food Blog S'Cool, but this post gathers it together into one place. Hope it is useful.

This Post was written by Kalyn from Kalyn's Kitchen

Wordpress Plugin

Hi all!

You know how some blogs have those links at the bottom of each post that let you save to all the social networking sites (del.ic.ious, facebook, stumble upon, i'm sure there are others I don't even know about)? Is there a Wordpress plugin that lets you add those links to the bottom of every post?

The closest thing I found is a (quite good) WP plugin called ShareThis, but it doesn't work quite the same way -- it opens up a box that then lets you send the post through email/facebook/all that other stuff). I'd rather have a few one-step links.

Thanks in advance for any help!



This Post was written by Katy from Sugarlaws.

Drop-Down Menu

Happy New Year, everyone!

I apologize for sounding like a broken record, but I've read the previous posts on the drop-down menu topic and I still can't figure it out.

The menu shows up looking all great and fancy, but when you click on a link within the drop-down menu, you are not redirected to the link.

Could someone possibly tell me what html I need to add and where to add it within my template so the drop-down menu works properly?

Thank you so much ahead of time for your assistance.

M

This Post was written by Mona from Mona's Apple.

Stats

Technorati isn't working at the moment ... can anyone recommend any other blog ranking service?

Joanna


This Post was written by Joanna from Joanna's Food

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(Feeds) Bloglines Feeds Question

I have a question for all you web pros.

When I click on the Bloglines 'subscribe' link, 5 different feeds come up as options to add to my bloglines. There is also a random feed for an old post from August. What is up with that?? (see picture)


I'd like to narrow this down to just one feed (http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/lxqk)

Does anyone know how to do this?? I'm totally confused. :S


This Post was written by Ali from Divine Domesticity

Printer Friendly posts?

Has anyone discovered a widget for enabling "Printer Friendly" versions of individual posts? or does this require a full website with the ability to archive the printer friendly version of each recipe?

This is the one thing that drives me nuts about posting recipes to my blog. People really need to be able to print out the recipes.

I hope someone out there can give me guidance.

Deb Smith
JerseyBites.com

Why Do You Blog?

I recently read a post from 2005 which asked this very same question.
The blogging landscape has changed so much since then, I wondered what answers to the same question would like in 2008.

So, why do you blog? What drives you to do it?


This Post was written by Sam from Becks & Posh.
I'll put my own answer in the comments to get the ball rolling.

Hosting Fees

Just to give him the headache of a few extra visitors, she says, with tongue in cheek, Here is a warning about increasing your popularity, from Rhulman.com

Because blogger is thankfully free I have luckily never had to even consider this as an issue but gave me a greater understanding of why advertising is used to offset server fees by people who have to pay for the service.

This Post was written by Sam from Becks & Posh

Foh, Boh and elsewhere

Has anyone come across the social networking site FohBoh (Front of House Back of House)? It claims to be the leading social network and business exchange for the restaurant industry and superficially looks OK. I wouldn't mind signing up to a well-subscribed industry site, to add a new dimension to the food blogs, gourmet forums and online mags I check out. But you get sent so much crap these days I thought I'd ask if anyone else has experience of this or other industry-specific networking sites.

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

Blogger Glitch -- Envelope Icon -- Fixed -- See Below

Is anyone else having trouble with the blogger email post link icon?

I have all the settings clicked for the envelope icon (used to enable readers to email your post to others) to appear on my post line (next to info on comments, the little edit pencil, etc.) but it disappeared a few days ago.

Nothing on blogger known issues, or its own support. A lot of threads in the support group about other recent sufferers but their suggested fixes didn't work or were well beyond my comfort and/or expertise levels.

If you have had this experience and have some insight or if you are a lot more tech savvy than me and have a suggestion, I'd love to know your thoughts.

I've emailed Blogger but who knows when I'll hear back. Luckily, it's nothing that really impacts it's functionality.

Thanks for any input.

Update: 1.24.08 -- After much twiddling, attempting fixes in html, etc., and still no emails back from Blogger, I did what someone in the Blogger Help Group recommended as a last resort fix -- in layouts I clicked restore widgets to default settings. Worked like a charm. Luckily I had no customized widgets so there were no complications. If you have this problem with the email or even the quick edit icon, give it a try, however if you've customized widgets you may want to save that code somewhere so you can put it back in afterwards.

Based on my explorations the problem came from Blogger switching to a gif it hosts for the envelope icon. For some reason some blogs had issues with the transition.



This Post was written by Faith from Blog Appetit

Donations/Paypal

.
Since we just discussed all that is Food Blog Ads, I thought I would ask a similar question...do you have a paypal (or other) donation link, and how's that workin' for ya?


(And for the record, I have an ad and wish I didn't. And I don't have a donation link and can't foresee doing so, since I can't imagine who would give me money for my babbling.)


This query brought to you with love, by Rachael from Fresh Approach Cooking

Help needed for weird stuff happening in Wordpress

I recently upgraded Wordpress and have had some weird stuff happen.

First some conetnt for blog posts has dissapeared or partially been erased.

Second, when I go in to edit a post - or delete a static page I get this:

WordPress database error: [Table 'tomatomc_wrdp1.wp_post2cat' doesn't exist]
SELECT cat_ID AS ID, MAX(post_modified) AS last_mod FROM `wp_posts` p LEFT JOIN `wp_post2cat` pc ON p.ID = pc.post_id LEFT JOIN `wp_categories` c ON pc.category_id = c.cat_ID WHERE post_status = 'publish' GROUP BY cat_ID

WordPress database error: [Table 'tomatomc_wrdp1.wp_post2cat' doesn't exist]
SELECT cat_ID AS ID, MAX(post_modified) AS last_mod FROM `wp_posts` p LEFT JOIN `wp_post2cat` pc ON p.ID = pc.post_id LEFT JOIN `wp_categories` c ON pc.category_id = c.cat_ID WHERE post_status = 'publish' GROUP BY cat_ID

Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/tomatomc/public_html/wp-includes/wp-db.php:160) in /home/tomatomc/public_html/wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 391

I have repaired the tables in MySQL but have no idea what this means or what i should do. Any help appreciated.

To Ad or Not to Ad?

How do you feel about advertising on blogs?
Is it an issue that divides the community?
Do you understand the other side's point of view?
What irritates you?
What do you like to see?
Is the financial gain worth the downside of having ads on your blog?
What's the difference between professional and non-professional blogging?
Discuss...?


This Post was written by Sam by request from Kitty. (see previous post's comments)

Ad Free and Proud of it?

You might then be interested in adfreeblog.org



By using the above icon and link on your website you are stating...

1. You are opposed to the use of corporate advertising on blogs.

2. You feel the use of corporate advertising on blogs devalues the medium.

3. That you do not accept money in return for advertising space on your blog.

For more information read the FAQ.

This is intended as an informational post. If anyone would like to debate the issues associated with it further then I suggest it would probably be a good idea to start another post specifically for that conversation.

This Post was written by Sam from Becks & Posh with thanks to Amy for bringing it to my attention.

Facebook Profile

Hi Everyone,

I'm trying to integrate all of my various profiles and personas online, and I'd like to have a single Facebook account that connects to two different email accounts. That is, I'd like to include both email addresses in my Facebook profile and/or settings. That way, people who contact me through different email accounts can find me at one place online. But I can't figure out how to do it? I'd be delighted to get some advice.

Happy New Year!


This Post was written by Emily Stone from Chocolate in Context

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.

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.

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