I'm writing an article for my column at Spot-On entitled "Culinary Fundamentalism" about folks trying their hand at things like making sausage, making cheese, grinding their own wheat for bread, and roasting their own coffee beans. I've read blog articles recording all of these efforts but didn't keep links and can't remember where I read them. If you wrote such an article or remember where you read one, can you send me a link?

This Post was written by Kevin from Seriously Good.

[Reporting] Sitemeter "Unknowns"

I don't have a need for real in-depth stats for my sites so I've been using the free version of Sitemeter. In the Referrals section, the referring page often shows up as Unknown. Can anyone enlighten me as to what this means?

This Post was written by Bill from Weird Eats.

New Blogger for Scaredy Cats?

If you'd like to read how a cautious Blogger non-expert switched over to New Blogger and some tips and tricks (including some helpful websites) for other non-tech types to do the same, please read my post here.

I had some special problems with my Rounders4 template, so if you use that layout, you might want to pop over and take a look.

What to to when your content is taken

Since it's come up quite a bit on FoodBlogS'cool and I've personally had to deal with it a half a dozen times, I thought I'd share a bit about what to do when you find that your blog (in part or in whole) is ending up somewhere else on the web. (See more about Scraping at Wikipedia)

First, establish what is being taken and why. If someone is reposting a single post as a way to share it with others on their otherwise original blog, it's usually not an issue. They may have gone beyond the bounds of "fair use" but a simple email or comment on their blog to request that they use excerpts should suffice.

If you find that your entire blog content is being taken as you post it, then it's time to take action.

1. Look at the site and determine what they're doing. Are they taking your entire feed and reposting it on their site. Are they taking more than one blog's content? Are they using an automated script to post excerpts based on search results? Are they hotlinking to your images? Are they linking back to your site? Are they reposting under a different copyright or CC license? Is the site monetized (ads or affiliate links)?
2. Once you've figured out what they're doing with your content, take action immediately. If there is an email address displayed on the site, send them a note asking to be taken off of their site immediately. Give them 48 hours and check back. If there is no change, be prepared for further work.
3. If the site is monetized, send a note to the "abuse" email addresses for whomever is the ad agency. Adsense, Adbrite and most other big ad companies have easy ways for reporting abuse.
4. If the site is hosted at a site such as blogspot, livejournal, wordpress or other blog service, contact them to report the reposting of your content. You will need to provided links with a 1 to 1 comparison of content. Make it as EASY as possible for them to see that your information has been taken without your permission.
5. If the site is self-hosted under a unique domain, go to DomainTools.com to find out who registered the domain. Send an email requesting the removal of your material to the registrar.
6. Through DomainTools you can also find out who hosts the site. Don't wait until step 5 works, go ahead and send a DMCA notice to the host. Usually you can do it via email, but be double-diligent and print out your email and either snail mail it or FAX it to them.
7. Follow up on ALL of the above if nothing happens.

Now, it looks like this is a step-by-step process, but after you email the site owner, I say do everything else at the same time. Don't wait for the site to be de-monetized, go ahead and send the DMCA letter to the host.

Other helpful hints:

If you notice that your content is not the only site being scraped, see if you can figure out who else's is being stolen. Contact those bloggers and share your information. They may have other tactics to share and of course multiple emails from people complaining about DMCA violations to hosts are taken much more seriously.

Here are some great articles everyone should read:

What to do when someone is stealing your content
How long should a plagiarism case take?
DMCA Primer
Dealing with Website Plagiarism
How to Write an Effective DMCA Notice
Is Someone Stealing Your Content? The DMCA is Your Friend (Thanks for the pointer on that one Elise!)

So, who has an experience to share and other tips?

This Post was written by Cybele from Candy Blog

Has My Blog Been Scraped?

I recently found out through Google Alerts that a site called http://nmbr1gurl.duskdiary.com
is copying entire posts from my blog and giving them her (his) byline. This has been going on since Dec. 2006 and all the posts are mine. Is this what scraping is?
I've sent a complaint to Dusk Diary and to abuse@secureserver.net and really don't know what else to do.
Any help out there?


This Post was written by Christine from CHRISTINE COOKS

Customising 'Comments'

Hi, I want to replace the word 'Comments' with something else in my blog. I switched to New Blogger recently and lost that bit of customisation. Where exactly do I make the change in the template? Thanks


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

An Opportunity to Give Input for Food Blogging Sessions at Blogher 07

Were You There Last Year?

Many of you may remember me writing about attending the Blogher conference last year and meeting other food bloggers. Planning is now getting underway for Blogher 07, which will be in Chicago July 27-28 this year. I'm involved this year as a co-chair of a track called The Art of Life, which will will "be devoted to the passions about which so many of us blog...food, art, photography, crafts, knitting, writing, poetry, music and more."

You did notice the word food in there didn't you? While my specific task doesn't give me control over the food content at Blogher 07, I do get to help screen ideas for sessions and/or presenters for the track of which food will be a part. So naturally, I want to do what I can to help insure there will be a lot of exciting sessions which food bloggers will find interesting.

What's the Blogher conference?
Blogher is a site which features women bloggers, and this year's Blogher Conference will be the third annual conference. However, both the site and conference are not limited to women. Here's the conference agenda, as outlined by Elisa Camahort: "BlogHer's annual event continues to be dedicated to bringing bloggers together, and to celebrate the fact that although there are, in fact, many blogospheres, we can find common ground."

How Can You Help Give Input into the Planning of Blogher 07 or Become a Presenter Yourself?

You have until March 16 to submit ideas about Blogher 07 sessions to the planning committee . Blogher welcomes your ideas whether you're letting us know about a topic you'd love to see covered, someone you would recommend as a presenter, or would be interested in participating as a presenter yourself. Here is the link for full information about how to submit ideas for presenters or propose yourself as a presenter for the Blogher 07 conference.

I'd especially like to encourage anyone who was there last year to get involved to help recommend presenters for the food blogging sessions for this year. (If I didn't have a full time job teaching school in addition to my blog, I'd love to be making the invitation to last year's participants in a more personal way.)

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

TECHNORATI TAGS:
Blogher Conference

Do we have a new scraper? Or just a food blog enthusiast?

UPDATE 2.25.07 --- Food Feed is strictly a "public service." Feel free to contact the publisher through his email if you'd like to add or remove your blog's feed. Please read the comments below for an explanation of the service from the publisher, Sam's request that we restrict "scraping" issues to hints, suggestions, etc., rather than specific urls, and Kat's helpful comments re feeds. -- FJK
------------------------------
Check out this one: Food Feed at http://amr.textdriven.com/

This one positions that all their copy is "selected"

No ads that I could see, at least yet. All feeds are clearly identified with links back to source blogs

Here's a link to the 67 food blogs it is posting feeds from: http://amr.textdriven.com/mixin/feeds

Many of you are listed here.
There is a gmail address for contact if you want to protest, although it is listed so readers can suggest new feeds!

I almost think this is just someone who enjoys getting a lot of food blog feeds who put this together. It is probably pretty benign. But if you don't want your feeds to show up in someone else's public blog without your permission, you might want to contact the publisher: amr.alhindi@gmail.com

I found the site through links to url referrers on my stat program. First time I've seen it.

Do's and Don'ts of Marketing to Bloggers

Following on Sam's most excellent example of stupendously bad marketing to bloggers, I've put together an article on my rarely-updated business oriented blog on the subject: The Do's and Don'ts of Marketing to Bloggers. The article is aimed at marketing and PR professionals and is written as a lead-up to a panel I'm on at the upcoming BlogHer business conference in NYC. A big thank you to those of you who contributed your thoughts on the subject when I put a call out here last December. You'll find many of the suggestions written in to the article.

Please feel to add more thoughts in the comments section of the post. Feel free to copy and distribute this article to whomever you think would benefit from it. Just today I got yet another lame "please promote my product" request and simply replied with a link to this article.

Cheers,

Elise
Simply Recipes

[Transparency] PR Pushing Products (again)

This arrived in my inbox earlier today. I think the sender muddled up my email address with that of Sandra Lee. In light of our recent discussion about PR companies trying to pull the wool over bloggers' eyes - this is a perfect example of how a PR person underestimates the intelligence of the people they are trying to coerce into slave labour. I have not edited this at all except for hiding the identity of the sender and company with XXXs. She didn't even bother to delete the and/or as necessary, who does she think she is kidding?! This is how not to win a blogger over. Agreed?

Hi,

Let me first start off by saying that I’ve read a ton of blogs recently, and it’s really fun to get stories, info, and pieces of advice that are insightful, relevant and/or funny as those on your site.

My name is XXXX XXXXX, and I’m work in marketing for XXXXX Foods developing recipes ideas for a new product called XXXXXXXXXXXX Ready-To-Eat Cheesecake Filling. I’m interested in getting as many recipe ideas and feedback as possible about this product, and I’d like to send you a free sample to get your thoughts / opinions / recipe ideas. If you like it, great, feel free to spread the word. If there are opportunities to make it better, I’d encourage you to let me know what those opportunities are.

A little more about the product I’m so fired up about…think about how cool it is to serve cheesecake for those special occasions. XXXXXX Ready-To-Eat Cheesecake Filling let you have a great tasting dessert any night of the week. Do you love cheesecake but too busy to bake? XXXXXX Ready-To-Eat Cheesecake Filling there’s no need to bake. You just spread it into a pie crust and you’ll have a delicious cheesecake dessert in minutes. Out of your fridge and onto the table in one easy step!

I’ve spoken with a lot of people who I think might enjoy this product, and I asked them whose opinion they respect either on-line, on TV, in print etc, and your blog came up in conversations with a large number of them. I not only asked about whose advice hey listen to regarding “food,” but also whose voice they would consider a good source about parenting, travel, music, all kinds of new products, and the general trials and tribulations of life J

Anyway, let me know if you’d be willing to try out a free sample and provide me with some feedback about what you think. If so, send me an address to send one to, and I’ll ship it out right away.


This Post was written by sam from B&P

[Migration] Migrating from classical template to new template in New Blogger

I'm no technical expert and I'm sure many people will understand much more on this topic than I do, but I thought that some of the less technical readers would benefit from understanding something of what I've just done (with help from my dad) to upgrade my blog. I'm hoping that because I’m not that technical myself, my notes will be more easily understood by others like me. You may still need professional help, but at least this may help you understand the basics. This note is a bit long, but I hope nobody will mind. Clarifications and additions from those more expert would be most welcome.

Like many of us, I made quite a few changes to my template during the months since I started blogging. When Blogger Beta/New Blogger came along I was keen to migrate, but when it came to it I realized that the only way to keep all my changes intact was to select the "classical template" option and paste in my existing template html.

This was fine in terms of migrating to the new service, but I soon realized the drawbacks. Had I started under New Blogger, I would have used a new style template with all the advantages of the page element display and widgets. By keeping the old template, this was lost to me.

Essentially, everything that belongs to your site under Blogger lives in one of two places – in your template or in your postings. The postings are saved separately, so if you changed your template the posts were still there. A problem if you changed column widths or something that meant old displays no longer laid out the same as before, but otherwise OK. But when you changed your template you lost all the hacks and mods you'd made. These might be colours, fonts, code for recent comments, Google Analytics, etc, etc.

Worse still, mucking about with your template could introduce errors that weren't noticed when you made the changes. You could add some code that generated expanded summaries, for instance, only to find much later that your main background colour changed on linking through an external search because some <div> or similar had disappeared or an extra one appeared and this only had an effect under this one particular circumstance, so you never spotted the problem.

Perhaps worst of all is the incompatibility between browsers. I used to check everything in Firefox and IE, but at some point I had to introduce "conditional code" to check for the browser type – a certain path to eventual disaster. And it was ages before Haalo kindly pointed out to me that my site did not render properly in Safari.

The long and the short of it is that standard templates are properly checked against all main browsers (well, that's the theory anyway), whereas we don't have time to run comprehensive checks. So ideally you want a standard template, but you also want your own code.

New Blogger offers the opportunity to come close to this. Headers, footers, sidebar contents, etc. are all coded into "widgets". Now you have three components to your blog – a template, widgets and posts. In theory you could use a standard template and make your personalisations in widgets that are automatically saved (keeping copies in case they screw up!). In practice you probably still need to make some changes to your template, but they are relatively small, compared with under old Blogger. And the new template is much neater, with variables extracted as labels and put in one place. You can even make minor mods in-between widget code sections to segment your sidebar, for instance. In other words, you interfere with your template less and in a more controlled manner.

There are many advantages to this. The fewer changes the more likely your blog is to render at all, to render identically under different browsers and to work properly when stressed through hyperlinking, etc. It also makes it easier to note your changes and re-implement them after changing to a different template. It's easier to debug anything that does go wrong. And you can use widgets!

It was this last point that drove me to change to the new template structure. Finding hacks for the old template will get harder and harder, whereas there are loads of ready-made hacks for widgets. There are even sites out there such as Beautiful Beta which have facilities allowing you to add a hack to your blog in widget form with a single click. So all those features like flickr displays, clocks, calendars, comments, archive drawers, etc. can be added so easily.

So, how did I manage the migration?

Firstly, I set up a new account on my PC as a development testbed. The idea was to recreate my blog and make all the changes without touching my live blog until everything was working properly on the testbed.

So I recreated by blogs (I've got five interlinked blogs carrying my main page, my archives and three specialist areas) in the new directory under boring names such as "mn67e4testmainpage" and, most importantly, changed the settings so they did not index on Blogger, did not generate xml feeds, were not visible to anyone except me, etc. You just go through the settings and make the testbed as invisible as possible.

The way I created my test pages was to start from scratch each time and create a new blog with a new template. The default contains widgets for the header, sidebar and footer. I then took a copy of my current template and split out all of the changes I had made. I put everything I could into widgets, adding new ones as necessary. There were some changes I had to make to the new template - for colours, column widths, navbar hiding, meta coding for site verification by Google Webmaster Tools, etc – but these were relatively small changes and I recorded them as I went. Almost all of the other changes I had made to my old template were either removed as no longer necessary or put into widgets. I took advantage of adding some new widgets at the same time.

Eventually my blogs all looked as I wanted them and I tested the hyperlinks between them by making temporary changes (these must be changed back of course to link to the right urls when upgrading the real blog). It would be easy, of course, to create new blogs under new urls but this would mean losing external and internal links, rankings, etc. So each blog was upgraded under its existing url.

Now I'd done the hard work of creating a parallel set of blogs that all looked the way I wanted, I waited for a quiet time to perform the upgrade. The first action was to save all my templates carefully. Then I posted a note on my main page saying upgrade was in progress.

Working on my subsidiary blogs first and finishing with the main blog, I selected the "Customise Design" option and clicked on "Upgrade Your Template". You get a stern warning about all template changes being lost, but of course this didn't matter because I'd already used all my changes in the testbed design and in any event had a fallback option to the classical templates. I chose the same basic template so the structure was the same. Working quickly but carefully, I added the template changes first – widening the columns, changing colours, and feeding in the other bits of code. Then I worked on the widgets. By and large the 'widgetable' code appeared in widgets automatically, but some were in the wrong place and needed to be drag-and-dropped into place. Then I simply transferred the widget code from my testbed to the live blog, bit by bit, until my blog was fully migrated.

Whereas I spent about a week on and off building the testbed – because there are some significant differences between the old and new templates that you have to master - the actual migration took only about 2 hours and was smooth as clockwork. I've had no complaints yet and was delighted to receive an email from the ever-helpful Haalo telling me that I was now rendering properly on the Macintosh. I now have blogs that are all in the new format, have relatively few changes to their templates and are ready for whatever new code is made available for me to implement as widgets.

I'm sure I've missed some things here and confused some others, but I'd be happy to answer any questions and correct errors. The point of all this is to encourage anyone who is using the classical template under New Blogger to go the extra step and upgrade the way I did. As long as you are careful and methodical, I'm sure you won't regret it.


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

Search Engine Optimization for your blog

So, as you learn more about the technical aspects of blogging and the search-o-sphere (my term so dont freak if you have not heard it before) you will learn one thing consistently - that you know even less than you thought you did on your most modest-ego day.

You could get lost for days in all the very germane topics on ProBlogger - how to make money, how to increase page rank, why you want to increase page rank or traffic or ad payout or vague kharma, etc.

I have decended into recursive fits of anxiety over doing SEO or search engine optimization. Because I use Wordpress on my own server, this can be remedied in a methodical manner but just when I think I have figured it out and thought I had done the "Right" thing, I find that I have missed something.

If you are lost in SEO-land, there is a tool (actually a set of tools) that will help you run diagnostics on your blog SEO status.

Surf over to SEO Tools and start with their free tool called "SEO Analyzer". The other tools on the nav bar across the upper part of the page are good too.

SEO analyzer will tell you if your blog is optimized, by how much, and, more importantly, just how it sucks, if it does indeed suck (as my blogs usually do at some point :-).

If you do not know what SEO is, dont worry about it. Its not important until you are ready to deal with it.

Those of you running Wordpress, you can install nofollow language with a plugin that will help with your pagerank standings and SEO - here is a link to one of those plugins (I am running WP 2.1 with this plugin and it works fine, right now).


This Post was written by Nika from Nika's Culinaria

[ranking and search engines] Headings in Google search results

In the event that someone should come one of my posts by doing a google search, the heading of that google listing appears as the date on which I published that post.

For example, should someone google "sweet sour valentine," a post from my blog will appear in the search results under the heading "Tuesday, February 6, 2007."

Is there a way for me to make a change to my blogger template so that the title or the first sentence of my post appears as the heading?


This Post was written by sarahalisonmiller from Food and Paper.

New food blog scraper site

I have found some of my content scraped onto this site (not using the real URL so they do not get link-goodness from this post) "cooking hyphen joy dot net".

They have not yet monetized (ads on site), as far as I can tell, but they may be working up to that.

You might want to keep an eye on it for your content (looks like its a mash-up from technorati tags). I can not find any contact info. Ihave not yet done a whois.. might when I have the time but was thinking I would wait until they monetized to complain.


This Post was written by Nika from Nika's Culinaria

[Transparency] PR Gifts for Bloggers

Hop over to 'Almost Vegetarian' to read:
For all the food bloggers who have ever, or will ever, encounter a public relations (PR) person.

Previous discussions on this subject can be found in the archives situated in the blogroll, including some under the heading transparency and blogging etiquette.

Hope some of you will find it to be an educational read.


This Post was written by sam from Becks & Posh

Labels in New Blogger

I've finally managed to switch to the new blogger, and really want to make use of the 'labels' function for catagorising, and sorting, my posts. However I can't work out how to format the labels' appearance on each post. As a default setting, the labels appear directly under my post body without a paragraph break, which I'd like to change - ideally I'd like to have paragraph break AND have the labels only appear on fullpost pages, as I can do with technorati tags - anyone know how I can do this?


This Post was written by Fahara from Souperior

[Photography & Pictures] Payment and Attribution for Photos

Quite a few friends have asked me what to do if a publication asks for permission to use their photos. My answer is always the same, and I thought I'd just put it out here for discussion:

- Ask them what they pay for photos. You're not going to make a ton of money on the sale of a photo, so it's not really the amount as much as it is proving a point that your photos are worth something, and that publications need to have a budget for that. It helps photographers everywhere when people ask this question. And it helps publications to know that web photos are not "freebies" that can be used instead of professional photos.

- Insist on attribution. And try for a www link as well.

- Make sure you understand the scope of where the photo is going to be used (one-time use, on a single www page or on multiple properties, in print, unlimited use, etc).

- Go for it!

I still stand by these guidelines, but would say that they are loose guidelines, to be considered but not necessarily followed to the letter of the law.

A couple days ago, I was approached by a newspaper and was offered attribution but no pay*. And I went for it. Even though I know that it wasn't going very far to help "the cause" of getting photographers paid, I was getting attribution in a print edition of nationally read, top 5 newspaper. In my mind, it was a win for me as it would help to build my publication portfolio, and I didn't have to do any extra work for the credit.

It was the first time I had allowed a print publication to use a photo of mine without paying.

I also wanted to go easy on the publication, giving them a break for at least tracking me down and asking if they could use my photo - unlike Mrs. D's experience last year.

*I should say that I was offered this after directly asking the questions. I have never seen a media org answer questions about pay, attribution, or use unless they are asked about it.

What has been your experience when dealing with traditional media on photos you've taken? Have you had any success?

This Post was written by Jen Maiser from Life Begins @ 30.

[promotion] Why a newsletter?

I don't know why, but recently 1) my traffic has increased a lot and perhaps related to that 2) I've gotten requests for a newsletter. I already supply my RSS feeds via email as a subscription option using Feedburner, but I gather this is not what is being asked for.

So..my questions for those of you nice people who have a separate newsletter that is not just taking a feed or something of your blog posts -

• - what are the the advantages of having a separate newsletter? Does it bring more visitors/fame/fortune/karma?
• - What do you put there that you don't put in your posts?
• - how frequently do you send out your newsletter?
• - do you put a copy of your newsletter on your site for non-subscribers to access?

This Post was written by maki from Just Hungry.

(New Blogger) Does New Blogger Have Gremlins?

I recently had a strange experience with new Blogger and I wondered if this had happened to anyone else (or if anyone has any idea why it happened.) I posted this Weekend Herb Blogging Recap on my blog Sunday night, and as I always do, I made the location headers in the post large and green. They appeared that way on my blog on Sunday night and again on Monday when I posted something else.

On Monday at school I looked at my blog, and lo and behold, all the headers (except one) had changed to normal size and black. I thought it might be an IE viewing thing (I use Firefox at home) but when I got home it was also that way in Firefox. How could this happen?

BTW, I just threw up my hands and changed the one large green one (Vienna) to normal size black too, but I am completely puzzled.

This Post was written by Kalyn from Kalyn's Kitchen

[Aggregator] Blog Appetite Expanded for English Speaking Blogs

A French favourite translates to English

you can add your blogs here:


If you open a user's account you can bookmark, tag and manage your own favorites.


Note from the creator Laurent:
I wish all english written food blogs will appreciate it as much as french food bloggers. Blog-appetit.com exits since 2 years and more than 900 food blogs are already followed everyday by more and more person. It helped all the french written blogosphere to know each other, exchange and create a real community. It has really some good benefits for new comer in the foodblog. it provide faster to them some visibility.I made a blog-appetite's blog to maintain some explaination and news.



This Post was written by sam from becks/posh