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

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.

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

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)

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

You say Entertaining I say Nightmare!

Just saying the word ‘November’ makes the entertaining challenged run for cover. From now until January 2^nd (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 3^rd 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.

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

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.

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

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

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:

• Tastespotting (I LOVE THIS ONE!)


• Digg


• StumbleUpon


• Reddit

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

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

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

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

[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:


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.