Calendar Widget

I got rid of a lot of junk in my side bar with my most recent redesign. But I'm thinking one thing I'd like to add would be a calendar widget so I could post local food events. It would NOT be a calendar of blog posts.

I've tried playing with the Google calendar but when I attempt to embed it, it doesn't work very well when it's in a very small format (less than 300 pixels wide).

Can anyone recommend a better calendar widget to use in a sidebar on a Blogger blog?

This Post was written by Amy from Cooking with Amy

Another Photo "Borrower"

Hi all,

I just wanted to make you all aware of another photo "borrower" out there. Her blog is at keepcalmandcarryonblog_dot_com. The owner used a photo from my blog in a recent post called "Pet Project". It was a photo of mac & cheese. She did not ask permission, of course, or I wouldn't be posting this. No, instead, she just cropped off the copyright info on my photo.

I asked her to remove it, and I pointed out that she should know to ask first since she also has an "all rights reserved" copyright on her blog. She didn't respond, but she did replace my photo with one from someone else's blog.

There's at least one other photo in that post alone where she cropped off copyright data so she could use it. That's the part that irritates me the most. If she'd left it on, at least viewers would know whose work it was!

So, maybe take a look and see if any of your photos are on her site.

This Post was written by Dawn from Dawn's Recipes

Amazing--NY Mag Online wanted Free Photos

I was contacted by someone from NY Magazine online because they're featuring a Keralan restaurant in London I'd written about for a travel piece. They wanted to know if they could use my food photos "with credit, of course." I replied that I'd be happy for them to use the photos for whatever token fee is standard but that I couldn't give permission without at least an honorarium. I got a reply that they don't do payment for such things. Does everybody think everything is free?


This Post was written by Peter Cherches from Word of Mouth

Adding a small google map to a post?

Hi all, I've started another blog that I really enjoy covering places to eat in my town (Chengdu, Sichuan). At the end of each post I give the adresses in Chinese but am getting feedback from readers, especially those who don't read Chinese or those unfamiliar with the city, who are having a hard time figuring out where places are. So I am trying to figure out how to add a link to a google map on the post instead.

I can copy the link from the google map and insert it in the post, but the map is really big (almost another picture) and it makes the post look strange. Does anyone know how I could make the map smaller, or an obvious link to a map?


This Post was written by Pepper from Frugal Cuisine.

Love Her or Hate Her: Julie Powell

Hi Everyone,

I'm writing a piece for ABC News on the blogging community's split of Julie Powell lovers and haters. Do you feel strongly one way or another? Please respond in the comments or if you wish you can email me at monasapple@gmail.com or monica.nista@abc.com. Thanks ahead of time for your help. I will hyperlink directly back to your blog if I use your quote and this story is sure to be a clicker today. The more the merrier. Don't be shy!

Thanks ahead of time for any and all input you may have,

Mona of Mona's Apple

Support a fellow food-blogger

Hey all. I'm sure you know Sarah, of the Delicious Life. Well...she is in a contest to be the spokeswoman for a wine company and she needs your vote (and about 4,000 additional votes.)

Let's rally behind our girl and get her this gig! Vote at http://bit.ly/diFdW

(It's a super cute video from a super cool girl. Now just go vote. xoxo)


This Post was written by Rechael from Fresh Approach Cooking

MegaNom

Has anyone heard of MegaNom? (meganom.tumblr.com)

One of my recipe photos appeared on their site. It does link back to the recipe on my blog, so I guess it's not a bad thing. I'm just always leery about sites like that. I can't decide if I want them to take down my photo or not.


This Post was written by Dawn from Dawn's Recipes

IReallyLikeFood.com

Has anyone heard of them?

That got in touch with me saying that they'd like to feature my blog and we'd mutually discuss what would go up. I asked them to let me know what they'd like to cover to which they didn't reply in detail but only said that they appreciate my responding. Just today I found that they've copied the content of all my posts and posted it verbatim as a sub domain (http://purplefoodie.ireallylikefood.com/)

Really wanted to know if any of you have been contacted by them and what has your response been like. For now I've sent them a mail asking them to pull down the content. I'm getting anxious about having my content there. I should have been more careful. :(

This Post was written by Shaheen from The Purple Foodie

Header-Image problem

I have finally got round to changing my blog to the (no longer new) 'elements' template/layout version of Blogger and it's causing me a bit of a headache regarding my header.

I am using an image which incorporates my blog name as my header, and have selected the elements option 'have instead of title & description' as otherwise they appear in stark black font over the top of my image - regardless of what font colour I select for them! I don't want them to show at all, but this option I have taken at the moment means there is no text for search engines to utilise, so my ranking is lousy and if you search for my site the description text is a rather useless "skip to main | skip to sidebar. Souperior" etc, rather than my own description.

Can anyone tell me how I can keep my title & description visible to search engines but not have it showing up through my lovely header image?

This Post was written by Fahara from Souperior

Split Posts - Why?

I've seen more and more blogs lately with split posts - the kind where you have to click on a link to read the rest of the post. I guess I'm in a minority here, but this really bugs me. I want to sit and relax and read the posts, and to have to navigate to and from the main page is a pain. Can someone please tell my why this is considered a good thing to do? I've seen it encouraged - so I'm just wondering why.

Thanks!


This Post was written by Cyndi from Cookin' with Cyndi

Recipe Search Engine

Hi all,

I read about a new recipe search engine on lifehacker.com today. It's called Food.com. It's still in beta, but it looks pretty good. Search results show an image thumbnail ( if available), ingredients, ratings, etc., but still require the viewer to click through to the original site for the full recipe. Seems like a decent site to me, and I've requested they index my blog. Thought I'd pass on the info.


This Post was written by Dawn from Dawn's Recipes

Help! Stats on subscribers?

Hi all. I know, it's been a (long) while...

Words to Eat By went a little dormant once my son, Harry, came along, but now that he's practically in college I'm ready to revitalize it and make a new push. Someone asked me the other day how many subscribers I have--I'm working on a book proposal and it could be a valuable thing to cite--but I have no idea. I've done a little investigating, but with the myriad ways readers can find our content it seems almost impossible to aggregate a total number. Bloglines, Feedburner, Google Reader, etc... Does anyone have any suggestions?

This Post was written by Debbie from Words to Eat By.

Blogger 'Layouts' - help!

I have just (and very belatedly) switched to the 'new' Layouts version of blogger, which replaced the old format aaaages ago. So far I have yet to find a useful function of it in all honesty, and am having to replace lots of old coding done by a friend of mine who is no longer around to help. I have two problems:

1) On my sidebar, any content which comes from blogger itself refuses to be centralised, unlike the rest of the sidebar content. Examples are the links to subscribe and my archive list - does anyone have an idea how to solve this?

2) I no longer have the function of expandable post summaries - the links I put on longer posts so I didn't take up a full front page with long posts. The blogger helpdesk says to add this coding:

< b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == " item" '>
span.fullpost {display:inline;}
< b:else / >
span.fullpost {display:none;}
< /b:if >

But it is very unclear as to where, and I have tried multiple options, all of which fail miserably and do very odd things to my site overall. Where do I put this code?!

Any help much appreciated! :)

This Post was written by Fahara from Souperior

Moving on

Some of you will remember me from when I was an active food blogger - about two years ago on back for another at least three years. And I still keep up with my food blog reading. But anyone visiting Tomatilla! in the past two years will have been disappointed since I haven't been keeping up with it since I started working as editorial director for a startup. Well, I got laid off a couple of months ago and will be revitalizing Tomatilla! soon. But I also have to pay the bills, so I launched a coffee site that is somewhere between a blog, and a news magazine. It is very early days yet, but I would LOVE if you came and looked and gave me some feedback. By the way, for Wordpress users, the theme I used for the coffee site is atahualpa and it is the most customizable theme I have ever seeen and totally free.


www.getin2coffee.com


This Post was written by Owen from Tomatilla

Google Followers

In case anyone using Google Blogger was wondering why their followers total has fallen today...

...it's probably not because your readers are deserting you. There's been a change as a result of something to do with Google, Twitter and information disclosure that has caused Google to set the status of all followed blogs to "Anonymous". Once everyone has changed their followed blog status entries back to "Public", the links will be restored and follower numbers will rise back to previous levels. Well, that's the theory.

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

A really good conclusion to a plagiarism case

My last couple of posts here were about someone who seems to have no sense of wrong about copying recipes and so on, even after receiving complaints. That person is still posting copied recipes, though greatly stripped down now, and still getting tons of Twitter followers thanking her for her great recipes and so on. Really a downer. But today I had a very positive experience with another person, so I thought I'd relate it to show that sometimes these exchanges can end on a positive note.

So, someone had copied 4 of my posts and a couple of the photos that accompanied them, back in October or so. I didn't realize it because the person who copied them was smart enough to not link to me directly, but a reader alerted me to the copies yesterday. Not the first time this has happened by any means. Last night I pulled out the standard 'please stop that, copyright, etc.' email and sent it off, not expecting a response anytime soon.

This morning, I got a contrite message from that person, who apologized and said he had taken down the offending posts. But he also said this (edited a bit to protect his identity)

Your message has given me a new perspective [on my blog]. You see, I copied [the articles] back when I was in my gangster stage of life; I was lazy and if i could trick the people around me it was all fine, but now I'm different. I found [programming], which allows me to make things without copying from others. What I did before was bad, but now I'm different, and your message has given me the idea to completely redesign my site! All the suspect articles have been removed and I am in the process of rebuilding [my site].

I am guessing that he's pretty young...and if this incident has really helped to change his thinking, it's a really great! (And yes his site is indeed down at the moment.)

Anyway, his response really made my day, and it made up for all the other, less positive similar situations.

Email subscription service/plugin for a Wordpress blog?

Hi everyone. I've been trying to find an email subscription plugin or service for a site I launched in December - The Gastronomer's Bookshelf. As the site is for culinary book reviews, I know that many readers will want to subscribe to updates, but might not be used to RSS.

I've been testing the Subscribe2 plugin, behind the scenes, but I feel its interface could be quite daunting for new users (it lets you choose which categories you subscribe to by email, and as the site has a very large number of book categories to choose from, the list is daunting!).

I know I could just direct the RSS feed to Feedburner and let people do a Feedburner email subscription, but I was wondering if people know of anything else that might offer a little more flexibility (eg, I'd love a subscribe field on the front page where people could just enter their address and click "subscribe").

Any suggestions appreciated.

This Post was written by Duncan from Syrup & Tang

Michelin Break Their Own Embargo

It's not exactly something you'd normally expect, but the Michelin awards for Great Britain & Ireland 2009 - due for announcement next Wednesday - have been published this weekend... on the Michelin news website. Still, as almost every change was trailed in advance on several food blog sites, I suppose there's not much point keeping it secret.

Alain Ducasse being tipped for 3* status and Nathan Outlaw getting a tip this year instead of his second star were the major surprises, although we appear to have been awarded more new first stars than for many years. I'm personally delighted to see Fergus Henderson of St. John amongst this list - about time too for someone ranked (albeit a bit excessively to put it mildly) above Alinea, Troisgros and Martin Berasategui in the San Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants 2008.

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

This Post was written by Joanna from Joanna's Food


Can anyone tell me how to disable comments in an individual post in blogger? I don't want to disable all comments, just on one or two archive posts that attract staggering amounts of inappropriate diet-related advertising type comments ....

Thanks
Joanna

Tracking amyrecipes

Following up to the previous post, I've compared her most recent few recipes and the source where she copied them from. (No live linkage to her site for obvious reasons)
I found the sources within the first 1-2 results. Just to show how busy this person is. (Oh, and she also stole her Twitter avatar pic from leahdemilio, though she's since replaced it with another photo, which I wouldn't be surprised is also nicked from someplace.)

BTW this output is just from the last 2 days. I didn't have the time or will to go back further.

'Grilled Chicken Recipe with Sage, Rosemary, and Garlic Dried Herb Rub' - http://www.southbeachrecipe.info/grilled-chicken-with-sage-rosemary-and-garlic-dried-herb-rub: original - on Kalyn's Kitchen (heavily edited but the same recipe)

'Zucchini and Tomato Gratin' - http://www.southbeachrecipe.info/zucchini-and-tomato-gratin: original -
on Pinch My Salt

'Baked Eggplant with Tomato Mushroom Sauce' - http://www.southbeachrecipe.info/baked-eggplant-with-tomato-mushroom-sauce: original: on Cheap Healthy Good


'Baby Bok Choy with Garlic and Shrimp' - www.southbeachrecipe.info/baby-bok-choy-with-garlic-and-shrimp - original: on Rasa Malaysia

'Great Vegetarian Dish - Rajma with Green Peppers' - www.southbeachrecipe.info/great-vegetarian-dish-rajma-with-green-peppers - original: on Ahaar (even copying the rather unique way of writing 'tspoon')

'South Beach Diet Sausage and Pepper Skewers' - http://www.southbeachrecipe.info/south-beach-sausage-pepper-skewers - original: on Green Lite Bites

'Lemon Chicken' - http://www.southbeachrecipe.info/lemon-chicken - original: on Kalyn's Kitchen (she has altered this more than the others)

'Beef or Chicken Fajitas' - http://www.southbeachrecipe.info/beef-or-chicken-fajitas - original: on About.com Low Carb Diets

'Oven-Baked Salmon With Herbs' - http://www.southbeachrecipe.info/oven-baked-salmon-with-herbs - original: on About.com Low Carb Diets (they both 'happen to have lemon thyme in my garden')

'Cabbage and Blue Cheese Salad With Sunflower Seeds' - http://www.southbeachrecipe.info/cabbage-and-blue-cheese-salad-with-sunflower-seeds: original - on Kalyn's Kitchen (also altered a lot)

'Chicken Soup with Roasted Asparagus, Mushrooms and Shallots' - http://www.southbeachrecipe.info/chicken-soup-with-roasted-asparagus-mushrooms-and-shallots: original - on French Kitchen in America

'Breakfast Quiches' - this was the only one I couldn't find the source of easily, though there are lots of Breakfast Quiche recipes out there

'Beef or Chicken Fajitas' - http://www.southbeachrecipe.info/beef-or-chicken-fajitas: original - on About.com Low Carb Diets

'Stuffed Green Peppers' - http://www.southbeachrecipe.info/stuffed-green-peppers: original - on Group Recipes