I’ve been on a kick over at Pots and Plots gearing up to launch some new features that will, I hope, improve traffic and make my readers happy.
One of the biggest things I’m doing will be making printable versions of my recipes (as I realized that not everyone has a laptop that they lug into their kitchen when they cook, and if you try to print a recipe without selecting the text and printing selection, you wind up with like 4 pages of sidebar. My web guru at CYHAssociates said we should be able to make that an easy fix with css, but unfortunately the free version of wordpress doesn’t allow you to add a print css stylesheet, so I’m doing it the long way. Making a file, uploading it to a host, linking to file. Not really a big deal if I do it as I’m prepping a new post, but going back to do it for the 210 recipes I have so far…BIG undertaking. I spent about 3 hours last night working on converting all my past recipes into printable versions (made it from 2007 through about June of 2009).
Another feature I plan to implement (after I work out the logistics), is a weekly menu planner post, which will feature both new and old recipes and, in theory, a printable grocery list. Part of what goes along with that is getting all my recipes added to my profile at TastyPlanner, which is a weekly menu planning site that I’m using myself, then linking back to the original post. I like TastyPlanner because it allows you to drag a recipe to the relevant day and it will generate your grocery list for you, AND it will let you drag and drop ingredients into the “Already Purchased” section if you’ve got it at home already. Pretty nifty.
And then I’m working on getting nutritional info (fat and calories) up on all my old posts from before I got back on calorie counting and creating searchable entries on Sparkpeople for anyone wishing to keep track of things there.
So lots of changes going on at the food blog. And all that is to say, I haven’t really thought of what I could to here to make y’all happy. I know one of the biggest things I can do to bring more visitors is to provide something of my fiction to read, and that’s in the works with the novella I intend to e-publish later this year, but in the meantime, what changes would you like to see? Types of posts featured? A different look? Information I don’t already provide? Is something hard to read? Is my blogroll out of control?
Speak! and I shall listen.
Recipe of the day: Baked Pita Chips.