Better Recipe Management

We’ve gotten mostly through our look-and-feel work (there’s still more to do but it won’t be so dramatic). Now we are going to try and bite off some the features we listed for V2. We’ve had some feedback, but would have liked some more (if you haven’t yet, please do). Our first goal is to make the recipe management in V2 better than that of the original recipe manager. There are some people with a lot of recipes and those are the people we need to hear from. We’ve already made some changes to how you can download your recipes (check that out here). We’ve added the ability to sort your recipe list in different ways (see the top-right of your recipe list). One suggested feature was to be able to make wholesale changes to your recipe tags (thanks Matriarchy). I think we’ll look at that next. The other thing we think would be handy is to download a cookbook of your recipes in a PDF document (suitable for printing). So a question: what changes can we make to be able to manage your recipes better? Provide feedback here.

Dave - Why is it when I download my recipes in the V2, I get various symbols that show up in the actual recipe after it is saved? For example:

is showing up sprinkled throughtout recipes where I updated and added text to a recipe and then saved it? If I would want to print that recipe file, I would have to go through each individual recipe and delete all of the symbols and save again, but when I do that, the next time I download the entire file of recipes again, the same symbols still show up.....

That is formatting code that usually shows up when you copy a recipe directly from another website. Are you sure it doesn't show up on the V1 download? Either way we'll try to strip that out.

I like the new look! Very pleasant. Here are my suggestions/requests for better recipe management. Recipe Listing: The leading (space between the lines of text) is a little tight under the "Directions", making it more difficult to read. (I don't mean to be super picky here...it's just my opinion). My suggestion is to make the leading the same as the "Ingredients" list. Organizing Bookmarked recipes - I'm trying to figure out the most effective way to search/organize the recipes I've bookmarked since we can't add our own TAGS to them. I know there is an Advanced Search option, but personally, that doesn't help me in an efficient way (sometimes I hit search, and it takes quite a while to get results back). Here's an idea: 1 - Have the ability to create folders, such as "Main Dishes to Try", "Dessert Recipes", "Breakfast Recipes", etc. Then we can move our bookmarked recipes in and out of those folders as desired. So, if I wanted to make a new dinner recipe that I haven't tried yet, I could just click on my "Main Dishes to Try" folder and browse through it. I'm not sure how you would actually handle Bookmarking a new recipe then. Would it just go to an "Unsorted" folder, then we would have to re-organize them into the appropriate folders?? Or maybe have a drop down on the bookmark icon and file it that way. It would also be nice to add another "Search In" category named: "My recipes & My bookmarked recipes". Page Numbers Request: I liked having the option of displaying 10, 25, 50, or 100 recipes per page. But now that is gone. Can we have it back?? If so, can it default back to the last amount you select, instead of having to change it every time you visit the site? Also, it would be nice if those "page number boxes" could also be displayed at the TOP of each page of recipes. "Getting to a Recipe": Many times, I need to pull up one of my recipes so that I can print it, reference it, whatever. For those of us who do have quite a few recipes, I guess using the Advanced Search or just clicking the numbered page boxes or next box, is an option. I have two ideas that might be more convenient. 1 - Search box request: On the left side of the page (where there are light grey/blue boxes), it would be nice to add another search box for "Search My Recipes", and maybe even another one for "Search My Bookmarked Recipes". 2 - At the top of the "My Recipes" page, and the "Bookmarks" page, maybe there could be alphabetical letters running horizontally across the page that you can click on to get to the recipe quicker. Such as: A-B C-D E-F G-H I-J-K L-M N-O-P Q-R S-T U-V-W X-Y-Z I know that a lot of the above things I mentioned are kinda similar. Maybe you can come up with something simpler to combine all those thoughts. Problems: 1 - When I click on one of my TAGS that has more than 10 recipes (maindish and dessert), and then try to move to the second page of recipes with those tags, it defaults to "11-20 of 67 recipes". I have a total of 67 recipes, and instead of taking me to page 2 of my maindishes or desserts, it takes me to the second page of ALL my recipes. 2 - When I tried to download my recipes using the XML format, it didn't work and I got this error message: "This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below." Then there is just a bunch of mumbo jumbo!

Thanks a lot for your feedback. This is exactly what we're looking for. These are good ideas and we'll need a little bit to digest them, but we'll try to figure out how to address them. As far as the two problems you pointed out, we think they are fixed now. Please try them when you get a chance and see if they work better for you. Thanks again.

Ok, sounds great! Can't wait to see the new stuff. The tags thing is now working. Thanks. The XML download still does not work. I am using Firefox...is that a problem? A different error message came up this time, asking me to allow something. I just ended up canceling it cuz I'll have to ask my husband about that. One other little thing that I forgot to mention before is that on my Profile page, it says I have 1 friend, but when you click on my friend page, I really have two. I think I've noticed this for other people as well. It'll say they have 1 friend but they really have none.

I will test out the new V2 and post comments shortly. I have a lot going on family-wise right now, and I don't have much time to spare.

The font for the recipes is much better! I think it's perfect. Oh, and the bolded quantity and unit of measure are nice too! Thanks for adding the "Show 10, 25" etc. recipes. It would be great if it remembered the number you choose every time you visit the site (like the sort recipe list does). The search options you added on the left side of the site are FABULOUS!!! VERY useful for me now! Thanks again for a wonderful site. I've told many people about this...I can't help but get excited whenever I talk about it. ;-)

Thanks Nicki. It should be remembering your quantity. It's setup to remember different values for different pages though. My Recipes will be different from My Bookmarks which is different from My Friends. The sorting is saved but is different for recipes, people and comments. Make sure it's working like that. Thanks

Dave - Well, it only remembers my quantity during each session of my web browsing (using Firefox). I can move around to different areas of WGE, and it'll save it, and I can go to completely different sites and then come back to WGE and it remembers it. But if I close out Firefox completely, then re-open it, the quantity defaults back to 10 for each page.

[quote]2 - At the top of the "My Recipes" page, and the "Bookmarks" page, maybe there could be alphabetical letters running horizontally across the page that you can click on to get to the recipe quicker. Such as: A-B C-D E-F G-H I-J-K L-M N-O-P Q-R S-T U-V-W X-Y-Z [/quote] i second this [quote]1 - Have the ability to create folders, such as "Main Dishes to Try", "Dessert Recipes", "Breakfast Recipes", etc. Then we can move our bookmarked recipes in and out of those folders as desired. So, if I wanted to make a new dinner recipe that I haven't tried yet, I could just click on my "Main Dishes to Try" folder and browse through it.[/quote] i think this is a good solution for organizing other people's recipes. how feasible is this? also, is the search delay that Nickie mentioned something that you will have to address later on by expanding...memory or something (sorry, don't have the web lingo)?

We are working on better navigation for your recipes. It will include an alphabetical index as Nicki suggested. We're also planning on having "collections" to organize your recipes and bookmarks. Maybe we'll call them "cookbooks" or something like that. We'd also like you to be able to "publish" your collections and even print them out into a book. We've been looking at Tastebook.com, which now let's you import groups of recipes. We'll soon have a way to export your recipes so they can be imported easily into Tastebook for printing in a cookbook. Regarding the "search delay", are you referring to the time it takes for a search to return? I couldn't find Nicki's reference to it?

There is now a "Filters" link at the top of your recipe list. Try clicking that and see what it does. Let me know what you think. How can it be improved? Thanks

oooh...i like the filters very much, thank you, Dave. [quote]I know there is an Advanced Search option, but personally, that doesn't help me in an efficient way (sometimes I hit search, and it takes quite a while to get results back).[/quote] that's the sentence i was referring to, 3/4 paragraphs down, but it's more just a general concern for when this site gets very large and the "search delay" that would occur when more people utilize the website and there are many more recipes to search.

[quote]oooh...i like the filters very much[/quote] Glad you like them. Hopefully they will get people to their recipes faster. [quote]search delay[/quote] We've made some optimizations on the searching and the results should return a little faster now. Let me know if your not seeing the increase in response.

I'm new to the site. I love the idea. I have 150 recipes on Mastercook. The thought of reinputting them kills me. Is there any thought to basic importing?

Yes. We may be able to help you with them. Can you export one of your Mastercook recipes and email it to support@wegottaeat.com?

Hey there! I had a new idea for the V2 recipes. Sometimes in my recipes, I'd like to include an ingredient that alludes to another recipe. For example, in a tortellini recipe, one of the ingredients may be "one batch of fresh pasta dough"... and the fresh pasta dough is one of my recipes. Could there be an ability to add a link to a recipe within another recipe, similar to the way we can add a recipe to our posts? Thank you!

I love Lorrae's idea!

yeah, Lorrae's idea is great! Dave, if you could just even add a simple link widget in the Add Ingredient pop-up, somehow, that would be excellent. that way, we could refer people to a web page that would define an unusual ingredient, or possibly point out a place to buy the ingredient and also have the option of linking to our own recipe for incorporation into the list of ingredients as Lorrae mentioned.