Tag Archives: beta

Update: 12-8-2010

December 8, 2010 – 7:23 pm

This update brings a major new feature that’s been in the works for a while.  You can now import previously typed recipes and have it populate the fields of the new recipe form for you.  You’ll still need to do some editing before you complete the submit, it’s very imperfect.  It is pretty good at figuring out which parts of the ingredient are amount, but its very bad at spotting preparations (right now).  So you’ll need to copy and paste those over into the correct field.  However, this should make adding recipes significantly easier. I’ll be continuing to update and improve it and hopefully, someday, it won’t even require editing.

In addition, this update brings some design improvements — you’ll notice that the various menu bars look a little different and a lot more uniform.  As well as a number of bug fixes.

Happy Eats!

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Release: 12-2-2010

December 2, 2010 – 1:52 pm

Holy cow, is it the last month of 2010?  Really?  Really? How on Earth did that happen?

Well, in any case, this is the first update of what should be a very productive last month of 2010.  Most of these changes were made before I made my transpacific trip home, they just required some polishing and finishing in order to be released.  And now, released they have been.  Included in this release are:

  • Several new Ribbons
  • Fixes to the various bugs in Title Search
  • A new, less obnoxious welcome box that you can make go away.
  • Several design improvements.
  • A change to the way reputation is awarded.
    • Upvotes on images will now give 5 reputation and down votes will take 5 reputation.
    • For recipes it remains the same.
    • All previously earned reputation has been recalculated for the new numbers.
  • Updated about page
  • Added a display of a user’s uploaded images to their profile page

The biggest change is obviously, the change in the way reputation is given.  My reasoning here is two fold.  First, I wanted to give more of a reward for people who upload photos.  Photos are extremely important to Fridge to Food, with out them it doesn’t look so hot.  They are also extremely important to people who are deciding whether to cook a recipe. We decide what to eat by sight and smell.  Can’t do smell over the internet, but can do sight.

There’s already an incentive to post photos to your own recipes.  They make it more likely that people will try the recipe, and then vote it up.  And therefor more likely that you’ll gain reputation from it.  However, aside from the ribbons, there isn’t currently much incentive to post photos to other people’s recipes.  Now there is, you have a real chance to gain reputation from it, if you do.

The other piece of the reasoning is that, if you can cook a recipe and plate it well enough to make it look good in a photo that garners lots of upvotes, then you can probably cook that recipe well enough to make it taste pretty good too.  For those cooks who can cook from a recipe, but not really cook original creations it might become misleading if they gain a high reputation from photographs.  However, someone who is about to try a new recipe can always examine the poster’s profile to determine where the reputation comes from.  If it becomes a real problem, I may revisit the issue (one solution might be to split the reputations).  But for now, I’m going to wager it won’t become too much of a problem.

That’s all for now, more updates will be on the way as I get settled in here in Bloomington.

As always, Happy Eats!

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The Day of the Ribbon

November 12, 2010 – 4:01 am

Today’s update included two major changes (and a bunch of little ones that don’t bare mentioning).  The first is that users may now upload a profile picture (once again) by clicking on their current profile picture (or lack thereof).  The second is a page to view all existing ribbons and the addition of many new ones. Check em out!

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Out with the old and in with the new (bugs)

November 2, 2010 – 10:06 am

So today’s update included a number of bug fixes.  Unfortunately it also included a couple of bug additions.  Oh well, win some, lose some.  Two steps forward, one step back.  I’m pretty sure the additions were less than the subtractions, so the net result was positive.  Err..  never mind.

Yeah, I’m pretty tired.  Working an 8+ hour day teaching and then coming home to 4 to 6 more hours of start up work is starting to wear me a little thin.  To alleviate some of the pain, I’ve applied for seed funding.  The hope is to raise enough money to allow me to quit my job as a teacher and work full time on Fridge to Food.  Not that I don’t enjoy teaching, I do!

But I was working on Fridge to Food before I came here, with the hope of making it my full time job some day.  I didn’t think the chance to do that would come so soon.  But it has.  Funny thing to, because it feels like it couldn’t come sooner.  The more Fridge to Food gradually becomes a real, live website, the more work I have to do on it.  And the more work I have to do on it, the more I want and need to be able to focus whole heartedly on it so that it has a chance at succeeding and becoming the excellent cooking tool and community that I envisioned when I started it.  Anyway, I hear back whether I get to interview for the funding tomorrow.

In the mean time, this update includes a couple of neat features in addition to the bug fixes.

  • Tag browsing has been updated to allow you to browse only tags of a certain type (general, allergen, course, cuisine, or diet).  More types may come if people suggest them.
  • You may now browse the ingredients that exist on this site.  If you click on one, you will see a list of recipes that use it.

The final thing the update includes are some design updates.  The footer has been updated with some new information and links.  I added a new welcome box that shows on login.  The box provides social media links to help spread the site.  Finally, I added some social media links (Facebook and Twitter) to the recipe view pages, to make it easier to share recipes that you like to social media.

The tag and ingredient browsing updates are leading into something that is in development, but that I hope will eventually be key for the site.  When you gain a certain reputation, you will gain the ability to edit and organize the tags and ingredients on the site.  Exactly how much reputation will lead to how much power hasn’t been determined yet.  The powers gained will be to merge, mark as synonyms, or declare relations between.  The idea is to give the community as much power to shape Fridge to Food as a tool as possible.  Together we can build a far more effective tool for sharing and finding great recipes than I ever could alone.  There will be more on this to come.

Also in the works, but not ready for this update, are import recipes from html or xml formatted files.  I’m looking at implementing hRecipe import, but first I’m going to write a homegrown F2FML import.  I made some progress on this, but it wasn’t ready for prime time yet.  Also in the works are more ribbons and the ability, as requested, to browse the available ribbons that may be earned as well as see who has earned each ribbon.

Anyway, I’m going to sign off and hit the sack early tonight.  Wish me luck tomorrow!  As always, if you spot any bugs don’t hesitate to post them.  And if you have any ideas, don’t hesitate to share them.

Happy eats!

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Milestone: 100 registered foodies!

October 31, 2010 – 2:45 am

Fridge to Food passed a huge milestone last night: 100 reigstered foodies!  This morning we’re up to 103!  We’re nearing 200 recipes (though not there yet).  One solid day of importing ought to put us over the top on that one.

But the day’s importing will likely have to wait until I finish a new feature that has been requested by a couple of bloggers.  The ability to import recipes based on formatted html.  I’m working on implementing import for the hRecipe microformat.  But I’m going to have to modify it somewhat to ensure that ingredient names have their own field.  I hope to have it done by the end of the day but it’s been a slow weekend work wise.  And I’m going to lose the next 5 weekends.  They’re requiring us to work the next 5 saturday’s at school.  Not good.  I may be up late tonight working.  To work!

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