Recipe Index Updates and New Options For Email Subscribers

 

A few months ago we did a total site redesign on both my main site and my allergy section. My goal was to have a cleaner look and to make it easier to navigate. I also wanted to make my allergy/gluten free section more of a branch of my main site, instead of a whole different site.

I love the end result and I hope you all do as well. There are a few tweaks still to do, and things I need to update in the archives, but overall I love it.

I have been meaning to do a post about the updates and changes we made, but with the holidays and holiday baking, I did not get it done. So, it is a little late, but today I finally have it for you.

First off I want to let you know that I have some new options for email subscribers.

Many of you have mentioned that you love my site and recipes, but you don’t like emails everyday. I understand and listened and I now have a weekly email option.

I have that option for my main site, my gluten free section, and an option to receive both the main and gluten free section, in one email. This allows you to get all the posts from the week in one email on Saturday mornings.

I also now have a few different daily update options, one for my main site, one for my gluten free/allergy section, one that is a combined daily email with updates from both sections.

The combined option is a great option for those that are gluten free because most of the recipes and tips I post now are gluten free or can easily be adapted to be gluten free. So if you subscribe to both sites/sections this will allow you to get the same posts, but in fewer emails.

You can find out all the details on the new options on my subscriber page. I hope you all find the new options helpful.

One of my goals in doing a redesign was to make it easier to navigate. 

When you go to the main page of my site now you will see a section for recent posts at the top. This is the most recent posts from the entire site. If you scroll to the bottom of the page you will see blue banners that say latest posts from the main section and latest posts from the allergy section.

This helps you see quickly what is new to the site and what you may have missed.

Now for the updates to the recipe index.

I think this may be one of my favorite updates to the site. I have wanted to add images to my recipe index page for awhile now. I love seeing images with the recipe and I know you all do as well.

The problem is that because of the massive amount of recipes that I now have on my site, we could not fit them all with pictures on one page. We came up with a solution though that I love and works great.

All we did was create index pages for the different categories. This allowed us to put images on the index page and makes finding the specific type of recipes easy.

When you go to my site, you will see under the header tabs that say main dish, desserts and sweets, side dishes etc.

If you scroll over the main dish  tab, or the dessert tab, it gives you a drop down of choices. Choose the option you want and it takes you to that recipe index page.

If you choose beef main dishes it will take you to a page with the links and images of all the beef recipes on my site. (A few are still missing images because I am still working on updating the archives for those.)

If you click on the breakfast tab it will take you to a page with all the breakfast recipes with images listed.

The main recipe index pages contain all the recipes on the site. If you want gluten free specific recipes, click on the orange tab that says gluten free recipes.

Then you can choose what gluten free category you want to see and it will take you to that page.

This is another area where I am still updating the archives and adding recipes that are gluten free to the gluten free indexes. Many recipes are there, but there are many more that I will be added from the archives.

One more feature we added was a new search feature.

We still have the regular search box on the top right of my site, but we also added a new search page where you can search specific types of recipes.

There is now a tab under the header that says recipe search. If you click on the recipe search tab it takes you to this page.

And then you can do a search for what you want. You can search all recipes, gluten free recipes only, and nut free recipes only. Now I am still updating the archives to mark older recipes gluten and/or nut free, so not all recipes will show up, but they will as I update them. I hope this makes searching for those that are gluten and/or nut free easier.

If you receive updates by email or RSS and have not visited my site in awhile, I hope you take a look at all the changes. I hope you all enjoy these new features.

And a huge thank you to Joy at Five Js Design for her work on the redesign.