After a long update, we have a new format, new pages, and new people. A much needed update but one that took some time. Finally, a new blog post.
Let’s kick this off by apologizing to our community for the downtime. We can assure you this one was a sorely needed update.
This update was part of a server migration as well as a software update so there was some added down time added in. There’s a new structure to the website and we’re going to let things settle for about a week before implementing the next update. The next update is ready to go but in the interest of website stability we’re giving some space between these updates.
New Format
Our regular visitors may notice a new format for the website while new visitors obviously won’t recognize this new style. We haven’t made a lot of changes but certainly enough changes to be noticed. We’ve tried to address the ones that would be the most notable:
Permalinks
We’ve updated the permalinks here and that would include the html sitemap and xml sitemap location. Changes were needed for our new website format and structure. The search engines have been notified and 301 redirects set up where needed (so far). We’ll be monitoring the 404’s for legitimate calls for resources and deal with these on a case by case basis.
There are new post types, categories and new taxonomies set up to take advantage of SEO efficient formatting. Expect new content that is community and website based within these new formats.
Recipes
Recipes have gotten a remake. As mentioned the permalinks were changed and this was part of the reason. Recipes are now set up so that community shared recipes will have it’s own slug for the URL “shared-recipes”(https://luvmyrecipe.com/shared-recipes/). We needed to do this to distinguish between the community recipes and the featured recipes of our website. Featured recipes for the website are exclusive content for our website and will have it’s slug URL “recipes” (https://luvmyrecipe.com/recipes/).
The current recipe repository is about half of what we had previous. We could get into all the errors and problems involved but look for many recipes to return in the coming weeks. The current repository are the “legacy” recipes that imported into our system successfully. There are more to import and that is on our “to do” list. Expect more categories and recipes as we continue the migration.
Legacy Recipes
Legacy recipes are a category of our “Shared Recipes”. Legacy recipes are recipes from our previous repository that do not carry a canonical URL with them and there were a few fields not marked mandatory in the original form so the community member may not have included these fields with the original recipe to begin with. The recipes and posts never included a canonical URL field from the start and for various reasons we removed any links that were included in these early recipes and posts.
The main reason for link removal for these legacy recipes was that the user’s website permalinks entered for the recipe were changing after they were entered here at our website. If that community member wasn’t maintaining their link here at our website OR at their website, OR website ownership transferred ignorant of any previous links to our site, the potential of us sending our visitors to an invalid URL had to stop and we removed all the external links.
If you are LuvMyRecipe community member with a legacy recipe and you would like to have it upgraded so that it may be included in more featured lists and categories, you only need to provide a canonical URL and any other fields not previously filled out for the recipe. To gain access, you must be logged in and click edit when viewing your recipe or post.
Recipe Forms and Display
There are multiple recipe forms and multiple display types for our recipes now. Community “shared-recipes” will now have a Canonical URL for members to enter when posting a recipe and a post. This will allow our members to get that valuable SEO juice for their own content from their own website or blog. Cheers!
Recipe Ratings
Recipe ratings have changed and will keep changing. They should be thought of as “on hold” until we implement a system of tracking for the rating. We were confronted with a couple issues when trying to import the rating. The new templates are search engine friendly where the old templates were not. Search engines like to see an accumulated rating, not just a rating. For instance.. “5 stars from 76 participants” or “5.0/76”. The first number would always be a number 1-5 and the second number would always accumulate based on how many people would participate in the rating.
Our solution was to create an average number from the old templates and make it the starting base number for the new templates. Meaning the first number of a rating will be whatever the average rating was and will now accumulate the way search engines like to see them. This means new recipes will likely start out with a “0” rating until someone rates it.
Membership and Posting
There are levels of membership now at LuvMyRecipe.com to help organize resources a bit better and to handle website traffic more efficiently. From now on, a visitor needs to be registered at LuvMyRecipe to leave a comment, share a recipe, and create a post. Users will not be able to make comments as guests and they will not be able to share recipes either without first logging in to our website.
This is a change from the old format because previously a “guest” was allowed to post without having an account at LuvMyRecipe.com. They could list their own website as the author and we would track the author meta that way. We’ve implemented security and spam protocols that have eliminated “guest” posting of anything.
LuvMyRecipe Community User Accounts
LuvMyRecipe user accounts are the same as they were on the old server. Users should be able to still log in using their email address they originally set up their LuvMyRecipe account with. We’ve already seen a few members log in so the system is working properly. Users should be able to utilize the lost password function on the login page without issue as long as you’re using the same email address listed for your account.
Any user having an issue logging in to their LuvMyRecipe profile account should contact administration through the contact page.
Moving Forward
We’ll be implementing “Cuisines” and “Dietary Choices” into the structure here at the website. Users should be able to sort our recipe repository based on their favorite cuisine and their favorite dietary choice. For instance, sorting the latest posts for “gluten free” and “American Cuisine”. These were previous categories marked with the recipes but as in combination with site tags. These have all been removed in favor of a new format.
We’ll be opening up registration for new members soon. We’re still straightening out a few things regarding website structure and we hope to be done in the near future.
New Faces
We have some new writers on staff here at LuvMyRecipe. They have been writing articles here for a little while but we’ve had no formal introduction for them. Please welcome Kevin Pratte, Mary Connolly. We also have a family member posting for “Auntie Bea”. Yes.. Auntie Bea is a real person and they will be posting new recipes and new articles exclusive to LuvMyRecipe.com.
We’ve taken on a new administrator as well while we upgrade the site. We hope this will help with our continued migration while we introduce new features to the website.
Expect a few more new faces in the coming months to help diversify the content here.
Again.. we thank everyone for their interest and patronage.
