9.85 years ago, I decided that I was going to start a home cooking blog and that I would design the site myself, which is hilarious because my HTML and CSS skill level is equivalent to that thing you do when you don’t know which circuit on the panel blew so you just flip them all up and down until the right thing comes back on. I made the logo in Microsoft Paint — I’m not even a little bit kidding — with a font I downloaded from a free font website, and that was until an hour ago the same file being used today. I’d expected this food blog thing to last maybe six months and instead I’m still here (hooray!) and this site, aside from some server changes and software upgrades, was still “coded” the way it was that first day in 2006. It was the design equivalent of these outfits. Font: tiny and terrible. Paragraphs: justified. Mobile responsiveness? 2006 doesn’t even know what these words mean.
But today is at last a new day. Here are a few things we’ve a talented team of developers have changed or improved:
- We didn’t dare touch the “Surprise Me!” button. It should be easier to find than ever.
- The site looks awesome on a mobile or tablet. The site looks awesome on a mobile or tablet. The site looks awesome on a mobile or tablet. (Yes I wrote that three times. It brings me that much relief-tinged joy.)
- The Recipe Index is so much better. You can still view recipes by category as a list, or by pressing that little grid icon up top, change it to by image.
- Don’t want to read all of my blather up top? I am not offended, heh. Right below the title of each recipe, you can jump right to the recipe or the comments. Previous-next navigation arrows are ghosted into the top image so you can keep browsing if that recipe wasn’t your thing.
- The number one complaint about the comments on this (and really every recipe site) is about ones that don’t tell us how the recipe went. Now, when you leave a comment you have the option to let us know whether your comment reflects your experience making the recipe or if it’s just a question and it will then sort itself under a tab where you can only read those comments. Want to read all the comments as you always have? Just go to the main thread, which is where comments that don’t fit the other two categories will go. [All comments are still, as always, welcome.] Threaded comments, i.e. being able to reply to specific comments? We’ve got that too.
- There’s a contact form. Recipes print neatly from your browser (i.e. Cntrl-P, not just from a button). The logo got a little refresh by, like, a professional. Links are in a color you should hopefully be actually able to see. Into newsletters? This one is fun, full of a recipe ideas and I enjoy putting it together weekly. The field should be easy to find (but not a popup that you must close to read the site! I’d never do that to us.)
- There were two rather buried side blogs on this site, one for Baby food (it was short-lived and this newer child mostly throws food so there’s been little opportunity to increase the recipe database) and a Tips blog; they’re now integrated. The latter is the one that I’m excited about because I have an avalanche of assorted bits of cooking advice I’ve been eager to send out into the world.
- Finally, the site has now been migrated to a heftier publishing platform, WordPress VIP, the same used to publish sites like, uh, the New York Post and Fortune and ESPN so lord only knows what I’m doing there. In time, though, it will make adding new features even easier.
Note: There are things that have landed a little out of place — older posts where the photos aren’t yet resized, categories that need re-sorting, and the vast majority of recipes aren’t yet in this hellacious thing called “shortcode” which allows fancier formatting. We’re taking note and fixing them all as soon as possible; do leave comments as you find broken things and we will add them to “The List.” It will take a bit of time to get all 1000+ recipes and posts to date in tip-top shape. But I would never make you wait that long for caaaaaaake! That, my friends, is coming up next. I’m so happy to be back.
Updates: As you can hopefully read below, we (a bad tic of mine; it’s just me — Deb) are reading and logging concerns you have voiced. Many things went into the queue and have since been adjusted:
- The ad is gone from the top of the page.
- The print template is working in full.
- Paragraph fonts have been tightened up and darkened a little.
- A little bit of shadowing has been add to the white all-caps overlay fonts on images in the sidebar and recipe index.
- I’m continuing to make adjustments to the Recipe Index — if you find a miscategorized recipe or a recipe missing from a category, please let me know. It’s usually a very quick fix. (And I manage these, not a help desk, hence the high number of errors!)
- Do you miss having the recipes in the index list in alphabetical order? All fixed now. When read as a list (the default) this is how they’ll appear. See: Chocolate.
- Comment formatting has been tightened up a lot so each comment takes up less space and it should hopefully require less scrolling to read through them.
- More to come!
Love, love, love it!! I especially love “in season now”. Congratulations on a fabulous upgrade…I’m SOOO glad you are back!!!!
Hate the new website
Why do we have download trump news and nothing but ads on the email page
Toast..and burnt at that
Not to mention save the bunny cake for ??????
Not interested
What the heck are you talking about…GO AWAY!
I think you’re talking about the newsletter that went out? Something went wrong, but it should be fixed now. Of course I have no interest or benefit from sending out a page of ads and none of the content you signed up for. (I mean, unless interest = angry emails from 80K subscribers, which was pretty close to what my inbox looked like over the weekend!)
I wondered where you had gone! I was concerned! Happy to see you’re back up and running and looking forward to your new posts!
CONGRATULATIONS! It is gorgeous. So easy to read.
Welcome back, new and improved Deb!
Woo hoo!!! I loved the old look, and love the tweaks with this upgrade. Hurray!
Congrats! Now…recipe away, Deb!
Looking fabulous on my phone!! Congratulations!!
I agree! Lots of blogs do not look great on a phone. You started your blog exactly when I got married ~ so we share an anniversary!
Love the new look! Congratulations Deb.
Love the new site. There was one feature I used all the time on the old site and it was the search function. I use the boy bait all the time and plunk it into search and it found it in one step, is this gone now or am I missing it. I do realize I can search recipes for blueberries etc. Just wondered about the search feature itself.
Shelly — Thank you. The search is still here (I use it too, for everything) — it’s that little magnifying glass icon on the top-right. I hope not too hard to find. It’s the same on mobile and tablet. I think the search results look amazing, btw.
The magnifying glass would be much more obvious if the search box outline was visible all of the time rather than only if one clicks on the magnifying glass.
My two cents. I personally detest having to click and poke until what I want comes up. I am very likely to leave a site and never return if I can’t readily find something that should be easy to find.
I agree with this – the magnifying glass on its own isn’t obvious to me, and if I hadn’t read this comment I would have missed it entirely. I think a blank box beside it would solve the problem.
Love the new site – Congrats!! I think the magnifying glass alone is great. Adding a box would ruin the symmetry and trigger my OCD – lol! As always, there will be differences in opinion and you can’t please everyone. Just my vote to leave it as is.
Well, I just cannot have any results for baby food …
For what it’s worth, I think MOST people understand a magnifying glass = search.
New site looks great!
I’m on a laptop so I don’t know if it’s the same in mobile but there’s a magnifying glass on the top right of the site (same line as the surprise me, and recipe links). If you click that a search field pops up. Hope that helps (I used the search all the time as well)!
It’s on the left in mobile :)
Re: clicks. Why make search into two steps (1. click magnifying glass 2. hit enter after entering search parameter) when only one would do, if the search box appeared by the magnifying glass?
I am going to find out if we can have the search bar default open on desktop, but I know that the reason this has happened is because of what is called responsive design, which is “right” way to do sites these days — it’s not, like, a mobile template and a tablet one and a desktop, it’s one template that resizes itself depending on the device. So, search needs to be behind an icon on mobile and tablet because of space, hence it’s also this way on desktop (see also: NYTimes.com, Bon Appetit, etc.) However, a great fan of search myself, I prefer it open when it can be. More soon!
The magnifying glass is universal for search. IMO, it’s fine. :)
I’m sure transferring your previous site over to this new WP one was quite an undertaking. Bravo! I like it. :)
Also, off topic, I just made your “I Want Chocolate Cake, Cake” for my bf’s b-day. He LOVED it. I found my new favorite choc cake recipe…so, thank you! I’ve been following you since 2008 and have made countless recipes. So, again, thank you and keep it up! :)
There’s a magnifying glass in the upper right-hand corner :) Took me a minute to find too
If you’re on mobile it is a little magnifying glass icon!
I see a magnifying glass in the top right corner, and if you click that, a search bar opens…(I’m on a PC.)
Hey Shelly! I too often used the search bar. I think its now accessed by clicking the magnifying glass to the right of the heading links right under the logo.
Now I’m off to search boy bait, which I have never made! :)
That’s one of my most-used features of the site, too! I found the search function remains intact in SK 2.0, if a bit more subtle; it appears as the magnifying glass icon to the far right on the line below the logo. If I misunderstood and this isn’t what you’re talking about, my apologies!
Same question. I followed the “search Smitten Kitchen” link, entered “zucchini” and got this response: Subscribe to this search. Come on. I subscribe to the blog already.
Sorry about the previous comment. I thought the search link on the blog post would lead into SK2.0.
Hi Shelly – if you notice, at the upper right hand corner, there’s a magnifying glass – click on that on the search function pops in. :)
Hooray!!!!!! I am writing this comment from a mobile phone and the site looks fantastic! Congrats!
I thought I couldn’t love this site any more and then you linked a BuzzFeed article lol. You’re my favorite. Congrats on the update!! Can’t wait to keep lazily browsing the recipe index when I have nothing else to do- inbetween BF sessions of course. Long Live Smitten!
This looks great!!!
Is it possible for the comments one has already read to collapse so that the next time I go back to read newer comments, I can just start up with the new ones?
Deb, Love the new look! I always kinda wondered if you knew how tiny and tough to read that old font was, but thought it would be kinda rude to point it out, especially as it never stopped me from re-creating one of your fabulous recipes. Congrats!!
The site looks lovely! I just have my fingers crossed that the new upgrades don’t come with a new level of advertising… I stopped reading some of my favorite cooking blogs after they “upped” the page advertising (to the point where pages take ages to load because of unwanted ads, videos, etc). I would hate that to happen to my MOST favorite recipe source! I know that’s how these things make money though :-/ …
I understand the need for advertisements, but I dislike that the entire page loads before the top ad, then the page shifts down some unspecified amount when the top ad does finally load. It makes reading as well as clicking links *much* harder …
Matt L. — We also have a new ad team directly managing this site and I will forward the concern along. We worked very hard to find places where the ads would be the least obtrusive but it still may need some finetuning.
I love your site and check it most days hoping for a new post! Love the new page and all of the upgrades. My one immediate thought was how much I dislike the floating ad on the right. No matter what page I’m on – recipes, in season, book, etc. the ad placed on the right scrolls with you. The problem with it demanding to be in your face the entire time is that it actually covers what you’ve posted as you scroll! For example, if you go to recipes, you have “in season” with a pic of tomatoes on the right, the ad will actually cover up the picture of the tomatoes and your text “tomato” will layer on top of the advertisement. It’s really distracting. I realize you make money on ads, but it would be great if they could just stay in their place and not float with me up and down as I scroll. It sort of makes me feel like the advertisement is getting shoved down my throat when all I really want to do is read your witty posts and imagine how tasty your recipe must be! But otherwise, love all the improvements. Thanks Deb!
Agreed–they’re absolutely massive. Also, I’m finding that when I scroll into/past the stationary ad on the right, a new ad pops up and travels with me as I scroll down the page. I can’t click on the “In Season” image as a result.
yes! this is one of the top reasons I left Epicurious…in a hurry to reference a recipe, load the page, click…and then shift and wait. It is much slower now to load, scroll…and everything’s so big it doesn’t fit. So frustrated. If ads start playing and popping up, I’m gone.
It looks so great on my phone! It looks so great on my phone! It looks so great on my phone!
Looks so much cleaner and better! Love it!
Oh yes! I loved you before and will even more now. Thanks for all the new bells and whistles but I hope you never stop with the chatter up top!
Yay, very exciting! (And very much looking forward to cake!)
In the interest of “things are new”, a few things for “The List” (because QA here is way more fun than the software QA I should be doing…):
– Announcements page (linked to by the tag on this post) doesn’t work :(
– In season photos for raspberries and blueberries don’t load
– Tags cover part of title (this may be intentional?) for posts that don’t have a picture. I noticed on the nut roasting tips page first.
– Facebook sharing icon isn’t showing up for me at the bottom of this post? It was missing, then I loaded again in a new tab and both it and Pinterest were missing. It seems OK on some other pages (which I’m sure will make this extra fun for the devs to fix…) and the link still works, just need to mouseover to see what should be there.
And last, but not least, a question! Is there still a way to see the full list of recipes? I regularly use ctrl+f to find things that aren’t necessarily covered by the categories, so being able to see everything at once is helpful. (Usually it’s search terms like “crumb” when I know that’s what I want but don’t care in what format.) This also helps when things might not be categorized how I’d expect.
Yes, I would like to see the full list of recipes too! I used that so frequently, just scrolling through to see what sounds good. Kind of like scanning through a table of contents in a cookbook. I’m not seeing a way to do that anymore, which is very disappointing.
Thank you — looking into all of these things and will see about putting a full recipe list back in the index. I was a big ctrl+f-er myself, so I can see how it would be missed.
The segmented comments are completely BRILLIANT! Whoever came up with that is on to something for cooking sites like yours that still receive a lot of user comments. I cook many things from your site, and take a lot out of wading through others’ feedback and appropriating their tweaks to suit my kitchen.
Congrats, Deb!
Maria — It was you guys! It came up so often (“it would be great if there were a way…” etc) that I asked them what they could build. And they came through. This doesn’t exist anywhere else, they built it for SK, so we’re going to have to see how it works, but I have a good feeling about it.
It’s a genius idea. I don’t know why nobody thought of it before. I’m SO HAPPY ALL CAPS to see it.
Exciting news! Thank you for being around for the past almost 10 years, and hopefully this is a good start on the NEXT 10 or so…
It really does look great on mobile and tablet! Awesome job by you and your team!
Simple and clean. I love it!
Looks great! Can’t wait to check it out further :)
I love it! The functionality to let people know you actually made the recipe and any notes is fantastic.
Love the new look!!
It’s beautiful and super fresh!
Pretty on my phone. Pretty on my phone. Pretty on my phone.
Now where’s the cake?
J/K kind of. I’m glad you’re back!
This is terrific. Well done. I mean, I didn’t particularly care that your site hadn’t been updated for mobile because your blog and recipes are too integrated into my daily life and I would follow you to the end of the earth, but this update is a real treat. Congrats — enjoy all your growth and success.
Awesome! So shiny, so bright! So nice on the phone! Love the sorted comments! Oh, and I also second Tiernan’s request for the full list of recipes. This is going to be great!!
Ditto on missing the full list of recipes! But overall, congratulations on the site re-design! I know first-hand how challenging those can be.
i LOVE your new layout and i’m particularly excited by the addition of “i made this” comments. i love reading those for tips and ideas.
i always look forward to your witty writing, beautiful pictures, and tried and true recipes. my favorite cooking blog…hands down! thank you for all your hard work. <3
Yeah the old font was like a colicky baby: It’s terrible and makes your eyes hurt but it’s yours and you love it so you grind your teeth and persevere.
Thing is, looking for hidden grey links in tiny grey font is a smittenkitchen.com sport at which we excel especially when we look for kid pics. But I guess you are right this IS easier to read :D
Congrats on the relaunch!
I absolutely love the new design, especially pictures included with the index! It’s so nice to see the dish with the title, and I love that I’m able to easier see a review from someone who made the dish.
Congrats! Love the new site. Love the responsiveness! Can’t wait for cake! The only thing I don’t love is ad placement. The giant leaderboard ad at the top of the page is very distracting (and pushes content below the fold for me), and the moving 300×250 on the side covers up the “in season” content as you scroll…
It looks great! I can’t get my Paprika button to save recipes on the new site, though. Is that a temporary glitch, or will it be permanent?
I’m going to get more information and let you know — tbh, didn’t even know we had it, so it’s likely an issue on their end; we certainly never coded for it. But I’ll find out.
This is also an issue for me on Plan to Eat, an awesome meal planning program–PTE has a bookmarklet that you can use to extract a recipe from an external site. It used to work perfectly for SK recipes (it “finds” the ingredients and the instructions and separates them out), but now it can’t “see” the difference between the intro text, the ingredients, and the directions. It’s easy enough to just copy-paste, but if there’s a simple coding fix for this, it would be fantastic! LOVE the site update!
Congrats Deb! Looving how the comments are separated. So smart!
Did something in the new site break Pepperplate integration? It used to be so easy to import recipes.
I second this comment. Just tried to import a recipe to Pepperplate and was denied.
To be completely honest, I had no idea I even had this! And I’m not sure I ever set it up, so it might be for them to adjust on their end. But, we’re looking into it. Thanks for the heads up.
Ditto with the Paprika comment, I’m going to get more information and let you know — tbh, didn’t even know we had it, so it’s likely an issue on their end; we certainly never coded for it. But I’ll find out.
Deb can I be a pain and ask if you got anywhere with this? I use Pepper Plate for all my meal planning and I looooved that I could click a button and get your recipes to import. It’s saves so much time on my ancient tablet that is very slow. (P.s I love the new site, it’s so amazing!)
I know. They were literally working on this again last Thursday and Friday. Someone emailed me that Pepperplate was working again but it sounds like not really?
It wasn’t working when I posted that comment, no. But, I googled after that to see if its a commen problem and it seems they are having heaps of import issues at the moment so maybe it’s not a fault of the redesign? I’m getting a bit nervous the sites going to shut down based on the lack of response from pepperplate. Also, I emailed them about the issue, just in case you needed more voices :)
This is a silly thing, but I miss the disasters! They reminded me that the problem isn’t always me; sometimes it’s the recipe, or the weather, or something else that isn’t “I’m a bad cook”, because you’re the opposite of a bad cook and they happen to you too. Have you not had any disasters for the last several years, or did you just decide not to blog them?
MerelyMe — Did they go away or do I just not post enough anymore? It’s true that I don’t as often. Well, as disasters. These days, I fold it into a success story — i.e. this bombed, so did this, this worked better. I felt like it was more helpful that way. We like happy endings and resolutions! But, fear not, I still wreck many recipes and can share more if you all would like.
Can I second the call for more disasters? I love when you spin them into success stories but miss the old “I texted Alex at 1am that this was a flop/ and then we got takeout” posts that happened once in a blue moon.
This I can do! (Because I do do it, heh.)
It’s beautiful!!! Was always worth whatever it took to use your recipe, but this – wow! Thanks for taking care of us :) LOVE that you can sort the comments. I always read them before making something. Fantastic work!
Site looks great! I do have a question about the “older posts”. They don’t seem to be appearing in order and including all old posts, is that correct? I don’t read every day but I do come back frequently and read back through older posts. I would hate to not be able to do that!
I’m so relieved you haven’t changed too much, I was nervous! Looks great, congratulations!
Looks gorgeous! Congratulations :) I think my favorite part will be the new comment sorting system!
Looks incredible! There are so many new blogs with wonderful content, but I come back to yours over and over. It’s my very favourite/most trusted. Just a quick note that there’s a photo tagged us “Us” on the About page that isn’t loading for me in Safari 8.0.5. Thank you for creating and sharing such beautiful, tasty, dependable content!
Congrats on the new site Deb! So excited to see what is next in store for Smitten Kitchen! I adore your blog, recipes, books, etc…. and can we talk more baby food and toddler food, pretty please!!! I’m totally obsessed with it. :D
THIS LOOKS AMAAAAZING!
And I’m so glad “surprise me” is still there – I love that feature!
Looks awesome – congratulations!
Looks lovely! Question: Do you have an *actual* new kitchen? Because I read an interview with you where you mentioned a patio off of your kitchen and I couldn’t think of what you meant!
Yes, I went down a nosy wormhole.
We moved in the summer of 2014. Same building, apartment not much bigger (sadly, as we added a “resident” in 2015) but yes, with a patio. Basically, I stalked this apartment until it was available and we’re so glad we did.
Great update! Your blog is by far the best around and this will just make it better. I am a professional chef and it’s almost embarrassing how often I use your recipes; you have never let me down! I just pulled some pink lemonade bars out of the oven and I’m about to make a mashup of two of your pasta salads.Thanks for everything you do. Here’s to the next 10 years!
On the “Comment Guidelines” page, looks like there’s some weird code at the bottom of the page. It’s right after the “Last Updated” line.
Now fixed, thank you. Just some old ad code.
Hooray for tablet functionality! The biggest reason I have an ipad is to use in the kitchen (so much easier to clean a screen than dig cake batter out of a keyboard, just me?) I love the new site! And a million thanks for not having a newsletter pop up, that alone deserves cake and a cocktail.
Congrats, Deb, the site looks great. Well done… and I can’t wait for the cake!
I love the surprise me feature AND the categorization of the comments.
This is nice. But I liked your old site too – and always liked your logo!
By the way, the strawberry popsicle recipe has made me very popular. Thank you!
Love your new site and so glad you kept the “surprise” button!! :)
Aaaaahh I’m so glad you’re back, at last!
And I love the new look of course. It was worth the wait !
Now on to new recipes (and please don’t forget the photos of your cute kids :) )
Mimi from Germany
Welcome back and congrats! The site is looking great!
Also, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for not doing in-browser pop-ups. It’s the most frustrating thing for me, especially on otherwise good blogs. It’s very kind and unselfish of you, because I know it does make some people money.
Finally, I’m so excited for your new book and looking forward to reading more of what you have to say about each recipe! :) I doubt I’ll use that “skip” button too often.
A few bugs I found for your troubleshooting pleasure:
The IN SEASON section on the sidebar leads to a page not found…
There are some missing photos on the “IN SEASON” page…
Looks great!
-R
Bunny Birthday Cake??? Welcome home !
I think for comments there should be ‘Deb love’ or some category for just saying it looks yummy or that your read our minds, since the bulk of the comments seem to go that way in the best of ways…
Aw, thanks. All comments are welcome. They’ll just going into the main column. The other columns are self-selected.
Sooo happy you are back!!
Looks like all the time stamps are off by about 4 hours.
Looks fixed now.
Fixed now, thanks! But might only adjust for comments etc. going forward.
Wow, very nice update. It is great that you kept the clean look and I love the recipe index.
YOU’RE BACK YOU’RE BACK YOU’RE BACK! Balloons instead of funnel cake! Yes!
For The List: when I click on the In Season “tomatoes” photo, I get a “page not found” error message.
i love the i made this feature!! but then this is one of my staple websites.
There used to be numbers on comments, but I don’t see any now. I found it helpful to cross-reference (and when other commenters used them to cross-reference). Was that an intentional design choice?
No, sadly (and also: hi! I know I’ve missed a few of your comments this month but will catch up shortly) it was a limitation of the sorted and threaded comments, that there is no longer a clear numerical order.
Thanks! And hi, no worries. Hope your 3 weeks away were productive / enjoyable.
I miss that too. I would use other commenters numbers to agree with, reply to, or keep tab of a particularly helpful comment; I’d just write the number on my printed copy. Oh well. Still love SK!! And I’ll give up numbered comments for the I MADE THIS sorting any day.
OKAY – new problem. When trying to post this comment WordPress is asking me to sign in. I do have an account with wordpress but do NOT like that I would need to sign in to leave a comment. I’m going to use a different email address in hope of avoiding for now but would LOVE for that to go away!
Oh my! love the new site. My MOST favorite, is the sorting of the comments. I like to read the comments on what people did or thoughts or questions on the recipe! This part made me happy! Genius idea!.
Thanks for the update Deb! Your site has helped bring my cooking from college into true adult cooking and even seen me baking sweets! Thanks for being awesome and I can’t wait for your next book!!
I love it!
Hooray!
Congrats, Deb! The site looks beautiful!
Congrats, looks great. Love it all, though one critical point – hate the new logo. It looks like a logo that was made of several images combined, and the browser didn’t load them all.
Great job, though, best wishes.
But I thought you had a baby? DEB ARE YOU SUPERWOMAN? So many things and also cake.
So, so glad you’re back.
I’ve been following your blog for over five years, had your first book signed in Seattle (but you truly need to come to eastern Washington (state) and explore the wine country) and tell everyone about you who loves to cook! Love the new design and upgrades. Can’t wait till your second book releases! Congratulations!
Love the new look, Deb! SK is like that dear old hilarious friend who just stepped out with a bangin’ new haircut. Damn, she looks good!
Ditto
Can’t even tell you how much I appreciate the larger font! And, yes, I can actually read the posts on my phone. Thanks for the update, Deb! Blessings from Oregon, Karen
The new site looks lovely. Are you planning to further categorize the recipe index, the way it used to be? I loved having a separate category for desserts, for example. It’s a little harder to find things in the big sea of links at the top now.
Indeed! I had to do a quick clean-up of the subcategories due to the way the new page is built, but I agree a subsection for desserts is great, and will possibly add a couple more.
One of my favorite things about your blog was the small and pleasing type. Sad to see that gone because this new font is quite jarring, but I’m so happy you are happy and I will keep reading!
Looks good. A few notes from someone who’s worked on some of the largest sites around:
– When sites move to an icon-style compacted search field visitors tend to use the site less. It should start off expanded.
– The label overlay on every image (Announcements, Recipes, etc) adds visual noise with no corresponding UX benefit. I’d remove it.
– BOOK at the top should probably be a cover image in the sidebar, and otherwise integrated into the site. (E.g. “this recipe also appears in _my book_.”)
As a Happiness Engineer at WordPress.com and a long-time fan of your blog, I am so, so, so thrilled to see this! Our VIP team is indeed fabulous, and I’ve been looking forward to this day for a long time! Yay! Welcome! :)
Looks great on my phone! Love the new index and search. Sitting on my porch looking thinking I need to do something with my Swiss chard. Search results show recipes and pics! Thanks!
Congrats on the new site, Deb! I’ve been reading since your dating blog, if you can believe it!
One suggestion I have (and I guess it’s probably too late) is that you put together an archive of party food. I love to throw cocktail parties and I’ve come to your site a few times looking for ideas for a crowd. Although you DO have recipes for that, they’re not all grouped in the same place. So, you know, make my life easier!
Wow, thank you! And not at all. We’re actually going to be overhauling the categories very soon — not removing any useful ones, but resorting ones that don’t make sense and adding ones that have been requested. This is actually a very easy, ongoing process and because this site was built by mad-skilled developers, everything is automated so when I make changes, the design just adjusts. Be happy to add Party Foods.
I will definitely miss the old format – it was comfortable and familiar :) But congrats on the change, and THANK YOU for the incredibly useful update to comment sorting. I just hope people pay attention and use it correctly – it looks like some ladies already got a bit confused. Feedback on how a recipe goes is so much more valuable to me than a ramble about something unrelated.
Just a QA comment. When I posted my previous comment I did not include a website but used an email address that is associated with a WordPress account. The comment system made me login to WordPress before posting my comment. Then it added a link to my screen name greenjillo that does not go anywhere. Not a big deal just thought your tech team may be interested.
Thank you — I will look into this. (I would personally find that annoying.)
This happened to me too, and I did find it annoying. I didn’t like the way my name displayed but couldn’t edit it (not that editing comments was ever an option). We’ll see what happens this time when I hit “submit”! (ps: this is so fun, everyone chiming in with good cheer!)
I too wonder. like on other blogs, about having to log into WordPress to comment. I get the email security thing and “I’m not a robot typing”. Just a tad annoying since I don’t use WordPress myself much and only have it for a handful of blogs for commenting.
I do like the new design. It feels fresh and welcoming.
I tried printing from the browser, and noticed that the sign-up box for your newsletter blocks part of the recipe. I am using Google Chrome on Windows 7.
Thanks for the feedback. Do you mean the newsletter signup field in the sidebar or the one in the recipe field? Going to file a ticket so we can look at it…
It might be the sidebar one, but what pops up doesn’t exactly match. It says “Follow ‘Smitten Kitchen’. Get every new post delivered to your Inbox…” I will also email you a screenshot.
Oooh! I love that I can look at all the recipes in photo format, especially considering that’s often what I remember best about a post I’m looking for.
Also, I wanted you to know that I am still loving your cookbook! Not one recipe has been a dud and sometimes I like to pull it out just to gaze a the beautiful photos. I can’t wait for the next one!
This is amazing! I’m particularly excited about the sorted comments – I’ve been wishing for forever that recipe sites would find a way to sort comments from people who were saying ‘Wow! Looks amazing!’ and ‘Wow! This turned out amazing!’
For the record, “Wow, your blog looks amazing!” :) I’ve been following since 2007 and you deserve as much professional help as you’ve shared with all of us! (I mean that in a good way, not in the ‘you need professional help cause you have a screw loose way’). Also for the record, I will still be reading all your blather.
Love the new site, it’s beautiful!
Love the new design of the website…very easy to read!
Will have to try to access it via my smartphone & tablet to see how it looks on mobile devices.
You’ve been my tried and true all these years and will continue to be just that! Thank you and many blessings to you and your beautiful family.
I LOVE the “surprise me” button! That is such a cool feature! :)
No pre-emptive popup for a newsletter?! Thank you! I appreciate it so much I shall withhold my rant about such things.
Good luck with the new site. Thanks for really thinking/listening to things that will make it better for your readers.
LOVE that you can sort comments – I’m always searching for tips from people who’ve actually made the dish!
Time to update your FAQs to reflect the new website! Love the redesign, beyond excited about the mobile compatibility.
OMG I’M SO JEALOUS I wish you’d hired me. fhgkadf Your site was always the best of diy sites, though – actually goddamn readable and stuff. :)
Also, I LOVE the new commenting system!! I always control F on the page and look for “I made this” in search of comments by people who actually made the recipe – this makes things so much easier!
Loved the blog for years now. The recipes always work and are delicious. This new “I made this” ability is unbelievably awesome! I have longed for this. Congratulations and thanks!!!!!!!!
It looks beautiful! Congrats on getting through it—time well spent for sure!
Man oh man, am I excited! You are daaaa best!
Lovely! If we are already signed up with you and get the emails etc. do we have to sign up again?
Nope! You should be just fine. Goes out 8 am EST Monday mornings, or Tuesdays after a holiday weekend so if you’re not getting it, do let me know or sign up again. Thanks!
Yay, congratulations! The new updates are awesome!!! :)
The new mobile compatibility is amazing. I love the whole redesign! Congratulations and thank you for every recipe and story you’ve told us the last years. You are really inspiring.
That comment feature is so clever! Congrats on the new site. Looks great.
Congratulations on the new design and the book being done! And I’m also curious to know about the cool new projects you hinted at a few posts ago :)
There seem to be some broken links. https://smittenkitchen.com/category/tips/ (Found others of this type that are broken too.)
Oh — I now see that comment preview no longer happens?
Is the sk logo at the top more zoomed in now or the same as before? Separately, and I’m sure I’ll get used to this, it feels like the logo should be more prominent and/or should take up horizontal space. The ad above seems to dominate it at the moment. Would you consider moving the ad to between the first and second posts instead of the top?
The comment below yours at 5:56 has also got the grey box, which I assume is unintended? I see that comment numbers have disappeared as well.
(I hope this does not come across as criticism, just trying to help debug. Thanks, as always, for all you do!)
I hope the next recipe is for the peach cake you teased on … instagram? snapchat? My daughter will be turning one in a few months (omg!) and she is obsessed with peaches. OBSESSED.
Also, I navigated here first on my phone (though I’m posting from a desktop) and it looks GREAT. Finally, it’s big enough to read!! It’s beautiful and so functional! Congrats!
Really awesome. It is always exciting, when we launch new looks on our sites:-)
Well done!!
Such fantastic news for you! The site is gorgeous and is already luring me to browse more recipes. Congrats on the update!
Love the new look. I went to recipe section looking for “beef” or “meat recipes” as I need inspiration for next week’s menu. I couldn’t find, did I miss it?
Awesome! Rally happy for you and the refreshed site. Keep the good work up and yes, caaaaake! :)
About those comment numbers — how about only numbering the ones that are not replies? Does that create other problems?
And I have figured out that the double line separation is for when the thread ends. And if there are no replies, it’s just single line separation. (Anal? Me?)
I know that replies with indentation is its own headache, but without indentation it’s hard to tell that it’s a thread. Anyway anyway. Will get used to all of this in time :)
And now for my third comment, which is about the logo again (and the ad above it). It appears that there are two changes to the logo (at least). The background used to be grey and is now white, and it was taller than it is now (it was inside a square box I think, and now it’s inside a squat rectangle). What about restoring both those things and making it left-justified (rather than center) and then having the top ad to its right rather than above it? Might that not solve a lot of issues? Just thinking out loud.
The background of the logo was never gray — it’s always been white, which is the background color. No colors have changed, save the links, which are now in pink (I know! I’m so nooot a pink person but I really liked this chestnut brown/pink as a contrast and requested it.) The logo has been trimmed down a bit; wanted to try something new for Decade 2. We auditioned many different layouts including the logo to the left or right but it never quite worked the way this did.
If I search for dijon chicken, I also get all recipes that link to that dijon chicken recipe that I love. Slightly annoying, but not the worst! In all, I still love Smitten Kitchen :)
Congrats! :D I came on her yesterday and saw you hadn’t posted for a while but I as SO excited for you when I came on today and saw this post! :D
The site looks awesome on a mobile or tablet. The site looks awesome on a mobile or tablet. The site looks awesome on a mobile or tablet.
Affirmed! I read this post on my mobile. And now I have an excuse to make Confetti cookies a third time, since I’ll be able to read everything so much better! Quality assurance and all…
I have to echo the unfavorable comments about the ad at the top of the page :( Proportionally it seems way too big, and the load speed for ads is different than the load speed for the page. When the ad loads it bumps everything else down, which is annoying if I’m already reading but a little infuriating if I was trying to click on one of your links but accidentally click on the ad instead due to movement on the page.
Otherwise – looks great! Can’t wait to try it on mobile and especially can’t wait for the new book :)
Congratulations!! The site looks great and so much hard work has paid off!
Was wondering if there was any thought going toward having some sort of forum for cookbook users to chat about our results with you/with each other? Miss the comments in your cookbook so much! ;)
I love this idea of a cookbook forum!
You just made my favorite site even favorite-r! LOVE IT!
Congrats, Deb, it looks fantastic! I’m super happy about the comments categorizing–it sounds so useful. And the link to skip to the recipe will be handy for the recipes I make repeatedly but haven’t gotten around to printing out yet. Yay, you!
Congrats on the new site! A couple of things, since I use it ALL THE TIME (thank you!):
– I also have questions about the search–basically what others have said about the ability to search by a specific word/ingredient. I have some beets that need using and wondered what ideas you have about them but couldn’t find anything when I searched for them. (I also did a scan of salads and vegetarian and didn’t see them, so it’s also possible that you don’t like beets and never use them…!)
– Bug: On my Windows laptop, every time I navigate between pages, a dialogue box comes up (twice!) saying: “you have chosen to open: passback,” with this code: application/octet-stream (617 bytes) It asks me if I want to open or save the file, and I have to click okay or cancel in order to move on. Ack!
– Since we’re talking websites, a suggestion for your next round: I’d so love a way to make my own personal comments to myself on your recipes. I guess I could make them in the new comments feature, but I also don’t want to clutter the comments with notes to myself. I guess this might require a login, which also wouldn’t be ideal… But man, would it be helpful.
Thank you!!
Excellent! 2006 doesn’t miss you :-) I can’t wait to play with the new features! (also – I’ve been cooking a lot of your recipes from instagram links…that’s a smart thing you’re doing. (It helps that I can print from my phone…while I’m in bed. Not lying.)
First, I love your website, cook from it constantly, and share it with everyone I talk to about recipes ever. So, THANK YOU.
One concern with the new site, though–each time I open it, it downloads a file to my computer called “passback.” I don’t know what this file is, and don’t dare open it, but it makes me super nervous about a site which I love. Thought you’d want to know.
You’re right, it does look great on mobile. Nice!
Wow…change makes me nervous (especially with favourite websites that I’ve read and loved forever!)(ahem, Yogaglo, I’m looking at you!) but your intro to it makes me feel good about this. Looks great so far, can’t wait to keep reading and cooking with you!!
Ps…and that link to 2006 was awesome!
I love the new look – huzzah to you! I’ve been reading your blog and cooking your recipes for a few years now and I have to thank you for never letting me down. I have never made anything using your instructions that was a failure.
Congratulations Deb! Am probably one of the few people that loved the simple design of your old website and for me personally, the search function and the ctrl+F command helped me navigate through your entire website. I also wanted to let you know about a few things I noticed:
– In the website box when publishing a comment, the default points to http://pragmaticmarketing.com/AgilityRedirector.htm, not sure if its just me
– When I click on the magnifying glass icon, the box covers the book and more options on the left.
– I like the “made this” and “have a question” options when publishing a comment but from the comment section it looks like its not clear that you don’t necessarily have to choose either when publishing a comment :)
Hope these are helpful!
Can’t wait to read the cake recipe and categorize it into my personal categories – “have to make it”, “may be one day” and “am in awe of people who attempt to make this” :)
Thank you — very helpful. The URL… that sounds like a bug. Is it still happening?
Sorry, I missed your response(I would make a lousy food blogger).. I was obsessively reading through all the comments on your blog today (what else do people do at work on a Friday? ;) ) and found your response. I actually still see the link as an autocomplete suggestion for the website textbox. Doesn’t bother me but thought you might want to know.
I was missing you but expecting to see this exciting new site when you returned. Yea! I’m happy now.
I love the new site!! Especially the “in-season” tab!!!
So glad you are back Deb. You have no idea how much your sweet blog contributes to the happy lives of your readers :)
Congrats on the redesign!
There’s something kind of funny with your search results pulling in anything that contains the search word. For instance “blueberry” pulls up those chocolate chip cookies that you said looked kind of blueberryish, as well as the taco torte, probably because the taco torte post referred to a “last year” recipe with blueberry in it.
YES to all of this! To be honest I will always love the old site, I never had a problem with it :) But this is amazing work and I’m feeeelin it! On a tablet the site looks great and I kind of let out a big smile when I saw the balloons today. Your writing is beautiful. And I agree, the search results page is perfect! Congratulations and THANK YOUUU! PAR-TAY TIME!
And… yeah, the ad on the right that doesn’t go away when you scroll. Sometimes it contains an animation, like the gwynnie bee ad I’m looking at right now, and it’s bouncing around and I can’t get away from it and oy vey iz mir.
But overall, beautiful.
So that’s why I kept on getting funnel cake day after day! I am THRILLED that I can go directly to comments from people who have made the dish instead of scrolling through hundreds of comments. Deb your cooking blog is definitely the best ever!
Site looks great! It is much easier to read (I didn’t even realize how small the font was until I saw this update). I didn’t have the same ad problems others mentioned (that one ad did scroll with me but did not block anything for more than a second)… maybe it’s fixed now? Good decision on the comment tags.
One element I’m not likely to test… I will never have a use for that button that skips from the title to the recipe. I love the blather at the top the best! I sometimes only read the blog for your blather… I’ll see the recipe title and think “Eh, not interested in this one… let’s see what Deb has to blather!”
This is better, but I think there are some problems:
1) Under “Recipes” there’s a Chicken button, a Seafood button, but no buttons for Meat or Beef or Lamb or Pork or…
2) Where oh where did the recipe for Harvest Chicken with Olives and Grapes go? One of your best recipes ever, and it has completely vanished from the site.
Lookin’ good!
1. My bad; going to fix those categories. 2. Actually, that was never on the site, but in the first cookbook and promoted a lot around the web. But I do love so, and glad you do too.
Love this! And all the fancy new features!
First thing I noticed is… do I really have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the comments to leave a comment? I know your comment roll can get pretty lengthy. Would be AWESOME to have the comment box up top!
Congratulations! The site looks really neat. Although I though have to say your previous layout was something special and it kinda set the blog apart.
Threaded and indexed comments? Genius!
One more for the list, though this may be work-in-progress. I love being able to look at each recipe image within a category; however for at least the first two recipes categories I looked at, the recipes are not in alphabetical order. I often think “I want to make that one cake from Deb; I know the recipe starts with ‘chocolate’ and then scroll down to the ‘c’s’ and read through until I find it. So I would love them to be alphabetized again.
Truth be told, I really appreciated the straight-forward-ness of your original site, but this is beautiful! I love the idea of categorized comments, and tabs identifying different types of content on the homepage.
Congratulations!
Looking forward to SK 2.0 ;)
Agree that the ad at the top seriously detracts from your logo and design. What used to be clean and crisp now looks too busy, and your logo is lost. I have always thought it so impressive that you put the “old” website together yourself — I think it was perfect! You are clearly a woman of many talents. Congrats on your update — I will adjust.
Woo-boy. This is so great! Congrats on the new site, it looks fab!
The “I Made This” sorter for comments is completely genius. I wish every recipe blog had that!
Wow! I’m excited for the upgrade! My eyes immediately went to the “book” link at the top. A few of the images on there have broken links. Sorry if I’m repeating what a millino people have already said!
Looks good, but your site keeps trying to download stuff to my computer. It looks like my ad-blocker is catching some of it, but something called “passback” downloads automatically (I closed the window and came back to see if it was a one-time deal and it happened again). I have no problems with ads on the page (necessary evil), but unsolicited downloads over which I have no say is another thing entirely.
Sorry for the trouble. This should be fixed as of this morning and please let me know if it’s still happening.
Sorry to pile on about the ads, but I agree with the comments. The ad at the top detracts from your new look and branding, and the floating ad on the right hand side is super annoying to me. At least let me scroll past the ads.
But you saved the very best feature – Surprise me! Thank you.
I love a lot of these changes but the ads are super distracting. They move around a ton as you scroll and change. And the one that sits on the top just makes things look less beautiful.
Congratulations! Looks lovely. I hate to be the one to add more to your “to do” list, but quickly, in your recipe listing section, which I use all the time, I noticed these few things:
While you have a heading for “chicken”, I don’t see one for beef or lamb. When I did a search for “beef”, the recipes did come up under the heading of “meat”, but I don’t see that as one of the listings on the main recipe page. I also did a search for “desserts”, which also is not a heading, and the first thing that came-up was an asparagus frittata … oops! I realize this is most likely because you mention the word “dessert” somewhere in the copy of that particular story, but just a heads up. It seems like there are not as many headings as before, and that’s what I really loved when searching for a recipe … the specificity of your previous recipe filing system.
On it! We’re going to fix this in the next week. And thank you.
Oooh! I especially love the in-season tab! And by the way, in response to your question, “Don’t want to read all of my blather up top?” half the reason I read your site is because of your “blather” ;) the way you write, how you make your readers feel like welcome friends, and your amazing ability to talk us into trying anything!! The other half the reason I read your site is because your recipes are everything you make them out to be when you talk about them at the beginning! You, Deb, are gifted! :)
Congratulations! It looks fabulous. I’ve never tried the “Surprise Me” button before – very, very cool. :)
I am excited about the new features, however the top banner ad is very annoying.
Mostly because every ad is a different size and the screen keeps scrolling down to accommodate the ad.
I’m all for supporting your work but maybe at least make that banner smaller and more importantly the same size every time?
– Longtime reader
Congratulations! This is so exciting and it’s a great layout!
I have to admit that I rather miss your old website already. It was that happy, cozy place that I clicked to when I just wanted to see something warm, comforting, and familiar. Sometimes I would just click around, look at your beautiful photos, and read a bit of your recipe intros. Ever consider keeping a legacy website? ;) JK (kinda)
I look forward to navigating your new site and I’m especially thrilled about these changes to the comments section! I hope it works out well!
Best, V
*Like*
Congrats on the new site. It looks amazing on my phone, and since I:ve been known to use my phone when I’m making one of your recipes then it works out perfectly. That being said, I can’t help being a teeny bit disappointed in the way the site looks on my laptop. I’m sorry, I know you’re so proud, but I have to say that one of the things that make your site and your recipes so alluring , are the gorgeous pictures. To me, on this site, it feels as if the left side of the page, and hence the pictures, are smaller than before, I realize this probably isn’t true but it feels that way. The right side of the page with the ads seems a bit too wide. It makes the ads bigger and more in your face, and makes the left side feel uneven and cramed. I know ads are a necessary evil, but it really feels like the ads are crowding out the good stuff. I didn’t even notice the “in season” box until I read the comments, since on my page I had a video ad and a large very bright colorful ad on top of it and below it, It was kind of wedged in the jmiddle fighting for space. None of this of course is a problem on the phone since the pictures and text run the full width of my screen. I see this now on so many other pages that I guess it’s the way everyone is setting up their pages now. I’m sure in time I will get used to it.
Hi — I’m sorry that you’re not loving the new look. The photos are bigger (and oh, what a PROJECT it was to get them all resized, and of course, many were not and we will get to them). Previously, the sidebar was 160px and the mainbar was 500px. Currently, on desktop, it’s 300 and 640px, so I do see what you mean about it being proportionally smaller but it was sadly not optional as ad sizes have changed and spaces have to accommodate them. Now the ad that’s getting jammed is a major issue and we’re on that right now; should be sorted very soon. Re, being proud of the redesign, well, to be honest, it’s not perfect to me either. But, this represents over two years of behind-the-scenes research and tweaking and so much hair-pulling-outing, mostly, I’m relieved the site is 99% ready, up to code, and viewable on all devices and very soon, all the parts that broke in transition will be fixed too.
@cookknitpurr, I have the same impression on my iPad (left side of page and pictures seem smaller, while right side seems wider). My solution is to zoom in and “push” the page to the right. On your laptop, would it work for you to use Ctrl + to enlarge everything and then slide the screen over (if you know what I mean)?
@cookknitpurr, I posted an idea for you under the “Questions” tab.
Missed your posts terribly! So disappointed to see all the ads on the new site though. :( It really slows down my computer and I hate the distraction to be honest. Still, glad to see you back.
Great idea with the “I made this” tab! I often scroll knee deep through the comment section to see if people had success, liked it, needed changes, etc. Good to see before you use the ingredients and time (also mom of 2 little ones so I don’t get to experiment as much). Keep up the great work!
Huge congratulations on the new site! Love the mobile responsiveness! Well wishes for bugs and tweaks! Welcome back :)
Lovely new site! I did notice one thing. Nearly every page only has the option to skip to the comments. I would notice the “Skip to recipe” link for a split second while the page loaded, but then it would disappear leaving only the comments link. I use Chrome version 51.0.2704.103, for reference.
Thank you — this is going to be a slower fix because it only works on pages where the recipes are in that fancier formatting. We’re on it though, and plan to get through all of the archives as soon as possible. And thank you!
Congratulations!! It’s gorgeous. And HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANNA! <3
Congrats on the hard work and simply gorgeous design! I just thought you were on vacation for the past week. ;D
Love the separated comments and ‘in season’ tab!
Deb, I love this so so much. Congrats on the new site and thank you for the mobile responsive design. I always read your blog on my phone so it’s welcome. Can’t wait to try the new functions. And congratulations again, I think you totally deserve all the things :)
Congrats on the redesign! Your blog is the one food blog I’ve followed faithfully and excitedly for years, and it’s a delight to see you reinvesting in its (and your) awesomeness. Here’s to a tremendous start to the second decade of SK!
It’s so nice that now you have a gorgeous layout to match your awesome recipes and writing. And the “I made this” tab is just brilliant. Congrats, Deb! It’s so good to have you back!
Loving the fab new look! So much cleaner and easy to navigate. I esp love the new font – easier to read.
-First question/ suggestion: is there a way to set this up where we can comment without having to scroll to the bottom of 200 other comments? Obnoxious minds want to know.
-Re: integrated tips blog. This sounds really cool, and it’s the kind of thing that (if content allowed) might almost justify a separate ‘surprise me with a new tip’ button. The few times I’ve run across your entries on ‘Oh, by the way, this is how I set up
This thing in the kitchen. It made shaving the drunken weasels part so much easier,’ … Wait. Different cooking blog. Forget I said anything. Let’s just leave it at, ‘I find your insights into process, prep, and planning to be particularly pleasing. And finding them, without having to go fishing, would be cool.’
Stupid weasels.
I like the redesign! I’m worried about the ads though, it’s asking me to download something called “passback”?
Also I think someone sort of mentioned it already, but one of the things that was nice about the old recipe page was having all the recipes listed on one page. I can still pick any category and see all the recipes in that category, but is there way to just get a list of everything?
Love your site and never commented before but I have a question about searching for recipes. I found it very easy on the old site and if all else failed I could search alphabetically. Now it appears recipes are listed in categories according to date posted, is that right? Not helpful if you don’t know when they were posted, alphabetical would be easier. Are all the recipes listed? For example I was looking for the Cannoli Pound Cake and didn’t find it under cake. On the old site I could look for it by searching for ricotta cheese and now it doesn’t come up. If I search for Cannoli Pound Cake it’s there (happily) but I don’t always remember the exact name. Maybe the new search needs some tweaks? Thanks for the great recipes!
Seconding the missing of the alphabetical recipe listing; works so much better than eyeballing/ctrl+f for specific words.
I love the new design. Is there any chance that you still have a list of the blogs that were in your good reads list? There were a few that I never bookmarked and only went to through your list.
It’s back now — thanks for the heads up.
Oh how new and shiny! The original site was familiar yet this new, fresh look is so nice. Been a fan for ages. Off center posts and images may take my brain a moment to adjust but I understand the coding reasons why. I appreciate a clean color palette on a food blog(one of the big reasons I like yours so much as it isn’t over done w/ heavily repetitive images in a single post) I saw a blog once with 8 images of a cake slice for one post. I like cake too but that was an over kill of images and hard to scroll though. Sorry I wandered of…. Again congrats and onto the future.
Cool!! The new comment sorting feature looks amazing. Can’t wait to try it when I get home! :-P
TBH most other sites need the blather-skipping function. Not to make you all word-proud, but you’re one of the ones I read for kitchen form AND function.
Way to go, team!
Although I have sentimental attachments to the old look, I know we’re gonna have just as much fun in this new playground as well! Good job!!!
Congratulations! It really is wonderful though your recipes are so good we’d keep coming back if they were written in chicken scratch (or some such archaic format.)
Since you’re making changes… have you thought about having the links to your social media sites like Pinterest and Instagram open in another window? It’s just my personal preference, but I always like the original site to stay open.
Well, it looks great as a blog but not so much as an email. ( I subscribe so I know when you post! But the ads are overwhelming and those same gross ones on other subscribed posts so if you don’t mind I will just unsubscribe but still check your blog on occasion because I love your recipes. I always have the cookbook to fall back on! Maybe it is just me and my PC and my email subscription because no one else seems to have this problem. Please don’t take it personally, I am sure it is just a platform thing.
Hi — I think you must be subscribed to the old newsletter. It’s terrible. We changed systems last fall — much more detail about that here — but didn’t want to just cut off that feed because it had 80K+ subscribers. We’re using a much more professional system now for weekly newsletters that will round up what’s new and suggest seasonal menu ideas for the week. It’s more fun (I think, at least; I’m having fun putting it together). You can sign up in the sidebar.
Hi Deb.
I’ve been a long time fan – about 7 years, but this is my first comment ever. I’ve never once felt the need to post a comment of my own earlier – everyone else seemed to have already asked all the right questions. But I do feel the need to share my two pence today.
I love a lot of the features of the new site, like the new “In season” recipe tab and the comment sorter, but I do not like the look of it at all. I agree that it is easier to read and in a lighter color palette but it just does not have the warmth and visual appeal of the older site. To me it is visually really insipid and like any other webpage – the old one was really lovely and engaging. Also, the ad-traffic is way too much for me to be able to focus on the real gold here – your beautiful stories and recipes. I’m really sorry but I will unsubscribe to it – I will however continue to check in periodically – because frankly I don’t know what I’d do without your cheerful spirit and beautiful food.
Love,
Aditi
Very shiny!
Can I make the purely selfish suggestion that you have an ‘other side of the world’ in season as well, if possible?
Deb, I love your “talking to your readers” and enjoy immensely peering into your family’s doings. Keep it up. For now, I will have to spend time with the new design and see how it feels. Knowing you (just from your kitchen) it will be an exciting time well spent and great cooking. PS Happy Birthday Anna! (Give her those bright balloons to play with) :-)
Congratulations! Must feel really good to be all new and up-to-date. It looks really good!
P.S. I miss the fashion from 2006. Those useless belts were amazing.
Old or new, you writing an cooking is always delightful and brilliant.
Thank you for the wonderful work you do. Mazaltov.
Woo hoo, Congratulations! !!! I love the new design.
Congrats on your success. My one comment after reading you announcement is that the gray scale of your text makes it difficult for my old eyes to see. This gray text must be a new thing that people with younger eyes find appealing, but I find looks cool, but really strains my eyes. More contrast please.
Deb, it looks wonderful! I didn’t even know there was a surprise me button! Wooo! congratulations!!
You know what would be great ? If readers could “jump” from Deb-comment to Deb-comment, as if pushing Tab on the Keyboard. Maybe if you just put all your comments in a separate category?
That way I could read all your answers and tipps in one go without scrolling like a madman.
Just a thought.
Cheers :)
Mimi
I love this. First of all, the old design was fine for me because I came here for the content, not the layout. I love reading about what led you to make a particular recipe. I try them out, but not always on the spot. Going forward, I expect I will read the post and all the comments (there’s often useful info even when they aren’t exactly about the recipe) and then re-examine the “made this” and “question” comments when I come back to make the recipe myself. Very helpful!
The only In Season crop I see is Tomatoes. Are there more?
“In Season” is a permanent top menu item — on Desktop, it’s in the header bar and on Mobile/Tablet, it’s behind the menu button. On the sidebar (desktop), there’s just one tile right now, Tomatoes, but we’re going to see about automating more going forward.
Love the improvements… except one: the ads! I have 3 google ads on your home page. Is this permanent?
Last comment, I promise.
I only found the Tips because a previous commenter provided a link (which contained ‘category’ in the URL, but not any more). Now I know how to reach tips, but I can’t find a direct link on the SK home page. (PC, Windows 10, Firefox).
We will fix this! Thanks for letting me know.
Beautiful redesign! I did’t mind the old one at all, but this is lovely. As far as the hidden link- I used to enjoy going through to find the picture of your kids…. it was like a treasure hunt. Even if I never intended to make the recipe, I always looked for the kiddos! Lol
It is just fabulous, Deb! You’ve made a fantastic site even better. Congratulations!
Looks GREAT!!!
I think the search needs some tweaking – I searched for ‘buttermilk’, and the taco torte came up! That recipe doesn’t use buttermilk, but it does link to a previous recipe with buttermilk in the title. Don’t know if this is intended behaviour, but it’s not quite what I expected…
I love your blog, but I can’t find the ‘the little grid thing’. I’m using an iPad. I like pictures!!
FOUND IT! FOUND IT!! 🤗 THANKS!
Yay! Mazel tov on the upgraded site. I’ve been reading SK almost since the beginning. Your recipes are EVERYTHING. When I made my brother-in-law’s wedding cake, your tips were invaluable. Your Passover desserts are the only ones on my table most of the time. In general, my husband usually asks, “Anything we can find on Smitten Kitchen?” If it weren’t for you, I doubt he’d be eating vegetables. You rock. And since my pathetic celiac diagnosis a couple of years ago, I’m so happy that I can still cook tons of old and new recipes from this blog! Thank you for developing such yummy, amazing food that works for just about everybody. Looking forward to so much more!
Deb, the site looks great! One comment – I clicked on a link that took me away from your site. When I was finished reading it I closed it, assuming that it had opened in a new window (I know that’s a coding option). But it had opened over yours and consequently I inadvertently closed SK. You might want to think about having links to outside sites open in a different window so when the user clicks to close it, they are right back where they left off on SK.
Have subscribed and loved SK for years!! Thanks for all your hard work!!! :-)
I am weirdly pedantically attached to not having links open in new windows because of this. (I don’t think anyone much cares about web standards these days, but I have a soft spot for them.)
The best ever feature is 1 year ago, and since I moved to Australia 6 months ago! Brilliant to find other recipes/inspirations in season
Love this update. My eyes thank you very much! Tiny print is an issue with grown up eyeballs! I love the options for comments after making the recipe. That is so helpful. One thing I would like to see is a “back to the top” button at the bottom of the page. I’m viewing this on an iPad and if the comments are lengthy (which they usually are here) it would be lovely just to hit a link to go back to the top off the page. Not a huge deal, just a thought.
Glad you’re back.
Congratulations on your gorgeous site! I absolutely LOVE being able to filter the comments to read the “I Made This” ones. Thank you!
hi deb, i have been following your blogging since the “smitten” days! the new site is shiny and great. i just have a request in terms of the Recipe Index, can you include the earlier categories of “everyday cakes” and the like that you had? since i use sk for most things cooking, it would be great to have those back.
Yes! We lost some sorting when we moved to this system but we’re going to fix it up again ASAP.
On the old version, I would hit the print icon and only the recipe would export to my Evernote recipe file. Now, if I hit print, it actually looks for printer and I’m unable to just export the recipe. I don’t really want to upload the entire segment, including the comments. Of course I could just highlight the recipe and do a copy and paste.
Same here…I used to “print” from my phone then save the PDF, but now I can’t find a way to do anything but print a hard copy to a printer. Is there a workaround that doesn’t involve copy/paste?
Let me see if there is an option — thanks for letting me know.
First off, mazel tov on your new site!
Second, a QA point- would love to see your answers to the questions in the questions tab.
Third, wanted to second another commenter that would love a tab of just your comments (and maybe the comments you are addressing?)
Have a super day!
Testing replying on the mian page becuase I replied to a comment on the questions tab yesterday and it didn’t thread either there or on the main thread
I agree, would love to see the whole thread in the Questions tab, or at least your replies.
Love the new site! It looks fantastic – I’m so glad you kept the “surprise me” functionality. :)
The new look is clean, inviting and intuitive! I had absolutely no troubles finding the search – the magnifying glass is a pretty standard icon. As someone who works for a magazine and on its website, I feel your pain when it comes to complaints about ads. I can’t even tell you the number of times I hear: “Love your magazine/website, but there are TOO MANY ADS!” I mean, you like having the magazine/website, right? Well, ads help make it happen, people! Your love is valued and appreciated, but it doesn’t keep the lights on all by itself. I think the layout here is great – the floating ad isn’t much of a distraction and the rest are unobtrusive. I’m also not much of a script font fan – however, the small use of the one you chose is beautiful. Congrats!
I’m sure it’s a great new design but our security settings at work have made it unreadable (no pictures, jumbled text). And since I spend most of my days in front of a computer, I don’t browse much at home. So this may be a parting of our ways.
Love the new site. I’m a long time subscriber and make tons of your recipes. I really like the “I Made This” feature on your recipes – I’ve spent many minutes searching through comments trying to find hints and cooking experiences with the actual recipe verses people fawning over the photo but not making the dish yet. Love your work.
It appears that a little more clarification of what “I made this” means may be in order by the check box… ;-)
I agree! We will finetune this soon. Thanks for the feedback.
Maybe a third box (so everyone gets to click one :-) ) “General Comments”,
as well as “I made this and here are my thought on it” and “I want to make this but I have a question about it”…. I’m sure you’ll have great ideas!
(I’m with you on the short simple ones, but from experience selling gift cards on line sometimes you just have to be explicit!)
Thanks for all your hard work!
Thanks! The main column is for all comments. No need to sort yours if it doesn’t fall in a specific category. I think we should probably make this more clear.
The new search function made my day, if not weekend. Thank you thank you!!
Congratulations, Deb! What a big accomplishment! For the last 7 years, I’ve been an avid reader and have loved your recipes, your wit, and your beautiful photography. Thank you for making me look forward every week to seeing what’s new in your kitchen, for making me smile on those challenging days, and for helping me put quality meals on the table for my family and me. I hope you have found some time to celebrate this big move. Now…..off to make some Blue Sky Bran Muffins……..
Thank you, I love the new look and functionality!
Smittenkitchen has been my number 1 to go to for inspiration and to recommend for years, and the mobile-friendliness is especially appreciated now that I find myself browsing through recipes on my way to the store more and more often.
Btw your pie crust 102 was a huge hit with my birthday party some time ago, when I combined it with cherry filling to recreate the Twin peaks pie :D It was gone in literally 10 minutes.
Thank you, Deb, for all the wonderful things that have been making my family and friends happy so far, and can’t wait for new delicious treats :)
Love the new site! One potential addition… I would *love* a “show all” button on the recipes page, that basically shows everything like the old version. I would often just go there and scan things until some recipe name caught my eye.
I will look into this! Thanks.
Yes, this please!
Yay!! I, too, was a scanner. Love this site and being able to Ctrl+F everything was an amazing/amazingly fast way to see everything.
Hi Deb –
Congrats! The “I made this” category is great – and the whole reason why I read the comment sections so it’s nice to be able to skip to those comments. To be honest, I think I like the other site better. This of course does not scare me away! I love your recipes and will always be a fan. Few comments – the recipe index is visually very unappealing…not into all the little boxes and seems more challenging (visually and brain-use wise) to find recipes. And as others commented, I like the option of a straight up list of recipes. Loved Mimi’s idea: a tab button so readers could “jump” from Deb-comment to Deb-comment. (Yep the extra ads suck and the sidebar seems a bit too wide. But these are minutia). Excited for your new book!
Thanks for the feedback. You should have the option of viewing recipes as list or as images, hoping to please everyone. Did you mean you’d like a full list of all recipes? I think we can set that up as an option.
I love your new look! Welcome back :-))
Hi Deb, In the hope that this might be helpful – on my iPad, once the floating ad “engages,” the text of the blog post ceases to scroll properly: especially when scrolling back up, the text disappears competely for a moment and then when it reappears, it’s jumped beyond the point where I wanted to be. I don’t mean to rail against ads; not only are they necessary so that we can enjoy your site, but also I find that the ads here are appropriately selected for me and are ones I would click on. However, I think there’s an obtrusiveness or annoyance threshold that advertisers would not want to cross, and this glitch is annoying enough to me that I’ve turned to the iPad’s “Reader” function, meaning that I don’t see any ads. I never felt the need to do this on the old site. Maybe the ad team can adjust things so that it feels less like ads are controlling what we see of your content.
We are looking into this glitch; it shouldn’t be happening. Thanks for letting me know.
Glad to have you back and I really like the improvements. However, the first thing that pops up now when I open your site on my laptop is a large ad. It’s a big banner at the top of the page. And – there are more ads on your site than before. Maybe it’s just my browser and my laptop.
So happy to see you’re back Deb!
1.) Obsessed with the segmentation of comments so that we can gather people’s thoughts on each recipe/how they altered it with what they had, etc.
2.) SO HAPPY you didn’t remove the surprise me feature. It is by far my favorite feature on your site. Keep it forever and ever (and ever)! ;)
2.) Loving the “in season” section! Wonderful!
Bravo! Love the new site!
Sarah
Looking at the “old ” cookbook cover reminded me that if anyone has not made the beautiful tomato and whipped goat cheese ( aaagh -so yummy) recipe on the front cover- get the book out ( I know the book is not far away…) and do that one with some “real ” tomatoes. It is HEAVEN. Easy and perfect for any occasion.
Just wanted to share that I LOVE the new layout! When I was trying to click on the meat category though, it went straight to meatball sliders…. :(
This is AWESOME blog/website design. Elegant, clean, incredibly user friendly. Just everything it should be. Huge congrats and thanks!!!
The new site is beautiful. Glad the Surprise Me feature is still here. :-)
Congratulations Deb and welcome back! The new site is wonderful and Yay!!! we can easily print your recipes now (yes, I still print them on scrap paper). So many great new features, especially the “I made this” category which will be immensely helpful.
Fan-damn-tastic!
The new design is beautiful! Since you are (maybe?) taking requests, I would love the option to have the top photo in the post be on the recipe when printed out! And I love the “I made this” and “questions” options! It saves me from having to search for keywords in a huge list of comments!!
Happy you are back!
Liz — Thank you. Having this as an option was on my wish list for the site but we just ran out of time in development. I’ll see if we can revisit it down the road.
At the risk of outing myself as a total creepster, your new look made me initially panic at my favorite place on the internet being *new* and *different*. I’m breathing deeply and looking forward to exploring this shiny new SK. Thanks, as always, for the clearly enormous effort you put into making this site readable, useable, and most importantly, delicious.
Beautiful!!! I was starting to worry why there hadn’t been a post in awhile. This was worth the wait!
Must say, I also really liked the original site design. It was so uniquely smitten kitchen :) but alas, change is always good and the comment sorting feature is a fantastic idea! Also the way it looks on my phone is great. Something I’d change is the size of the comments. If they were a bit more compressed, like on the old site, it would make for a bit less scrolling.
I’m actually feeling a tiny bit sentimental and wishing I could look at the old site just one more time :)
The new website is gorgeous. And I love that it looks great mobile too!
A fabulous new update!
Looking forward to all the new posts. Keep up the amazing work Deb, you’re one of the best bloggers out there.
Jacko
Love the idea of comments on how the recipe actually turned out. While I am sure you enjoy getting compliments on how good the photos look or how amazing the recipes sound, I want to know how it is to actually cook in a tiny kitchen with real ingredients from others. Not that I don’t trust you. ;)
Also, I do kind of miss the long list of recipes. It was kind of like just going to the index at the back of a book and scanning to find something perfect. Maybe a separate link? Also I could not find the grid to just see pictures, but that could be me being inept. Keep up the wonderful work!
I love it! Congrats on the new site! This is such a small thing, but thought that I would throw it out there in case you had not thought of it. Any chance you can make it so that the pinterest description on your photos (that automatically fills in when you click “Pin it” on one of your photos) includes the text “Smitten Kitchen”? I hold your recipes above all others, so I always manually add it so that I can easily tell which recipes are yours when searching my pinterest boards. Just an idea!
Thanks — I agree, it would be great, and I’ll look into it.
I noticed that when you reply to comments those answers only seem to appear when looking at “all comments.” When I look at the filtered comments options I don’t see your replies. Is there be a way to have your replies appear on both the filtered and non-filtered comments? I often like to read the questions and your responses before attempting a recipe and this would be very helpful. If I have missed something obvious about how the new comments work- I apologize. Great redesign!
Nice change to the site! One of my favourite things about your posts is that you share what you posted in years past, including half-year-ago posts for those of us in the antipodes. So in the “In Season” tab, how about putting in an option for “In Season Down South” or something?
Oh no! One problem with your “questions” section that I noticed in your peach cake post…the questions show up there but your answers only appear in the general comment thread. The questions alone aren’t nearly as helpful as the answers. ;)
Congrats on the new site! I love your blog and cookbook and use it for nearly everything “special” that I make! :)
A couple questions/feedback: Did you change your ad hosting? I keep getting a popup ad that covers the page (I’m on mobile) for, of all things, weight loss! Ugh! I used to never get obtrusive ads on the old site and it makes me sad.
Also, as echoed by many people, the way the recipes are categorized is now different and less user-friendly in my opinion. It used to be so nice for browsing through until something caught your eye (like when we used to go to the video store and look at all the boxes before you rented a movie?).
Anyway, congrats again. We’ll still keep reading your blog and cooking from it, it just might take the natives a little while to get used to the new stuff.
Site looks great. One thing – I went to the celebration cake category in the recipe index and they were not listed alphabetically, as they used to be. Can’t wait to try the peach cake recipe, btw!
Looks great on iPad and desktop! I wonder how many people who say the font is too big have their browser zoomed in without realizing it. ;) I love the bigger font. Two little things:
1) it’s sometimes hard to tell where a comment thread starts and ends. Is there a way to add a visual marker or more indents? I know it’s tough to balance threading with horizontal space but anything you can do would be awesome!
2) the name of the commenter seems too large compared to the comment text. I’ve already accidentally tapped someone’s name (when scrolling on iPad) and gone to their URL by mistake.
(Testing… can we use html formatting in comments?)
A lot of blogs are now moving to a grey font. While this is aesthetically pleasing, it is very difficult for older eyes to read, even with glasses on. I miss the black type. However, I love the recipes so will continue to visit. Thanks for reading my comment.
Love it! It is so much easier to read – well worth the wait. My biggest suggestion is to pretty please, with a cherry on top, put the comment form at the TOP of the comments so I don’t have to scroll through all of the other comments just to tell you how awesome your blog is, and how much I love a recipe!
I accidentally piled on to a questioner, because it looked like there were no answers yet. Having both together would be really helpful.
Should we click the “I have a question” button when we’re replying with a possible answer?
I don’t like change much, but I am trying to here because a) your recipes work and are yummy and b) the new site is so pretty!
I just read about bunny cake (yay!), and my biggest complaint is that the site is SLOOOOOW. and Crashy (or at least the cake post is crashy), which is sad given the joy of bouncing babies. and bunnies. and bouncing bunnies. I can’t imagine that it’s traffic since it’s 4:40PM Pacific on Friday, not the minute you shared it on social media, etc. Anyway, I hope that the team behind the scenes can work that wrinkle out. Please and thank you :)
Also, given that comment threads here usually number in the zillions, it would be nice to have a comment box at the top of the comment section as well, since sometimes we really just want to comment and not read all 48738285 comments about how yummy babies and bunnies are.
ok, one more thing. Under the “post comment” button, there’s the option to “notify me of new comments via email.” Could you also add one for notifying for *replies* via email? I don’t necessarily want to read all the comments, but if anyone has a follow-up to me, I definitely would like to.
Also, it’s all so pretty!
(I wanted to end on a positive.)
oh shoot, and I’ll add to the people asking for a way to comment without logging in. Because I definitely didn’t mean to log in like ^
I swear, this is it. But in order to post that second comment, I had to log in again. So if we must log in, perhaps just once would be enough?
No, that shouldn’t be happening. Will look into it. (And you also shouldn’t have to log in at all if you don’t wish to.)
I know this is a little thing and I’ll get used to it, but did you consider leaving your text on the right side of the page rather than moving it to the left? Just wondering as I’m getting used to the new design! :)
It’s an adjustment for me too! But there’s some logic to it because we read from the left. Why not dive in and go to the sidebar for extras?
Good to have you back! The new design looks great!
I hope you’ll be keeping the photos of your cute ones in the posts! I’m sad there weren’t links to photos in this or the bunny cake post. I love finding them and seeing their cute faces. =D
I have seen a few comments like this and I feel like I’m missing something — are you seeing pics of the kids in the post today? That’s why there aren’t hidden links — no need to. But posts aren’t usually specifically about them, so I keep them hidden. ;)
I thought that was probably the reason, but then there wasn’t a link in the site upgrade post either, so I was just checking. =D
Love your intent!! But have to say that I miss your old (analog-esque) sweet site. Feel similarly to others, re. ads. But i love your recipes all the same and can’t wait to add to the “I made it” comment section
You’re always so good to us Deb!
This may be marginal, but for some time I’ve been wondering how to share this tip with other Smitten Kitchen devotees (and now’s as good a time as any):
-I love reading through comments, and if I am wondering about something specific, it helps to use the “Find” shortcut on browsers. For example, if I wanted to see if someone tried substituting something in a recipe, I would use the “Find” shortcut on a page for that ingredient. It saves me from reading through everything and narrows things down in a jiffy.
I suspect many might not know this trick due to the multiple questions/comments about specifics, and it might be a handy tip!
I can’t wait for more Smitten Kitchen goodness on the new website.
I haven’t looked at the new design on a desktop (only my iPhone – it’s so shiny and navigable! Love it), but I notice when I look at the questions under the ‘questions’ comment tab, I can’t see your (or anyone else’s) reply. Which makes it less useful.
i love your comment layout.ingenious as I’m always wanting to see all these catorgories at diff times depending on whether I’m making it or not or wanting to know something or just comment on ur greatness.fab.
Apologies if this has been noted already, but clicking the logo at the top of the screen (I’m on mobile, using Chrome) doesn’t take me back to the home page like I’m used to, and I don’t see a “home” link on the menu bar. Beyond that, beautiful site and congratulations!
Congratulations on your update, it seems to make you happy.
I have to admit, I am very unhappy about it. Almost one third on the right side are blinking ads now – probably there have been ads before, but they were never so annoying, as I do not even remember, if there were ads at all. The colors are so light, I find it hard to read – especially, since the contrast between the dark ads and the light text underlines the importance of the ads. I will use the site anyways, because I love your recipies, but I am not sure, I will visit it as happily as I used to, to read your funny and witty, well written texts.
I really wish, you could go back to the centered, well organized, dark font, less ad space, neatly arranged.
Now it looks like most of the fashion blogs out there :-(
I haven’t read through the comments so maybe these have already been mentioned/addressed.
I love the ability to separate out the comments, but replies don’t show up in the categories, only the all comments which kind of defeats the purpose.
I miss the numbers on the comments. It makes it a lot nicer when reading the comments on recipes to know how close (or not) I am to the end. Maybe the threaded replies could be lettered under the question number (2a, 4a, 10b, etc)
For feed readers, the old site had multiple paragraphs before truncating and needing to click through to finish. Now it only shows the title and picture, no other words. I liked being able to read a bit in my reader before clicking through.
I don’t really care for how the Recipes page looks now. The categories before were better separated and easier to read than the wall of text it is now. The style of having each category be its own bar/block is rough on the eyes and between that and the number it takes a minute to fully comprehend what I’m looking at and then try to find what I wanted.
I also miss the complete list of recipes without having to click through.
Under Book, the pictures were working earlier today when I was on my tablet, but they appear to be broken now on my PC (win10, chrome). Same problem with the raspberries and blueberries photos under In Season.
I wish the ad didn’t have to scroll with you down the page, but that’s me being spoiled. Please oh please though don’t allow any video or animated ads or anything that autoplays. The header ad distracts from your own branding (at least this REI co-op one). Plus I hate scrolling to read something and then having the whole page move once the ad finishes loading and then having to refind my place. Weren’t they all sidebar or at the footer before? Is there any way to allot a set height for the header ads so that the page doesn’t jump around after they finish loading?
It feels odd to have everything in the right sidebar instead of the left.
I hate having to log in to comment. Please remove that. I think I have at least 3 different wordpress accounts from the different blogs/websites that I admin and would greatly prefer to comment “anonymously” without having to log into wordpress or any social media accounts.
Thank you! This is all very helpful. Some I can answer right now; others I will have to take a closer look at but roughly: something’s broken in the RSS feed; it shouldn’t be happening and will be fixed. Ditto with the WordPress logins, pictures under Book and In Season and comment replies not showing up in the right place. Re, comment numbers, full recipe list, I will see what we can do. I hope this gives you hope that we will have all the kinks worked out soon.
I really love your ‘history’ links (‘One year ago’, ‘Two years ago’, etc…) And check them out regularly when I read a post. Sadly, I find the current styling of the links to be a biiiit, well, large. They work well, but the current styling means loooots of scrolling. It has the side-effect of them feeling annoying when I’m not in the ‘oh, lets check them out!’ mood.
Love the new clean feel of the site though! And it’s really cool that you and the team are reading and talking about our suggestions :)
Oh and the coloring seems to be a bit hard on the eyes compared to the old version. If I am not looking at my monitor at the exact proper angle (like the difference between sitting up and reclining in the same chair) then the reply background disappears and it didn’t used to.
The RSS feed isn’t working! Only post title is coming through. :(
Ugh! We will get this fixed. Thanks for letting me know.
I’ve followed your blog for ages and am really glad your site is now responsive and more accessible. I share the sentiment that there are way too many ads on the page now though. The in season box is sandwiched between two other ads that makes it look like an ad itself.
I really liked the type from the old site as well- mostly because it wasn’t dominated by any other elements around it. The old site had a unique-ness about it which made it really charming and pleasant to read. On the plus side, the site looks great on the iphone.
So I realized a couple of things I forgot to mention. The font is great but the lighter color makes it hard to read. I find I’m straining my eyes. The other thing I really miss are the numbers in the comments. If I had to back to a comment with a suggestion etc. it made it so easy to find again since there are usually so many. I hate, really hate having to log in to WP to comment. The last thing is as others have suggested/requested to move the comment box to the top of the comments and add a back to top button.
Thanks for the feedback. We will take a look at the font color and the numbers. We are definitely going to move the comment field back up.
Love it. great job!
the site layout is lovely, and i like the font upgrade – it’s certainly easier to read. the emails, oddly, aren’t working so well, and i’m not sure how that might be connected – the logo doesn’t show, and there’s not a snippet of the article in the email, just the title of the entry. i’m using gmail, fwiw.
emails now working – yay!
I love the new site and I am excited it will look good on mobile. I love the new commenting system. The font is huge on my macbook and I had to reduce the font size, never had to do that before.
Like the new design, but . . . . .
Indexing feature w tags is not as useful as the old format.
For example, Tangy Brisket. Once you figure out it’s not under Beef but maybe Meat, all 48 meat recipes come up in full. Not a list. This forces you to go to the general search field. And – that’s like no index at all.
The old index was terrific, easy, useful. Please consider un-improving this feature.
Noted! We will take a closer look. And thank you.
Sorry, for me this type is just too ginormous and not easy to look at the site. Way too much scrolling. Not too kind to desktop users.
Bug report I’m afraid, the menu doesn’t open in mobile view for me (Chrome 51.0.2704.81, Android 6.0, LG G4). It works fine in landscape mode, but in portrait mode it’s funky. Playing around a bit on Chrome’s emulator on my desktop, it looks like the hitbox is off (pinned to the top left corner, whereas the icon is more inset, so hitting the bottom right of the icon doesn’t toggle).
I love the new site and I LOVE how much easier it is to read on my phone. In the early days I printed almost everything, but if I continued to do that I would have your entire website printed… So into the electronic age we go!
Question– I have a vague recollection that on the old site you had a few “travelogue” type posts re: NYC, Mexico City, etc. Did I imagine that and if not, did it make it to the new site?
Thanks… keep making it rain, Deb!
Thank you! I need to gather them up in one space and will do so shortly. (To be completely honest, the real reason a lot of the static page content is currently AWOL is that I didn’t have time to refresh it before the launch because I was so busy finishing that book. But, I’ll get the back here very soon.)
THANK YOU for adding such a cool feature where I can just read the comments when people actually make the recipe. Oh man that helps and it’s genius! The site looks great! Thanks for all your hard on these delicious recipes!
Love the fresher upper! It’s like you moved to a large sun-lit apartment! Just a note to let you know I’m having trouble with Search. I see it, but I can’t seem to make it work. Something to work on…
Finally thanks for all the recipes, all the fun reading, all the family pix, and being there. Your recipes have never failed me, and for that, I am soooooo grateful!
Thanks for letting me know. Can you tell me more about what is happening?
Ads cover the top left corner of the page on the mobile (tablet) site. It is making it impossible to search for recipes.
Sorry, top right. It is very distracting. Sometimes it covers the top of the screen and sometimes it goes away when I scroll all the way up.
That shouldn’t be happening. I will let the team know. Thanks for letting me know.
I missed you Deb! So glad you are back! & happy birthday to Anna!
Congrats on the new design! I especially like the categories on the comments–brilliant. I am one who wanted a smaller point, so I was happy to learn how to do that myself. However, I just clicked and found that the recipe for printing is in a script font. I find this hard to read and dislike it in blogs where that’s all there is. IMHO. Thanks for a wonderful blog and recipes!
Hm… not quite sure why there would be a script. Everything I’ve seen has been with the same fonts as the site. Was it for this post?
Your newsletter as received in gmail is all ads with a few lines/links to the site. I can’t think that this in intentional. I can live with sidebar ads, but this is ridiculous. The newsletter itself is nowhere to be found.
I’d like to be able to jump to comment form, even though I often enjoy reading some comments. I am in awe that you read.every.one.
I love smitten kitchen!!!
Something went wrong today — shouldn’t have happened. Haven’t gotten to the bottom of it yet but we will. I’m sorry for the trouble.
Sorry if this has been mentioned, but the site is acting so laggy for me on Chrome / Macbook OSX 10.10.5 that I can’t really manage scroll through to read anything on this post. Other pages in my browser are fine.
I’ve had some issues with search, namely the structure of the “older posts” button. I used this for the first time on mobile, looking for your chocolate pudding recipe. A search for pudding did not bring up the recipe until clicking on older posts. It took me a moment to realize that clicking on the button was necessary and would expand the results. It’s not a huge deal, but it wasn’t very intuitive for me the first time, and I’d expect chocolate pudding to show up on a search for ‘pudding’ regardless of how old the post is.
Congrats on the new moves, and best of luck sorting it all out!
Hi Deb! Very very nice new website. Although I feel I should mention I somewhat miss the compactness of the one before, including the smaller fonts and the spacing. Now it seems there’s a huuuuge amount of things to read, which is fine when you have a lot of time but when you’re in a hurry to cook some of your brilliant recipees I’m not sure it helps. Also, I agree with the previous index being terrific. That said, great job, love it!
Thanks soooo much for adding the option to sort comments by those who are saying more than “Looks great! Can’t wait to try it!”
I like the larger font for the recipes, but do find it too large to comfortably read the text or comments. Perhaps a slightly smaller font for everything other that the recipe? I understand that ads need to happen, but they do seem kind of overwhelming – especially the one at the header.
I LOVE the new design: clean, bright, easy to read and navigate. And of course, love the “I made it” section – so helpful to read others results and ideas without weeding through the “this sounds good” and/or the questions.
I’m a programmer – not a designer, but I work back and forth with designers so understand the “responsive” layout a bit and it is interesting [to me] how that works. I know that is part of why a lot of sites have gone to the “magazine” layout but I prefer the linear layout as you’ve done.
I looked at it on both iPhone, Windows Phone (8.1) and a Windows (10) tablet as well as my Windows 10 laptop (Chrome and Edge browsers) – looks great everywhere – Congratulations!!!
Liz — Phew! And thank you.
I’ve read through a lot of the comments – professional curiosity :) I could write a good number of them by compiling all my team get whenever we deploy a new version of software. Not to denigrate any of them at all, but – and you and/or your team probably know this – SOME of the issues are browser/user specific.
For example, I have no ads in my newsletter received on my own self hosted blog server email account and then into Outlook (Office 365). I noticed that at least one person mentioned the ads with gmail. It is gmail that is most of the problem. I am not aware that you can do anything about that as they are context sensitive to the receiver’s browser searches. At least they used to be.
Some font sizing and displayed font discrepancies are likely user specific as well. I find that most newer sites, on my very large external monitor, tend to display larger than I prefer. I adjust the “Zoom” in my browser to the size I like. The large font size behavior is, I believe, part of the responsive layout, i.e. the code looks at the display size … but I don’t think at the resolution … and sizes things accordingly. I’m kind of writing part of this to myself as I’m thinking I’ll have to deal with similar issues as we get ready to release a new layout of the line of business software I am part of developing.
Congrats on the new design! I absolutely love it!
in your cherry brown butter bar recipe (https://smittenkitchen.com/2009/06/cherry-brown-butter-bars-new-video-project/) , the hyperlinks to “baked a wedding cake” and “Dessert tart” are broken
Thank you! Should now be fixed.
Hi Deb! I love the new design! A question, though: When I look at the recipe list in picture/grid format, the text is not a clickable link. I have to click outside the text on the picture. I suppose this may be annoying to just me, but was that intentional? (I havnent read through the comments yet to see if anyone else has brought it up, though.)
Also, the ads at the top of the page sometimes take up about a third of the screen on my laptop. Not the case when I visit on my phone as far as I can tell right now, but I like to start reading right away!
Hi Jess — Sounds like it’s not rendering right at all. Would you consider grabbing a screenshot of what you’re getting and sending it to me at deb@smittenkitchen.com? If not, maybe just let me know if you’re on a phone or tablet or desktop. It will help us get to the bottom of it sooner. Thank you.
Done. Thanks!
I’ve been a SK fan and have used the site weekly since 2008. Congratulations on the beautiful redesign– it’s elegant and user-friendly and best of all, keeps the familiar SK flavor that we all adore. Thank you for a decade of great recipes, Deb!!!
Skimming through the questions I see a few others have the same issue I have with email of the newsletter: too many ads! In fact, I just unsubscribed to newsletter this morning after the latest post I opened had not one, not two, but three separate large ads for financial services, and only the name of the Smitten Kitchen post for the bunny cake. I’d really like to get your newsletters, but only if they really are newsletters.
Hi Susan — Something had gone wrong with the newsletter that it didn’t go out correctly. I’d never intentionally send out an empty email of ads. FWIW, the post emailing serving you’re speaking of (the older newsletter) is not something I earn a penny from. The newsletter signup in the sidebar is to cleaner, more professional one I launched last fall. It only goes out weekly, but includes menu ideas for the week. It’s currently ad-free, but won’t be forever. However, there will be at most 1 to 2 ads on it, nothing like the old one.
Hi Deb! So glad you’re back! I’ve loved, loved your blog for years and it’s one of my top “go to sites.” I like the new comment section for those who have made the recipe – so helpful! I do have a small (but steady) annoyance with this new format, though. I loved the previous format because you could view the entire post, top to bottom, in three “page downs.” Now it’s at least 5-6 and, well, I read less of it, to be frank. I know the font was smaller (or less left/right margins?), which some don’t like, but I sure miss the “compactness.” Best to you and your family!
I opened it on my iPad and went “Arghh!” (No, not in a good way). It’s big, chunky and awkward. I want to make it smaller so the post titles aren’t shouting at me, but I can’t zoom out. (My husband’s reaction opening it on a computer: “It is tablet friendly; it’s all right down the middle, which makes it look kind of stupid on a computer. I mean, it’s ok, I guess. . . .”) I’ve been a reader for years, but honestly just don’t love looking at the new big clunky format. Maybe I’ll have to stop reading it on my tablet and only read on my computer?
I work in design and read a lot of cooking blogs, and I’ve got to say that this is the only time ever that you’ve done something that really seems “off”. But maybe doing something so focused on visual detail and scale for a living makes me hyper- aware.
Hey Deb, very long-time reader here though I rarely post in the comments (perhaps never? I can’t recall). I know you’re probably getting inundated with opinions & feedback on the new site & it’s awesome that you’re listening so closely to your followers. Just wanted to throw in my two cents.
I do miss the old site quite badly…admittedly in part for nostalgia, but while the new site is nice it feels a bit more, perhaps the word is generic? You could turn the whole site neon green & I’d still be reading, formatting won’t stop that, but I always loved the layout of the left sidebar on the old site, along with the recipe index, & miss those quite badly. I agree with other commenters asking for a return to the recipe index of the past. The new one doesn’t feel as smooth.
Also, I have to agree that the right-hand ad that pops up when scrolling down & then stays right where it is, that’s awfully distracting. It also makes it hard to click on “In Season”. No problem with ads, we all need to make money, but the placement of the ads on the old site never even registered & these are kind of glaring, getting in the way of your actual content.
Like I said, nothing will stop me from reading the recipes I love finding here, but I quite selfishly wish that could’ve been accomplished without scrapping the original layout. It was more compact, felt more professional, a step above a lot of other cooking blogs, if the code was behind the times a bit it didn’t show at all. Just one opinion. Regardless, thank you for all the work you put into this site…I use your recipes every week & website formatting is a small quibble in the grand scheme of that.
Congrats on the new site. I haven’t spent a lot of time exploring it yet, but the one thing that’s hard not to notice is the banner ad at the top. Was that there previously? The new layout is so pretty, but with a big banner advertising that RAID KILLS ROACHES, it’s not nearly as pretty. I wish the advertising could be less glaring.
It wasn’t and we’re trying out different spots to see what works. We’re looking into alternatives. Sorry about the gross ad; I haven’t seen it but quite often they relate to previous searches and are not centrally issued. For example, I always get Madewell and JCrew ads, and currently kid duvet covers and diapers. Perhaps predictably.
New site is so pretty!! I do miss having the navigation on the left, I must admit; that was nice. And I’m sorry you have to have ads :( But the new recipe index is great — I love being able to switch between list and photos. Because one can never have enough pictures of chocolate stuff, you know?
The new design is exciting, but there are some issues with how the site looks on my laptop (Macbook). The phone experience is definitely much improved in the new version, but I do hope your developers can address the issues with the laptop/desktop layout.
I believe the simplest way to observe this is by comparing what you can see “above the fold” when you first open smittenkitchen.com on a laptop. Here’s a link to the old version from the Internet Archive for reference: https://web.archive.org/web/20160301130402/http://smittenkitchen.com/.
In the old design, as soon as you open the page you can see the title of the latest recipe, a whole paragraph of text from the recipe, the whole first recipe photo completely, and most of the second photo, as well as several navigation links in the sidebar. It’s wonderful.
In the new version, I see an enormous ad taking up the top third of the page, *part* of the first photo for the recipe, and a smidgen of navigational links. I can’t see the recipe title (!) or any recipe text. Please fix this!!
I also really miss the old font – it felt iconic, although perhaps the size was due to be increased. The new font feels too casual/cheap.
All that said, it is *much* easier to read recipes in the new version on my phone, so that’s a good thing.
But please take my comments with a grain of salt because I haven’t had much caffeine today and I hate change.
Oh I’m coming back to report that; I changed my mind, the recipe index was so much better before! I liked to be able to read them ALL and not having to click just scroll. And also, I just don’t get the way it works? It looks very pretty though.
I really don’t like the text starting from the left side thing as some have mentioned. When I open the page there’s a huge ad on top (before the SK logo) which is sad.
Last but not least, the font feels too… tacky?!
Hope this helps!
Yeah, give us our serifs back! Sheesh!
The old font was also sans-serif. In general, sans-serif reads better on the web, serif reads better in print, or so say the typography experts I outsource these decisions to. It is larger and vastly more readable for most people; I know it’s a big change for everyone, regardless. As for the top ad, don’t love it either and am looking into alternatives. Be patient here if you can; I’m a one-person “team” running this site and addressing concerns as quickly as I can.
A couple of things about the new site from a super big fan and looooongtime reader. I’m a true “consumer” of your site and give you credit for teaching me how to cook and bake.
I echo what others are saying about ads. The top ad is very large and feels like a huge change to your brand. Nobody can say whether it’s “worth it” more than you can, but it does look like “Woza! New Smitten Kitchen = commercials!” The side ads are also glitchy, not only do they cover up side content when scrolling up and down (not all the time, but on certain pages) they seem to appear and disappear at random.
I dislike having to log in to wordpress to comment. #getoffmylawn
I absolutely ADORE the “I made this” feature, but think that the two checkboxes make it seem like one has to check a checkbox (either “I have a question” or “I made this” — it’s not intuitive that those are “opt-ins.” Perhaps just the word (optional) before those make it clear that I am not being asked to check one. I think this may be why some folks with general “This cake is awesome.” comments on the bunny post have their comments listed under “I made this.” (The choice between “I made this” and “I have a question” people might think “I made this? I guess? Or I would? Because it’s awesome?)
Other good thing = all the photos and the tiles of photos.
Yay Smitten Kitchen!
PS — In addition to logging in to make the comment, I don’t like that my default wordpress name “tracimsmith” is listed instead of the name I entered in the form. I’m now seeing what others meant in their comments. This actually could cause some folks some embarrassment if they don’t know it’s going to happen (for example, their wordpress name was something like hottiehotterson44 but they don’t really want to be listed as that on a baking site… Not sure if I’m making sense. :)
We are going to get this fixed ASAP. I’m sorry for the trouble.
Thank you — I appreciate all of the feedback and agree with you on at least 99% of it. We are looking into other ad spaces/options. I hadn’t realized that the banner would be so dominating. I thought we’d try it out because a) 90% websites out there have one. They also have more cluttered designs, so they’re barely noticed. b) It was outside of the reading area. In my mind, outside reading area better than inside reading area. Regardless, don’t love it; we’ll get it right soon. For the WordPress logging in, that shouldn’t be happening and we’re going to get it fixed. The comment sorting needs some finetuning; it will be.
I always love reading your “blather”…honestly, I’ve said it before, coming from someone with a PhD in English who loves to cook—your blog is the whole package. Well-written, sharp prose and amazing food. Also I’m so excited about the new delineations in the comments section. Genius.
Not that great, seeing and ad as the first thing is very annoying, don’t even see the picture of the recipe till one click again. Very bad user experience and terrible advise.
The website is beautiful! I love the in season section. It feels enough like the “old” Smitten Kitchen to not be shocking, but at the same time fresh and modern.
One thing that irks me: the placing of the email subscription box. Me, being a person who doesn’t bother to read things, happily typed in my search query (I am in dire need of some blueberry muffins, yo), and of course got a 404 page because “blueberry muffins” are apparently not an email address. Either way, I would prefer for the subscription box to be further down, perhaps below the “recently” bar. Maybe I am an outlier being frustrated by subscription boxes, though!
I would totally have done the same! Let me look into other options here. And thank you.
Absolutely wonderful this new site; must have been a huge effort to make it! I was happy and all excited to read that the Baby food section is in again, but I cannot find it!
Whoops — Use this link for now; I’ll get it back in the index soon. (This could be filed under Things The Designers Assigned To Deb, thus, my bad.)
Looks absolutely fabulous on an iphone – wonderful even. Love!
But on my mac, the first thing I see is a big advertisement and also all down the righthand side of the page. There is almost more advertisement than site content.
Is there anyway to make the ads smaller on the desktop version? It is really off-putting and disappointing as I usually read your site on my mac.
Just a small consideration…
PS – bunny cake? cuteness!
PS – now that I read the comments of others – perhaps it is just on a mac that the ads are so enormous and really take away from the whole site…? I am on a little 11-inch macbook air and the top ad is about 1 third of my page. The one on the right hand side is equally annoying…
I took a screenshot – if only I can figure out how to send it to you!
This doesn’t sound right to me. There should be an ad up above the banner and there is a “sticky” one in the sidebar that stays there as you scroll down, but it shouldn’t take over any other areas. It’s at the bottom of the sidebar, so there’s nothing below it. Are you still having this issue?
Great changes! (and thank you for not going to the magazine format).
Just a comment for your search engine: all recipes does not appears yet when typing the key words. One example you last post on foolproof crepes doesn’t appear when you type “crepes” in the search box. I am a geek when it comes to your blog so I manage to find my ways for this one recipe. However I also use a lot your search engine for inspiration at dinner time, it would be a shame to miss out on recipes because of a search engine!
Thanks for letting me know; I filed a ticket about this.
Hi Deb, I’m a long time reader of your blog. When I moved into my first apartment eight years ago, I realized I had no idea how to cook anything besides pasta and jarred tomato sauce. I didn’t even have internet at my apartment. I found your blog while at my work computer, printed your recipes, and took them back home to attempt to make myself dinner like a grown up. I love that you meticulously research and test every recipe, use non-fussy ingredients and give straightforward instructors. You basically taught me how to cook. Your site is still my go-to when looking for recipes even after all these years.
Congratulations on all you have achieved and the blog redesign! The only thing I miss is the old recipe index layout, which others have mentioned above me. And the search function isn’t functioning properly. I found the ads and headline text to be too large and obstructive on my small Macbook air, but the site looks beautiful on my desktop using Firefox and on my iPhone. And I love the new comments section. Thank you for your dedication and I look forward to what comes next for Smitten Kitchen 2.0 Cheers!
Thank you and do know that we are looking into all of these things. I’m sure within a week or two, we’ll have 85% of the kinks worked out. Thanks for your patience, in the meantime.
I read this site on a computer, not on my phone. The new design is very hard to read–pale gray letters on a white backdrop.
Thanks for the feedback; we are going to take a closer look at the font color.
Another question: how about alphabetizing the lists of recipes? If one clicks on “Recipes”, and “Cookies”, what populates is a long and seemingly unorganized list the reader must then scroll through. How about A to Z? I speak from personal experience: if I can’t find it easily, I’ll go to where I can. Which would mean not here. As for the complaints from others about ads, I use an adblocker. I hope this won’t become one of those sites that requires users to turn their adblockers off to access content. Because I don’t go to sites that require that…
Anne — Thanks, we will look into this. We are also looking into alternative ad placements; I’m not crazy about the banner, either.
However, I just want to put this out there about ad blockers: I understand why people use them. I understand that most web ads are terrible. But I can tell you that at least here, we work very hard to make sure the ads are as unobtrusive as possible — whether or not we are happy with them now, do know that a lot of time, energy and hair-pulling went into picking options that were outside of the reading areas, hence the sidebar and above the logo in the header and as minimal as can be — because I have no desire for anyone to have a terrible experience here. I can’t think of any way that would help the site.
There are only three ways for websites to make money: 1. Having people pay a subscription fee to use it, which I wouldn’t do and rarely keeps publications that are not, say, The New Yorker, afloat anyway. 2. Sponsored posts, i.e. “Here’s a totally unbiased review of a product I got for free,” which I would also never do, and 3. Ads. We are doing our best to make them unobnoxious and unobtrusive, but if the ads don’t show, this site cannot pay its bills. Ad blockers are diametrically opposed to any goal of having free, unbiased, unsponsored content. I would never (and could never) tell anyone what to do, but I did want to speak to this publisher’s side of things.
Hello Deb! I am glad you have a new responsive site, I cannot tell you how many times I have used my phone in the kitchen and it was sorta tricky to view before.
Two notes:
1: I was honestly really attached to the old body copy font, I know it is silly and I will get used to the new one but JUST SAYIN’.
2: Would you consider a recipe index with a thumbnail image? Reason: right now I am trying to find a cookie to make to bring to a party this weekend and just seeing the name of the recipe makes it hard to decide whether or not to click one without seeing a pic. Maybe have an option to show images or not? Just an idea!
Emily — Thank you. 1. I was too! I realize that redesigning the site says otherwise, but when it was time to refresh, I knew it was time to deal with the fact that for the vast majority of people, it was very hard to read and justified text gets very “river-y” when fonts get to a regular size. Plus the other issues. 2. Are you not seeing this as an option? Take cookies. This is how it appears when you select cookies from the recipe index. But, if you click on the little square/window icon right next to “cookie” it takes you to this.
2. !!!! WOW I totally missed it. So glad you pointed it out. Thank you!
Yesterday I posted that no newsletter in my email, just ads and links. Today your newsletter was there, intact. Just FYI.
Great! Glad it is fixed.
Feedback for consideration – I keep typing search keywords into the “email address” box for newsletter signup by mistake. I think that very accessible input box/field should be for searching and not newsletter signup (or have the search one above the newsletter signup box) as one will be higher use than the other. Not sure how it plays out on mobile platforms but I think it would be rather user-unfriendly if a mobile user also has to click on the magnifying glass icon before the search input field pops up.
Thank you — we’re going to look into this.
I really miss being able to go back and forward through the recipes in chronological order. It was like paging through a book, and because it was chronological, it also was sorted by season. Trying hard to adjust.
You mean the previous and next recipe, yes? We do still have that. You can do it in two places: the top photo (it’s not always easy to see) has white arrows built in pointing left (previous) and right (next, when it’s not the last recipe) and you can use that to navigate through. Right above the comment section, there’s another place where you can arrow through.
Love the new site! It’s clean and easy to read, but still very smitten-y. Great job!
I’m not sure if anyone else has commented on this (if so, my apologies) but would you consider listing the individual recipes in the index in alphabetical order? Prior to the redesign, the recipes within each category were alpha order but now I’m not sure the order – perhaps chronologically? I find it easier to locate a recipe by it’s name rather than when it was published. I can barely remember what I wore last week, definitely not when you posted that delicious cake… Just a suggestion!
Thanks for all you do to make this such a great site for everyone!
Definitely going to look into this, thanks for the suggestion.
I second this! It makes it so much easier to browse for recipes if they are in alphabetical order. Especially, as noted by another commentator, when you don’t remember the exact name of a recipe but have a vague recollection of what it should be called.
I’m so glad you are back and the site looks great. I was so worried that maybe you were shutting down. I need my smitten kitchen!
You won’t get rid of me that easily — and thank you!
I love your job Deb but previous site was perfect. But we will forget old…
Deb, honey, I love you, but the site has gone from a dignified, modern, professional, concise, cookbook-like look to a mom blog with GIANT font to match. Severely disappointed in your designers
Some feedback about printing – I LOVED the way recipes on the old site printed (centered on the page, smaller print etc.) However I just tried printing a relatively short recipe and it took 2 pages, unnecessarily huge font, and was squished to only the left half of the page (and I love a little white space for my own note writing in the margins but this seemed excessive?). Not sure if others are having this issue but something for consideration.
Thank you!
I also liked the old recipes! It was so nice to have both the ingredients and the instructions on the same page so you aren’t constantly flipping between pages while you’re trying to cook!
Me again: the light gray/white background is easier to read on my enormous billboard-size monitor at work, but not on the smaller monitor I use for my home office, so this probably more of an end user issue than an overall site design issue. But, speaking of difficult to read: in my opinion, the cartoonish curly all-caps font used for “Like this subscribe for more” jars the eye and doesn’t match the sleekness of the overall site design. And it is difficult to read.
I think you are a genius for the design aspects that you included and excluded. For example, not having the subscription popup (we all loathed popups in the past-and they’re not much better now!), and the I Made This! comment section-there are recipes that I’m so, so eager to make that I just want to read about real humans’ experiences (because you’re Superwoman, we all know that).
A huge congrats to the parents on surviving a year with your sweet baby, and congrats on this new baby too. My old eyes were growing tired of that tiny font!
I love your website old and new but am so disappointed that I no longer have the option of downloading your recipes to my kindle. Please tell me this is a temporary glitch.
Can you tell me more? We certainly never set up anything on our end to enable this, thus we haven’t removed the feature. It might be a glitch elsewhere. But if you can let me know more about how you used to use it, I can look into it.
Hi Deb,
I am not very technical but this is how I imported your recipes to my kindle. At the end of each recipe after share this were 3 small colored blocks. I would tap the black box which would redirect me to add this.com. This brings up options such as Twitter/Facebook/kindle it etc. Tapping kindle it would redirect to fivefilters.org which brings up page with push to kindle. When I would tap the send button on this page your recipe would import to my kindle. I thought it was brilliant!
Another food blog howsweeteats does what yours used to do if you want to see what I am talking about. On this site it is the red block with the + at the end of the post but before the comment section that does what your little black box did.
Very helpful! I think I can get this back. Thank you.
Hi Deb,
I was seriously out of sorts not being able to import recipes to my kindle since your redesign. I did some searching and discovered an app at fivefilters.org that not only lets me import your blog but every other blog. This makes me very happy. So thank you for redesigning your site and creating a site that I have become so attached to that I had to figure out a way to get you back in my kindle.
The photos on your “book” page are broken (show up as little blue question marks) just FYI.
Thank you — will get that fixed! (It’s cute the way I make it sound like I’m outsourcing it, right? Heh.)
Glad you are back! Missed you!
I get a HUGE banner ad across the top of the page here now. Like seriously huge – it takes up half the area on my browser window (pre-scrolling). Any way to make this smaller? I’m using firefox on a laptop.
Yes! We are looking into alternative ads as we speak.
I’m glad, Deb, as – reading on a small iPad pro in landscape view – I find that the banner ad, especially in its wide version, really impacts the presentation of the site. On my screen the vertical measurements are: Safari address bar and tabs: 3/4″, wide banner ad: 2″, and SK logo band: 1 3/4″, which leaves only 1 1/4″ for the blog post (e.g., tops of the bunny ears on the cakes). Horizontally, the photo gets 5/8 of the screen. Alltogether, the blog post content looks shoved into the lower left corner and does not communicate clearly what the post is about. Invested as I am in SK ( :) ), I was sorry to see the home page lose its warmly inviting feel.
On mobile, how do I get back to the homepage? I clicked the SK logo by habit and assumed this would work, but was extremely disappointed when it did not… I don’t get it!
Also, I would like a ‘jump to recipe’ option vs ‘jump to comments’… Being that this is a cooking blog, it makes more sense to me personally for the jump to direct to the recipe instead of comments. Especially if it’s a new post. But maybe this is just me?
Hi Cat — Where were you that the SK logo didn’t take you back to the home page? It should be working, so something went wrong. The Jump to Comments is on every page right now; the Jump to Recipe exists on the last, say, 10 recipes on the site and will, in time, exist on every recipe. Sadly, it requires that the recipes are re-coded and there’s no way to automate this, and there are 1000+ recipes to date. (Yes, I’ll be looking to hire this out once the dust settles.) So, that was the long answer, in short: it’s coming. :)
Hi Deb! Thanks for your reply. Makes sense about the ‘jump to’ link. Sounds like a lot of work! Good luck with that!
As for the logo, I see now that it works… Sort of… But it works very inconsistently for me. I’m on my mobile phone (HTC, Android), using Chrome browser, and the logo appears to be very weird… On all areas of the site. If I’m at the top of the page it seems to work okay, but if I scroll down, it becomes odd. Sometimes it works first click, sometimes it works if I touch it in a specific spot, sometimes have to touch it multiple times for it to work, sometimes I touch it a bazillion times and it goes nowhere. It’s quite odd!
I love the new site and I really appreciate that you put so much thought into everything. The only thing that i really don’t like about it is the ad on top being bigger (way bigger) than the sk logo… makes me cringe everytime. Other than that: DANKE aus Berlin!
Will take some getting used to. But at least we can move on from funnel cake…
Hi Deb! I use your site for EVERYTHING–so much so that it’s become a joke in my family. Like others have said, I would’ve kept using the old format forever just for the sake of the phenomenal recipes, but I’m so so happy to see to site brought into 2016. Especially for pulling recipes up on my phone!
I didn’t see any other comments on this, so maybe I’m the only one, but it happens on both my phone and iPad: I love the idea of photos with the recipe titles, but for me all those thumbnail photos are super washed out so that the white writing is nearly invisible and I can’t see the food. Has anyone else mentioned this?
Otherwise, I agree that the top ad shifting the whole page down is distracting. Disagree about adding a search box with the magnifying glass–location and symbol are universal for search, IMO–although it might be nice to get the cursor in the search box by clicking once on the symbol without having to click again in the box. Nitpicking; overall it’s fantastic!!
Love the new site design, Deb! Just wanted to share my own Smitten Kitchen story. Five years ago this summer I had graduated from college and moved to Paris for graduate school. It was the very first time I had lived alone, unaided by dining hall food, not to mention I was flat broke. A friend introduced me to your site, and I spent the next year in Paris learning how to cook for myself, trying your recipes, sometimes failing or flailing, but always loving the process. So thank you, for your endless encouragement and your optimistic narratives. I have so enjoyed following you over the years, and I can’t think of a single recipe that I haven’t devoured with relish.
Congrats on the new site! I am trying to search for cakes and ran into two problems. When I click on the link for “everyday cakes” (SK homepage -> recipes -> everyday cakes) it tells me the page can’t be found. And when I try just clicking on “Cakes”, I get the full recipe for the grapefruit yogurt cake and nothing else….
I’m laughing because my husband just told me the same in an email. On it! (And thank you.)
Your recipe links don’t seem to be working! The main page shows up, but the smaller links (to Bars, Everyday Cakes, etc) say page not found.
I’m laughing because my husband just told me the same in an email. On it! (And thank you.)
Hi,
A couple of issues while I go through the spiffy new website (Also you’re doing a fantastic job at incorporating the feedback so far)
1. the “Celebration Cake” section in recipes seems to be broken, none of the images load and I get this weird code in the middle of the page.
2. the “Everyday Cakes” leads to a page not found
3. the “Cake” tag takes me to a 2007 post for a specific cake
(Yes there is clearly a theme with this :)
Heh. This should be all fixed now and thanks for letting me know.
Yay! For the longest time I was like, the only possible way smitten kitchen could be better is if it was mobile responsive (I am forever using my phone for the recipes in the kitchen) and now it is! BEAUTIFUL! Love it! Off to use the ‘surprise me’ now…
The new website looks great on my home computer but AWFUL at work – Maybe due to the kind of ad blocking software that my company uses? The old layout worked equally well both places.
I am not sure if I am hesitant to like the new site because I like the old one better, or if I was just so used to the old one (what’s wrong with justified??). That being said, with the tweaks being made over the last few days and some time for me to adjust, I am liking it better. My notes: (1) The right column is still a little big for me. (2) I love the look of each result being its own picture with text overlaying it. However, I do want to point out that you cannot click on the text itself, you have to click on the picture around it, which is annoying. (3) I also liked being able to text search the old index page with all the recipe names on it. But maybe that is not sustainable with the growth of the site…
Love your site Deb!
Bonus: the link to the kid pic is easier to find! It’s the first place I go in any post. :)
Congrats on the redesign, I can only begin to fathom what an epic undertaking this must have been! I used the neat new “popular now” feature to spot the chopped salad with feta that will be on my table for tomorrow’s dinner. I have to say that I’m not loving the layout of the new printing feature. When I hit the print icon, it took me directly to my computer’s print screen rather than the clean recipe-only page (which I always liked, but not a big deal) and it printed in a long narrow column that was less easy to read than the prior site, and also there wasn’t the awesome SK logo up top, which I always loved for readily identifying your great recipes in my folder.
We are going to tidy this up. This fell behind, like, “half of recipe index is broken” and “everyone hates the banner ad” in terms of priority (heh), but I can almost promise that within a week, it will be less annoying. (Hope I didn’t jinx us!)
I appreciate the work that went into this redesign, and I’m sure I’ll get used to it. But it looks huge on my desktop (only place I read it) and I miss being able to see more pics on the screen at the same time. I guess I am just really used to the old look. But you’re back, and that’s the main thing!
no photos on the main page in the new version. i have internet explorer 11. i understand this is old and not hip, but it’s what a lot of people have on their desktops especially if you work for a big company and browsing while at work (on break, of course!). one of the main reasons i would click on a recipe to see more was because deb’s great photos invited me further. don’t love the new version.
Thanks for letting us know. You’re the first person to report this so I’m almost wondering if it was a local glitch; it’s not an issue of ignoring “unhip” browsers. Do let me know if it continues, if you can and we will take a closer look on our end.
I think your new design is excellent! One of the best I’ve ever seen. Love reading Smitten Kitchen. All the best!
One downside I’ve noticed is that when you print a recipe out now (which I do very often) it takes 2-3 pages of printing, rather than one like it did previously. Yes bigger print is better but this is the downside, feels wasteful.
I agree and this is on to-fine-tune list. :)
Hazel Tov—-ove the new site!! And thank you for all you do—I love cooking from your recipes—-plus your wonderful writing is such a pleasure to read!
I really wish you’d offer full, not truncated, RSS feeds.
Hi Oana — It’s been truncated for over 5 years. Unfortunately, there are a lot of services and scrapers that use RSS feeds to steal and reproduce content; it’s not fair to punish people who are not stealing, but it’s the only way I can protect my work. I’ve found that sharing half the post is a good balance — you can see if you like the post enough to finish reading but most of it is already there. (I’m an avid RSS reader, so this is coming from someone using the services too.) Currently, we have a bug with the new design in getting the truncation to go out correctly in feeds so new posts and being published in full in RSS, but will go back to partial after it’s corrected.
Hi, Deb!
I’m so excited for you and all the new, although I feel like I am the only one bummed by the new site layout. It may just be my problem, as I think something is clashing with my firewall or security preferences, but the site looks pretty wacky from here. Many pictures are error-ed, the logo takes up an entire frame, and the layout of the text looks like a big html fail. Not sure if it’s anything you can fix on your end though..
I may just have to browse for recipes on mobile phone to get the full effect, although it far less comfortable!
Any ideas?
Hi Hilla — That sounds terrible. It shouldn’t be happening. If you have a minute and want to send me a screen shot, I’m at thesmitten@gmail.com and we can take a closer look.
Will do so, thanks!
welcome back deb! everything looks great and can’t wait to play around with the site more. question: is it possible to have links open in a new tab instead of redirecting? it’s pure laziness on my part but saves me having to ctrl-click to see adorable kid photos! (more adorable kid photos, please, always). also i’d like to second the great suggestion of having your recipe comments separately accessible in their own tab or some such.
So, there is an actual reason that I don’t have links open in a new window and I explain it more here. In short: it’s just bad form on the web. I know I’m in a minority following these rules, though.
Love everything about the update. Especially the large font and easier to see linked text due to the color change. Never want to miss a picture of your darlings!
WELCOME BACK! Also, how incredibly cool is this “I made this” and “I have a question” feature. The coolest, is the answer. Such amazing things, plus cake, and corn pasta, which I just died over. Happy summer, Deb!!
Deb, I couldn’t be happier for you!!! I’ve been lurking for approximately half of those 9.85 years and I didn’t realize what a bad blog-follower I’d been until I saw this post and had a literal, physical dance party on your behalf. Then I thought to myself, “Self. You should tell Deb how much you adore her. Also stop being a lurker.”
So… here I am. :) Thank you for your French Onion Soup recipe. It was a game changer in my life & marriage. I love hearing about your life, kiddos, etc. Also we espouse different versions of the same name so I’m convinced that in an alternate universe we could be besties.
Also, gorg mobile site? Yaaaaas! Looks so good!
xoxo
Hooray! I’ve been reading for about 8 years now–can’t quite remember how I found you in the first place. These are some great changes!
I worked my way through your first cookbook and eagerly await more recipes (although I too have a second child, so no rush over here)
Hooray!
congrats on the new site! It’s lovely!
Maybe I’m not looking in the right place, but I wondered if your recipes’ temperatures are for a fan or conventional oven? Thanks!
Conventional; it’s standard here. And thank you!
Wow – this looks fantastic! Great job! The quality of the design now matches the quality of your writing and recipes.
Congratulations!
My main concern/complaint is the print button. It doesn’t work on mobile (for me). But more importantly, when you click it, it doesn’t take you to a new, more streamlined recipe like before. The reason I prefer that is bc I pull these up on my phone and then take a picture of the recipe. That way it’s saved and easy for me to use when I’m cooking. Now I can’t get it all in 1 or 2 pictures bc you can’t shrink the screen.
Oh and for the mobile site – it would be nice to have an option to “go to full site.” If that option is there (most mobile sites have it), I couldn’t find it.
I’m also not a fan of how large everything is now. And how much space all the stuff on the right side of the screen takes up. To me, it’s junkier and also looks like almost every other cooking blog out there. But others might like that look.
In any case, congratulations – I know you and your people put a lot of work into this redesign and I’m sure we will all love the new improvements we can and can’t see.
Hi Katie — Thanks for your feedback. The print issue is high on the to-do list right now and will be fixed.
As for mobile and go to full site, it actually doesn’t exist. The way sites are designed these days and the way this was is called “responsive” (the water image on this page I always think best sums it up) — there’s only one template. On a wider screen, it bounces into a two-column format (i.e. the “desktop” with a sidebar). On a narrow (phone) screen it funnels into one and the sidebar stuff goes to the bottom of the page. I realize you were making a suggestion and did not request a speech on mobile design (!) but I just wanted to explain why it isn’t something we can change.
As for the font size, I’m of two minds. First, we went with the size that’s considered “correct” for web design these days (it’s determined by average distances from screen and number of letters per line blah blah), but it doesn’t mean that I love it. I too prefer smaller fonts; I hated it for about 2 weeks (on the dev site) and the completely stopped noticing it. But I’m hearing overall that people are really happy to be able to read the site again without enlarging the text size from the browser. If the complaints about the bigger size begin to outpace these, we will definitely look into other options.
Oooh thanks for the info! I had no idea it was all 1 template. I figured there was a separate for mobile. I really only wanted a “go to full site” option so that I could shrink the recipe and screen shot it easier, but since y’all are working on the print button, that will solve it!
Btw, the print template should now be shrunk and streamlined and we tightened up the line spacing of the paragraphs a little, so it should be easier to screen shot. We’re going to tighten up the recipe card (recipe portion) next. I didn’t want to rush into too many font changes until we had a couple weeks to let it settle in; wanted to make sure the things that bothered us (and me!) on Day 1 were still bothersome.
You are my favorite cooking blog – way before the one with Pins. You provide an amazing resource with your tasty recipes and candor. Keep it up #SMITTENKITCHEN !!!
Love the bigger font !!! I was hooking my computer to my TV to make the recipes readable !!! Yay for the chocolate sheet pan cake, I might celebrate the new font with a cake !!! (any reason is enough for cake time !!!)
Why can I no longer save your recipes to my NYT Cooking recipe box?
Hi
On this page: https://smittenkitchen.com/about/faq/
The link to ‘Getty images’ is broken.
Loving the new site!
Hi Deb,
For the record, I have always thought that the site looked professional and was very user friendly so don’t be so hard on yourself :-). Hopefully you are getting a little help with your in-box now too, because I cannot imagine managing the thousands of emails you must get every day. I use the site a lot for my family meal planning (all of our breakfast recipes in the past two weeks have come from your site!) and I really wish that there was a way to sort a section of recipes alphabetically instead of chronologically. It helps me skim the “in season” stuff by being able to skip over fruits, etc. when I am browsing for in season mains and vice versa. I know that is the type of request that makes web designers probably want to tear their hair out, but they were probably already doing that anyway based on the number of comments already on this thread! Hope you and your family have a great weekend and thanks for all of your hard work.
I am dreadful with technology. Is there a way to create a recipe box on your site?
I liked your old column, where I didn’t have to look for your information and conversation among so many ads I’m not interested in. I’d be willing to pay money to subscribe to a non-advertising column, because I love your work. And your kitchen is lovely…
Deb, I can no longer save a recipe to my NYTimes Cooking Recipe Box and there are lots more ads. Any suggestions?
I love SK
m
To be honest, I don’t think we’d ever enabled this so it must have been automatic, however, I put in a ticket to find out why this and other integrations (Evernote, Paprika, etc.) haven’t been working since the redesign. Hope to have a fix soon.
Having so much trouble with your new emails/website! They’re filled with ads, and half the time, i can’t find the link for the actual recipe. Help!!! I miss the old days
:(
Sounds like something went wrong today. There was one email that went out blank but the most recent one should have been back to normal. Please, if you can, forward me any email that didn’t look right so we can take a closer look; I’m deb@smittenkitchen.com
The new look is great, clean, minimalist, and modern.
If possible I would like to see you tweak the recipe format so they could be pulled into the Paprika app.
Thanks for this wonderful resource.
How do I email a recipe? I can’t find any link at the end of a recipe.
The link should be back now, I hope.
This is so beautiful! Before I came here for the recipes – now my designereyes get some food, too :)
Hi Deb… the new design is lovely. One thing I miss is the opening photo of the dish in the newsletter. It helps to see if I want to make the dish or not.
Thanks!!
I love the look of your newly redesigned website, but I do have a problem. Since the demise of Ziplist (by Epicurious, ugh!), I save all my web recipes to my New York Times recipe box. There are a few websites that do not allow me to save things there, and unfortunately, your newly revised website has become one. I do hope something can be done so I can keep your wonderful recipes within easy access without printing them all out. Many thanks and congrats on this exciting step into the future!
We are looking into this. I’m not sure what changed (never actually set it up on my end, so it must have been automated) but we will figure it out.
Congrats – new site is lovely, many good improvement. I VASTLY prefer that the column of links be on the left (where it was) rather than on the right (where it is now). Easier navigation for fingers on a pad to slide to.
also – my choices at the bottom are only I MADE THIS or I HAVE A QUESTION. Neither of those apply to me. I’m just makin’ a comment
Thanks for the feedback. No need to choose a comment column at all. All comments are welcome; they’ll just go into the main feed which you can think of as the same comment section we’ve always had. The other two options are self-selections, a service to the subset of readers who only want to read comments from people with questions or who made this. I’m going to request that we put in a little one or two line explainer of how it works in the comment fields, to make it less confusing.
You have lost me – I am not very computer savvy, but something has happened and I am Gretel, alone in the woods. I can’t figure out where all the conversation between people (which was after the recipe, same screen) has gone, or how to find it. Nor do I understand why it goes to flicker and reduces the images so you have multiple screen choices. I only want one, that I can read all the way through.
If you answer, pretend you are talking to a ten year old (though the way things are going you may have to pretend she is younger.)
Thanks
I love your website your recipes- I just don’t know how to work my way through the new forest,
Hi Carol — I’m sorry that the new design can be confusing; design should never be hard work or it’s not doing its job. You can read all comments in the main tab; they’re as they’ve always been. The addition tabs are just for people who only want to read comments from people who have made the recipe or have a question. We created this in response to this feature being requested by readers about 100 times a year for 10 years. :) That said, it’s not working perfectly yet and the developer that built it is working on a fix. The images have always linked to Flickr because I host images there; this hasn’t changed.
Hi! One weird little bug I’ve noticed, I have the pinterest add on for firefox which normally means when you hover over images a little button appears to save to pinterest. For some reason on this website, the button appears just above the images, and when you try to click on it, it disappears, because you’ve moved off the image to reach it!
It’s a tiny thing and not that big a deal, but just thought I’d let you know :)
Everything else looks lovely, especially working better on mobile! x
Interesting — are you using a bookmarklet or plugin that enables that Pinterest tag on photos? We haven’t coded the site to include it (theorizing that heavy Pinterest users have a bookmarklet of sorts to make things easy) so something in that integration might be broken.
I think it’s Pinterest’s own tool that it prompts you to download! Interestingly it seems to be working fine today, so my apologies for troubling you with this one :)
(P.S. Same commenter as above, just not logged into my wordpress right now)
Mostly I love the new website, especially the way I can look specifically at comments from people who have made the recipe. However, it looks like (at least on the Bunny Cake) your answers to the questions only show up on the “All Comments” tab. If I have the same question, it would be a lot easier for me to find the answer under that tab than combing through all the comments. Is there a way you can answer in both places at once?
Let me see if I can. I think the issue is that my comments are not sorting as they should — and they’re working on a fix right now, so hopefully this should be sorted soon. Sorry for the difficulties.
I realize I am probably in the minority, but after Google RSS died, I started using Pocket to read blogs. Your new re-design cuts out all your wonderful exposition and now only leaves the recipe portion of each blog post in the reader!
I also agree that I would love to see the recipe list brought back since that is the most common way I found recipes on your site.
Wait, I love Pocket! I use it all of the time* but never for my own site, of course so I hadn’t noticed. Let me find out what’s happening.
* for me, it’s a get-back-to-work thing; I’ll end up with a lot of tabs open to articles I want to read which of course are not going to help me get work done so I save, save, save them, close the tab and read them later.
Love the search results on the website, but I’m having trouble seeing them on the mobile site. The pictures are washed out, so the white text makes it difficult to read the names of the recipes. Is anyone else having this issue? I’m using a super old iPhone, so it could just be a problem for a verrrrry small group of people. I can email you a screenshot if you need it.
Devoted to your posts for years,
but on your new website find it impossible to access your
READ MORE >>>
Sorry for the trouble; I am looking into it.
The mobile link to the latest post is missing. Can someone fix this? I’m using an Android phone.
Can you tell me where the mobile link is missing from? The site? An email? A particular part of the site? Just checked on my phone and didn’t have a problem but you’re not the only one reporting this…
Hey I am wondering if this was fixed but not working on my phone …. There doesn’t seem to be a way to just get back to the main website. I would expect if I clicked on your logo it would just take me back to the main page (the one that begins with the latest recipe.) The only way I can figure out to get back to the main page is to go to the web address and change it back to smittenkitchen.com. Not a huge deal, though. :)
It shouldn’t be broken for anyone, though, however, on my phone at least there’s no issue clicking on the logo to return to the home page. I wonder if others are having the same problem.
Well, it worked just now … Maybe the internet has become sentient. ;P
Oh, goodness. All your blather up top is my favorite part!
I just realized that could be taken as a criticism of the new format – it’s not! I just happen to love the blather :)
I just wanted to chime in and say that I totally love the “I made this” and “questions” subsections of the comments! Thank you for adding them! :)
Hi Deb, the search function doesn’t seem to work on your mobile site. I can’t actually get anything to work on my phone except the “surprise me” button and scrolling through the recipes in the order they appear on the site. LOVE your site, I can’t wait til I can access all of it again!
Hi Shaina — Sounds like something went wrong. Is this still an issue? It’s working on our phones, but that doesn’t mean it’s fixed for you. Can you tell me what kind of phone you’re using, too?
The site redesign looks beautiful!
However, my (kind of insane) recipe organization system uses Evernote, and the Evernote webclipper *really* doesn’t like the new formatting of the page. All of the paragraphs overlap with one-another, and I have to go through, remove all line breaks, and put in new ones.
Not expecting a fix (at least any time soon) but I figured I’d better say something so you knew there was an area for improvement.
I’m so sorry for the trouble. We are looking into why this and other integrations stopped working; hopefully it will be resolved soon. And thank you!
Hello Deb, Caroline from Montreal. Every recipe I’ve made has been a success. I can’t seem to find the “Conversions” section/link you had in the older website …perhaps you never did and I am mixed up with another site? If so I apologize. If not, do you plan on putting in back (it was always really helpful)? Congrats again,
I did and it’s very overdue for a clean-up so I pulled it after the redesign. It will be back very soon! What was your favorite part? What do you wish it had more of? Want to make it better and more useful. :) [Updated: Okay, ignore all that. I put it back under the More tab, but it still needs a cleanup bad so feel free to weigh in. Thanks!]
Bonjour Deb, thank you so so much for putting the Conversion section back. Sorry for the late reply gone on vacation electronicless. The only 2 other elements I find useful and found elsewhere were the pan conversions (with volume equivalents i.e. round/square/bundt in various sizes) and the flour equivalents per cup (pastry, all purpose, cake, etc…). Joy of baking has it but I’d much rather see all on Smitten ;-) Thanks again,
A few tweaks to be done to the print template:
When printing, there’s about an inch of headspace between the line below the SK logo at the top and the title of the recipe. If that could be reduced some, it would be nice so that less paper is wasted (and the logo w/ header is so minimalist anyway that it doesn’t need such a large gap).
Your recipes used to print with your copyright on them, but they aren’t now.
Please remove the ad from the print version of the recipe. I really don’t want to waste ink printing ads, even though it is at the bottom underneath the recipe.
Oh, and I’m not sure if it’s a bug on my end or an issue with the site, but when I print, my Canon MF3010 has an option to “Simplify Page”. (When I check that option in other websites, it looks like it prints only the article, no side frames, header/footer, or ads.) If I select that option and print, nothing happens. Attempting to print again by clicking the print button at the bottom of the recipe does nothing and I have to close the browser tab and reopen to be able to use the print button.
Oh, and even though it asks for name/email like for the anonymous commenting as it used to be, it still forces me to log into wordpress to leave a comment. :(
I’m so sorry about this. I have gone back and forth (and back and forth) with WordPress over this and unfortunately, it’s not something they can change. (I hate it too, believe me.) Here is the full spiel from the WordPress team:
Thank you — I’ve put all of these requests in (already, believe it or not). There were so many things that needed tweaking after the launch (par for the course) that they’re a bit deluged with requests but the ticket is in and they’re getting to them one by one. It will be fixed soon, promise.
You mention the tip blog and say it’s integrated – how? Can you explain where to find tips? And while on the subject, if you don’t have it already, can you make a tip page for baking prep? Some questions I’d love to have answers to in one place:
– Is room temperature butter the same as softened? (My room temp butter gets pretty darn soft.)
– Can you quickly get eggs to room temperature by putting them in a warm water bath? (That’s what I do but what do I know? I might be causing all sorts of chemical mayhem.)
– What are the recipes for self-rising flour? Cake flour? (Buttermilk I know, but it would be good on this page too.)
Etc.
Thanks!
Thanks — great tip ideas. I need to create an archive of tips; I have not yet. You can check this page to start (but many are missing featured images, so it doesn’t look great). In the meanwhile, a new tip will show up right where new posts do but the tag over the top photo will say “tip” instead of “announcement” (like this one) or “recipe” (the other 98% of posts).
Congratulations on your makeover! I haven’t looked around the site yet, but the thing I already appreciate is that it’s MUCH easier to find your embedded links, i.e. photos of your kids. I enjoy reading your blog, even if the recipe isn’t something I’d ever make. And what makes it worthwhile is looking at those adorable kids. Anna’s wrinkled-nose expression looks exactly like her brother!
I absolutely love the idea of separating the comments space into individuals who have tried the recipe and those with questions. You know your audience so well! Looking forward to trying lots of these recipes this summer :D
Congratulations on the site redesign! It does seem to have broken the RSS feed to apple news, though — I had been following you for a little while happily on my new iPhone, and now when I check your blog/topic (listed in my favorites) it keeps showing me the funnel cake recipe as the most recent one, seemingly indicating you haven’t updated in several weeks. I actually assumed you were on vacation, and then remembered to check today when I was on my laptop, and lo and behold, definitely new recipes for me to check out! Just wanted to give you a heads-up, if it’s something you need to alert them to fix. Thank you for your awesome website and fantastic recipes; I am so appreciative of your great work!
Hey Deb, I’m loving the new site and love that you keep tweaking it! On a sort of half-related note: I’ve been planning to fill the wait for the new book by making a list of the recipes from the first book which I haven’t made yet (it won’t be that many, trust me!) and trying them out. This reminded me of an old thought – when making recipes from the book, I often feel this itch to tell you how great they turned out, or ask for recommendations on a tweak, or give feedback on what didn’t work so well – in other words, to write a comment. I guess I’m so used to it with the blog, it’s really something I miss when cooking from the book, especially as your voice is so consistent and wonderfully present in both. I know you wrote at some point that we can always contact you about recipes from the book, but I was wondering if you might consider creating some kind of specific space on the site where we could comment on and talk about the individual recipes… I totally understand that it might be too complicated or unfeasible due to copyright or who knows what, but it’s just an idea I wanted to float. I wonder if others also feel this “itch” to talk about the book recipes with someone…
Thank you. I agree it would be a great feature. I got overwhelmed, to be honest, at the thought of having another comment section to manage. I wonder if Eat Your Books — and me dropping in there regularly — will suffice. But I’m not ruling out a homegrown solution just yet. Thank you.
Deb, it looks wonderful!
I love the new section of Spring, Summer, Autumn etc. and the I made this/questions comment sections, very handy.
I am usually a silent lurker who never comments, but I have made tons of your recipes over the years and quite a lot of them are now staples in my cooking routine. But I thought I would break my comment silence and say – hooray and congratulations, your new website is great! As well as THANK YOU of course :)
Love your recipes! Love your writing!
I’ve had a problem with the way the recipes print since the reformat. I figured it was one of the bugs that would eventually get worked out but no such luck.
The first line of type on every page (other than the first one) is cut off by a header that looks like this: recipe name — smitten kitchen. The header has always been there but now the print is starting too high on the page, so I have to go back and write in the missing directions. Doesn’t sound like anyone else is having this problem though… might just be something with my computer?
[…] 10 years of food blogging. I also gave a completely terrifying keynote address at a conference. This site was at last redesigned, the culmination of a multi-year and multi-design team effort to release this site from my circa […]
I can’t print your recipes. My Dell Windows 10 laptop and Hewlett Packard printer used to do this easily. But now when I hit print for any recipe, I just get a black page. Please tell me how to fix this!
Thanks for your offerings – much appreciated!
I saw you in Boulder Wed. night & I have a couple of random
musings.
1) I’d suggest you repeat the question being asked, because although
the questioner was miked, it was hard to hear the question.
2) An excellent chocolate I’ve found, at Whole Foods in Boulder, in bulk,
at $14.99 lb (not $40.00, but still not cheap) is El Rey Apamate Discos Dark Chocolate 73.5%.
you are amazing guys
you are amazing guys
plumbing Houston TX
[…] the first half of this summer was so busy — a manuscript due, a redesign set off into the world, a birthday, and a zillion other bits of happy work/life chaos — I’m in […]
Hi Deb,
I’m building my own Smitten Kitchen using the list posted on your blog. Will you be posting an updated list soon? Keeping my fingers crossed for a big knife like yours for Christmas.