Hey, we’ve given Framed Cooks a makeover that includes some very fun new features to help you answer that eternal question, “what’s for dinner?” – come on and take a look!
I’m interrupting my regular parade of recipes to give you a tour of the newest (and for me, the most exciting!) design of this little website of mine. It’s coming up on ten years (ten years!) since I started this site, and it has been one of the most joyful, difficult, exciting, humbling and satisfying parts of my life.
I’ve made friends I would never have known. I’ve become a better writer and photographer. I’ve been so grateful for the many generous helping hands along the way. And so to get ready for the tenth year of Framed Cooks, here’s a look around some of the new things going on here.
Most of this happens on my home page, which you can always get to by clicking on HOME on the very top of any page. For those of you visiting Framed Cooks on mobile devices, you can find the Home page (and all the other fun areas of the site) by tapping the Menu up in the top right corner.
So starting there, my navigation bar – that row along the top – is now a little different. For one thing, the Recipe Search has a lot more options – not only can you search by meal, but you can also search by event. For example, St Patrick’s Day is coming up, so if you need some ideas, click on that!
And if you need even more ideas, click on View All Recipes and you will get a new screen that lets you search by category, ingredient, event – you name it and I have a recipe for it!
The first item on the Home page will always be my newest recipe – but this time, with suggestions for other dishes that go with it that can round out your menu. Because I don’t know about you, but side dishes and desserts always stump me.
Now, back at the last version of Framed Cooks, the newest recipe would be followed by the second newest, the third newest and so on. But not any more! Nope, we decided that it would be a lot more fun and useful to come up with special themes for this month.
So we’ve created This Month’s Specials. I’m going to put up three of them a month that correspond to what might be going on this month…in this case, one of the February specials is Valentine’s Day! (The Southern husband’s favorite holiday!). Check out the other two on the Home page!
Scroll down on the Home page under the specials and here’s one of my favorite parts of our new design, which is my Shop of favorite kitchen items. I get so many requests for recommendations for everything from frying pans to cutting boards, and while I answer all of them, this seemed like the perfect solution. (This is also the part where I need to tell you that I’m sending you to Amazon for these items, and as an Amazon affiliate I may earn something from qualifying purchases. Which is part of what keeps this website going, so thank you.)
But most importantly, everything in this little shop is something that I have in my own kitchen, and that I love. The Shop has categories for everything from cookware to kitchen gadgets, and if you have any ideas for items you’d like me to try out and add, let me know!
On to the next section, which I am calling Watch, Cook, Eat! You may have noticed that I’ve started to add quick videos to some recipes, so this is a little showcase of some of them. If you go back to the Home page and click on any video, it will take you right to the video on that recipe post, so you can watch the video and then have the recipe right there.
And then comes one of the most fun parts of the new site. It’s called I Have No Idea What To Make For Dinner, and it has a Surprise Me button. If you go back to the Home page and click on it, it will bring up a menu of appetizer, main course, side dish and dessert. Even I have no idea what will come up, so I have been obsessively clicking it over and over. It’s also a constant reminder of the older recipes that need me to add pictures to them, so bear with me on that.
And last but not least, for those of you who are visiting the site on a desktop computer, at the very bottom of the Home page are the recipes that are trending up. In case you want to get in on the action on what’s currently popular on Framed Cooks. The cheesy cauliflower casserole is usually out in front for right now. Go back to the Home page and click on any of these pictures and it will take you right to the recipe.
That’s it, and I would love to hear what you think. This has been a long, exciting, terrifying process and I owe 99.9% of it to my website designer and manager of so many years, Cathy Tibbles of WordPress Barista. She came up with so many of the ideas, patiently and cheerfully made all 283,492 of the changes I decided I wanted during the process, and gave me the courage to finally push the button (or actually, let HER push the button) to send this new design out into the world. I am in awe of her skills and her generosity, and I love her to bits. Cathy, you ROCK, girl.
The amazing writer Mary Oliver wrote…
“Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”
This website is so much of me trying to live my life that way, not only through the recipes I write and cook and photograph, but in throwing some out and starting over, writing every day, taking leaps I never thought I would take, and connecting with so many amazing people through all of it. Including you, wonderful reader. Thank you, and love,
~Kate
Congratulations! The makeover is wonderful!
Thank you my friend! It took a while but it’s finally done! Thank you for all your support along the way. xoxo!
Absolutely Love it! Your Recipes are usually pretty easy and have ingredients I already have at home ( which is what I prefer) my husband and I have a small business and are very busy and I have to come in and get a idea for dinner fairly quick – and your new site looks like its gonna work great! I already have enjoyed getting your daily emails
Tracy! Thank you not only for this sweet comment, but for signing up for my emails – I really appreciate it! 🙂
Love it! The easy way to find a recipe is terrific.
Yours is one of my favorite recipe blogs!
Paula, thank you so much!!! You are so nice to tell me that! 🙂
The new site looks great and I love the search feature. Will make my meal planning much easier. One of the things I love about your recipes is they are not overly complicated, use everyday ingredients and always very delicious. Most importantly, my family always loves them. Also, can’t wait to make the Boston Cream donut recipe in (201) this Valentine’s Day for my kids – looks delicious.
Margaret, thank you so much! And those Boston Cream Pie cupcakes – whenever I make them they disappear in an instant, so I hope your family loves them as much as we do – happy early Valentine’s Day!
Congrats! I’ve been following and using your recipes for years (your aged white cheddar soup is the only one I will make and my friends request it all of the time). I’m truly excited for you. I just read everything and I am about to go play with the site now.
Maybe I misunderstood, but it seems like now there will only be 3 new recipes each month? Or will the monthly special recipes be in addition to weekly postings? Because I enjoy logging on and scrolling down through each new recipe, until I catch up to where I ended on my previous visit.
Sorry that’s so wordy, just trying to explain what I mean. Lol
Hi Wendy and thank you!! And to answer your very understandable question, there will still be 2 new recipes a week – the specials are in addition to the new recipes, and will be round-ups of recipes that are already on the site that I think are particularly relevant to each month. So you won’t be able to scroll down and see the most recent recipes…but I’ve heard from other folks that they miss that too, so I’m going to talk with my wonderful designer to see if she can add a link that will take you recent recipes. I totally get what you are looking for! In the meantime, I really, REALLY appreciate not only your sweet words, but your support of my site over the years! xoxo
I’ve just spent the last hour playing with it. I love it! It would be cool to have a ‘recents’ category but I really like the site as is. I love the the what’s for dinner section! Great job. Now I’m hungry again. ?
Thanks Wendy, and I’m so glad that you love it! We are working on ideas for a way to get to those recent recipes – stay tuned! 🙂
Kate!! I love that you let me do the fun new things (surprise me menu) on your site! You’re one of the nicest people I’ve ever worked with. And so are your readers! Such encouraging words. Congratulations on the launch!
Cathy
Cathy!! Never in a million years could this have happened without you and your incredible talent. You and me, Framed Cooks and WordPress Barista, together forever! xoxo
Wow! I am so impressed with all the bells and whistles you’ve got on your new blog. Brava!! I finally switched from Blogger to Word Press and am trying to adapt and learn. I’ve been following you for years Congrats on 10 years and I wish you many more.
Thank you so much! If you need any help with the transition from Blogger to WordPress, email me and I will put you in touch with the AMAZING team at WordPress Barista who helped me through that transition. xoxo!
Hey, so, the one thing that’s missing from the redesign is being able to see the newest recipes (after just the first one). There’s no way, as far as I can tell, to see the latest in order from newest to oldest, which is the main use case for frequent visitors.
Hi Claire! Yep, I’ve heard that from a few folks, so we are working on adding a button or link after that newest recipe that will take you to a page where you can see them in chronological order. Thanks for the suggestion, and stay tuned! 🙂