For the past three months the only thing I have heard our tech team talking about all day is the editor this and the editor that. Honestly, even I, the tech ignoramus, was waiting with barely concealed excitement. In fact, ever since I got to know what features were coming up with this new RecipeWriter, somehow I felt like I could simply not wait and every once in a while I would ask the team whether it was ready so I could tinker with it.
Now before I run away with my words, here is what to look forward to with the new editing interface. The techie boys allowed me to play with this beauty for a bit before the world got a peek, and I’m impressed!
Say hello to RecipeWriter Version 2
We have always loved a clean, minimalistic interface. And this is as clean as it can get. Personally, I love the lack of screaming colours and loads of text. I like that I can tinker around with this and make something beautiful from what looks like a blank canvas.
Once you type in the title, all the icons become active and you can add everything from multiple recipes, to photos, gifs, affiliate products, embedded links to videos and many more.
Images
Now you can caption your images, so attributions are taken care of without having to insert additional text. You can also add Alt Text and other elements to make your images SEO friendly, adjust the size of the image or delete it if required.
Adding Recipes
Now with the new ‘Add Recipe’ feature you can have multiple recipes in a single post, all looking uniform and professional! And the recipe section has a whole paraphernalia of options to offer. I haven’t given away even one tenth of what is available under all those section’s because I really think you will love spotting all the stuff in there. Give it a go and of course, we are all here to help if you need it. :)
Within the steps too, the scope has really opened up. Now you can assign sub sections within the steps, add links and stylise text.
Adding Affiliate Products
Now moving on to the next tab on offer, ‘Add Recommendations’. This tab will only be active for those bloggers who have their affiliate products enabled. If you want to get your affiliate product feature enabled please write to shriniwas@cucumbertown.com. For those of you who have this functionality, you no longer have an restriction on where the products will be displayed. You can add it anywhere in the post!
Embedding Content
And if you want to embed any urls including youtube or vimeo videos, google map links or even recipes for a listicle, just tap on the next tab, which is the ‘Embed URL’ tab.
Embedding Codes
One brand new feature that you enterprising bloggers can be thrilled about is that now you can embed the codes to giveaways or for sponsored content. Isn’t that great? No ore having to wait for the team to get it done for you. Yay yay!
Pre Publish Options
And once you are done with writing the post, the much awaited scheduling feature along with a host of other pre publish functionalities will be available before you go ahead and share that yummy recipe with the world. Besides scheduling, you can customise your meta description (this is the bit that comes after the title when your recipe shows up on Google search or Pinterest), add custom images for all your social media channels, preview, save to drafts and many more!
I cannot tell you how excited I am for this editor, not just because of how cool it looks and what all fancy things you can do on here. It’s more about the fact that most of these features are a direct result of what our food bloggers wanted. I remember how Saffron Trail’s Nandita Iyer had talked us months back about the scheduling feature and how Sinamon Tales’ Monika Manchanda had counselled us about passive cooking time and No Recipe’s Marc Matsumoto had told us about image captions and so on. This makes every feature special and highly targeted to the needs of a food blogger.
Thank you Cucumbertown bloggers for all your patience. We couldn’t have done this without you.
Now, I have to tell you upfront that this is barely skimming the surface of what all you can do with this editor. It’s really not far fetched to say that the world will be your food blogging oyster with this editor. And I will be coming up with a series on what each special feature can do for you.
So without further ado, write that post on the new editor. And let us know what you think. And while we would love to think this is going to be a smooth ride, if you hit any umps ahead and spot something strange, give us a shout on the Cucumbertown chat or write to us on chef@cucumbertown.com.
RecipeWriter Version 2.0: Custom Images
RecipeWriter Version 2.0: Editable Ingredient Parsing
RecipeWriter Version 2.0: Formatting Options
RecipeWriter Version 2.0: Multiple Recipe Support
RecipeWriter 2.1: Nofollow, Open in New Window and track clicks
