Blogging resources

On my first blog anniversary I wrote a post called Planet of the Blogs which included a list of blogging resources.  I wanted to share these because blogging was such a mystery when I started.  After blogging for over 5 years, it is time to provide a more comprehensive list of resources I have found.

NOTE: Over these years I have found that these resources change and move so I will try and keep it up to date as much as possible.  There are many many more resources out there but these are ones I have stumbled upon and found useful.  Suggestions or Questions are welcome.

Advice for new bloggers

• Food Blog Alliance - if you have a question, this is an excellent place to look for an answer
• Green Gourmet Giraffe (me) - My Top Ten Tips for Food Bloggers
• Dine and Dish - Tips for the Aspiring Blogger
• Choosing Raw - My Ten Top Tips for New Bloggers
• Sarah's Cucina Bella - Advice for New Bloggers (round up of her advice posts) 
• How to start a blog - a blog about starting a blog! 
• The write stuff (advice from a journalist and a blogger) - The Kitchen Maid
• Will write for food - Dianne Jacob
• How to blog by Tony Pierce - busblog (a good read with some good inspiration even if some needs to be taken with a pinch of salt) 
• How to get traffic for your blog - Seth Godin

Copyright

• Australian Copyright Council info sheet on recipes: legal protection (February 2012)
• My latest discussion on copyright (with useful comments)
• Law Geek Down Under - Law for Food Bloggers
• Seth Godin - Simple Thoughts about Fair Use

Writing Recipes

• Justcook NYC - Recipe writing cheat sheet
• Urban Vegan - Overused food writing terms
• Will Write for Food - 7 Most common recipe writing errors

Writing blogs:

• 5 keys to writing excellent blog posts - Problogger
• Before you hit publish - V3 integrated marketing
  

Australian ingredients
Useful links with comment discussion about the difference between Australian and American ingredients:

• James and Matt on Chilli powder in American recipes
• In the Mood for Noodles on Australian cooking conversions
• More useful cooking conversion info on my blog at Kitchen Notes and Baking Basics

Searching blogs

• Food Blog Search - a search engine that just searches blogs
• Veg Blog Search – a search engine that only searches vegetarian blogs
• Foodie Blog Roll – listing of over 1000 other food blogs

Blog event listings

• Events and Roundups
  
• Food Blog Diary
• Also see blog events listed on my blogroll

Bookmarking

• Pinterest - a visual pinboard of images from pages you like (eg food photos) that you can organise into pin boards. (See my post on pinterest, delicious and eat your books)
• Delicious - a great site where you can tag and organise your bookmarks
• Google Reader - now my preferred tool to bookmark and keep track of blogs (I originally used Bloglines but changed when it looked like they would close down) Update March 2013 - Google Reader is closing in July.

Book databases

• Cookbook Recipe Database - a free site that has indexed cookbooks
• Eat Your Books - this site is gradually indexing cookbooks (and some blogs) so if you sign up (for a nominal fee) you can choose the books you own and search your cookbooks by ingredient and other categories. (See my post on pinterest, delicious and eat your books)
• Good Reads - has a cookbook genre with reviews and recommendations.

Photography
There are heaps of posts giving advice on photography.  Here are a few that I have found useful:

• 6 Bittersweets - My Take on Food Styling and Photography (a lot of reading including good basic info about exposure, styling and lots of links)
• Food Gawker - Photography Tips
• Simply Cooked - Light box for staging food photography - step by step
• The Well Seasoned Cook - Tabletop Photography Tips for Green Beginners
• Mowie and Meeta - 41 food photography tips (quick notes from Blogger Connect event)
• Vegan Yum Yum - Food Photography for Bloggers
• Kalyn Denny at BlogHer - Helpful food photography tips from fellow bloggers 
• Serious eats - Guide to Food Photography (helpful explanation of white balance)

Statistics

• Google Analytics - free statistics software (if you are happy to share your data with Google).  It allows you to collect statistics over time.
• StatCounter – statistics software - free if you just want to see stats for the last few days but costs to see stats in more detail.
• Technorati – I used to find out who was linking to my blog through Technorati but it changed and I found it harder to find info. I have also used Google Alerts s but it hasn't seemed so useful for this.
• Site Meter - an audience tracking tool - I have only seen it recommended but have not looked at it myself.
• Blogger and Wordpress also have blog statistics information as part of a blog account.

Technical stuff like html and Blogger

• Advice on adding Anchors (which are links within a post) - on my blog
• Blogger Tips and Tricks for those using Blogger
• Shabby blogs backgrounds - free backgrounds- I used this until recently but have been warned off them due to malware.  Am on the lookout for other backgrounds I really like.
• Where's the beef - advice on Blogger back up
• Tinned Tomatoes - how to add code to a post as text 
• Online photo editing packages are quite useful such as picmonkey
• Rachel Cotterill - How to create a favicon  
• Bite Sized Thoughts - How to create a drop down menu in Blogger
• html tutorial - w3schools.com

Content theft

• What to do when your content is lifted - Food Blog Alliance
• Sample Copyright Complaint Steps (how to file a DMCA notice) - Host Gator
• Whois.net - a place to find who is stealing your content

NOTE: While collecting links for this post, I found a useful list of resources at the Hungry Australian.

Update - I am adding a few new links here as I see them but I just saw the 150 links on How to be a Food Blogger by Recipe Girl - a great resource.