NOTES:
2012: 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.
Update 2026 - I have now been blogging for 19 years and in a moment of procrastination have checked links up to and including the book databases heading. I hope to get more time to do more soon. So many crossed out broken links! I will try and update the rest soon but my time is very limited!
Useful posts from Green Gourmet Giraffe
- Kitchen notes, ingredients and substitutions
- Kitchen basic recipes and notes
- My ten rules for food blogging
- Shoots, Eats and Blogs: 10 things blogging means to me
- My ABC of photography
- Top 10 photos, Pinterest, Delicious and Eat Your Books (2012)
- My reflections on installing drop down menus
Advice for new bloggers
- Green Gourmet Giraffe (me) - My Top Ten Tips for Food Blogger
s - Will write for food - Dianne Jacob
- How to get traffic for your blog - Seth Godin
Food Blog Alliance - if you have a question, this is an excellent place to look for an answerDine and Dish - Tips for the Aspiring BloggerChoosing Raw - My Ten Top Tips for New BloggersSarah'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 MaidHow 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)Blogging tips: Blogger.EdThe beginner's guide to successful blogging - first site guide
Copyright
- Australian Copyright Council info sheet on recipes: legal protection (2025)
- Defamation, copyright and blogging in Australia - Not Quite Nigella
- Copy right issues (with useful comments) Green Gourmet Giraffe
- Law Geek Down Under - Law for Food Bloggers
- Seth Godin - Simple Thoughts about Fair Use
The Ultimate Guide to Copyright for Students - Who is Hosting
Writing Recipes
- Will Write for Food - 7 Most common recipe writing errors
- Mad - On all the ways to write a recipe - by Christine Muhlke
Justcook NYC - Recipe writing cheat sheetUrban Vegan - Overused food writing termsOlive Magazine - How to write recipes: 23 top tips
Writing blogs:
- 5 keys to writing excellent blog posts - Problogger
- My guide to writing totally awesome blog posts every single time - MackCollier.com
- Paying attention to your archival posts - Problogger
- Are you using blog images legally - skinnedcartree.com
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 blogsVeg Blog Search – a search engine that only searches vegetarian blogsFoodie Blog Roll – listing of over 1000 other food blogs
Blog event listings
Food Blog Diary- Events and Roundups- last updated 2017
- 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).
Louise has given a link to Remove "Picked for you" pins from Pinterest (after changes to Pinterest feeds in 2015). Get your site's Pinterest Pin CountDelicious - a great site where you can tag and organise your bookmarks. Since Delicious closed suddenly and I lost lots of bookmarked recipes I have resorted to a Google Sheet for these bookmarks. Sigh!- Since Google Reader closed in July 2013, I have stopped using a blog reader and reverted to my sidebar blogroll. See my post: Google Reader is closing... and I am not sure I am upset for more information and readers suggestions of blog readers.
Book databases
- 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.
Cookbook Recipe Database - a free site that has indexed cookbooks
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)
- I Eat Therefore I Am - Food Photography Tutorial with Ewen Bell - Simple Tips to Dramatically Improve Your Photos
- Digital Photography School - 10 tips to improve your photography
- Must check out the Image Map Generator that Louise uses.
- Pinch of Yum Artificial Lighting Tips for Food Photography
- Profblogger: Where to Find Free Images Online
Statistics
- Google Analytics - free statistics software (if you are happy to share your data with Google). It allows you to collect statistics over time. (See How to Use Google Analytics at Social Media Examiner)
- 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.
Design tools
- Canva - a graphic design site that will help you arrange photos in a collage or do lots of interesting graphics and texts on your images (free service as far as I can see but sign up required)
- 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.
- picmonkey - I use this a lot for collages. It also can be used to edit photos. It is free with no sign up required for a limited package or you can pay for more sophisticated design.
- Photosnack - I haven't used it but have seen Jac at Tinned Tomatoes using it for slideshows
- Snapseed - digital image editing app for photos on the iphone (I haven't used it).
- Fotor: free photo editing and collages - looks good
- Fotojet - another free site for photo editing and collages
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
- Where's the beef - advice on Blogger back up
- Tinned Tomatoes - how to add code to a post as text
- Rachel Cotterill - How to create a favicon
- Bite Sized Thoughts - How to create a drop down menu in Blogger
- My reflections on installing drop down menus
- html tutorial - w3schools.com
- How to easily create tables in Blogger using MS Word - MyBloggerLab
- HTML table generator - tables generator
- How to add printable recipes in Blogger - Confessions of an overworked mom
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
- The Ultimate DMCA Guilde for Students - Who is Hosting
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.
VERY useful, Johanna. Thanks for this. Will link to you later in the week as I'm sure there are lots of folk who'd find this list helpful.
ReplyDeleteThanks Wendy - that's great if others find this helpful
Deletewow Johanna! This is SO incredibly helpful! I seriously have spent the last 15 minutes looking at all your various links! THANK YOU!!
ReplyDeletethanks Gf happy tummy - I actually got caught up in reading the links when I was putting together this post - so much good info out there
DeleteThis list must have taken you quite some time to pull together. Thank you for doing all the hard graft, this is a great list of resources.
ReplyDeleteThanks chele - actually it didn't take me that long to put together but I have been collecting the links for a while (just had a day when I didn't have enough energy to put up a recipe so it was easier to finally put this up)
DeleteThis is incredible - what an amazing resource. I can't wait to read all the tips (esp your own ones, even though I have pored over lots of them before). Five years is very impressive, congratulations!
ReplyDeleteThanks Lucy - hope you find it helpful - happy reading!
DeleteThis is very helpful Johanna! I wish I had found this when I first started blogging! :)
ReplyDeleteThanks Nigella - so do I, though I suspect a lot of this info wasn't available at the time
DeleteThis is so helpful Johanna - thank you. It's also a little daunting (I've just opened a whole the links I hadn't seen and my browser now has many, many tabs!), but some of the points you cover / mention are so important.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations, too, on 5 years of blogging! What an amazing achievement. Your blog is certainly something to be proud of and I'm sure I'm not the only one that uses you as a 'first stop' for many things cooking and baking related :)
Thanks Kari - oh I always have too many tabs open on my browser (even IT guys at work have commented on it). I go back to some of these links when I want some particular info so it is good for me as well to have them easily accessible - glad my info is helpful to others
DeleteThis is so useful even if you've been blogging for a while like I have!
ReplyDeleteThanks Joanne - we are all still learning no matter how long we have been blogging
DeleteWhat a lovely helpful post - I wish I had known about these resources when I started. In fact, I still need to read them now, four years in!
ReplyDeleteThanks Caroline - if I had a list like this when I started out I would have done things differently - even now it is a lot to take in!
DeleteGreat links--will bookmark! I also use Google Reader, but sadly they, too, are going to close down. . . I think some time in 2013. Not sure what I'll use at that point! *sob*
ReplyDeleteThanks Ricki - I didn't know about Google Reader - when Bloglines changed hands I had lots of links bookmarked there which made the change a bit of a nightmare but I hope I will cope with the Google reader changes better but I hate these systems changing - since the resources post I did in 2008 I have seen quite a few of these systems change so it seems inevitable
DeleteWhat a lovely helpful post - I wish I had known about these resources when I started. In fact, I still need to read them now, four years in!
ReplyDeleteThanks Pavlova - I wish I had read a lot of these links before I started blogging too! But it has been an ongoing learning process and these have helped as I go so glad they might help you too.
Delete