With the rise of low-quality recipes from high-authority websites that fail to provide adequate instructions (like this one), visitors are increasingly looking for indications that they’ve landed on recipe sites that provide detailed, quality instructions. You have 3 seconds to make that all-important first impression, and help your visitors decide that you’re worth their time….
News & Updates
Rethinking the Nav Menu
Last year we updated the header/logo, making it simpler to manage for food bloggers, and correcting some faux-pas, like hidden off-screen text. We’ve continued listening to feedback and monitoring best practices, and there’s another update in the works. Examples logos at top food blogs How have some of the top food/recipe blogs implemented their logos?…
Food Blog Site Structure
Site structure is complicated, and we haven’t done enough to simplify it at Feast Design Co. Not only does it help search engines understand and crawl content, it helps visitors find related recipes, and it helps the blogger focus on what’s important. As of 2019, we’ll be recommending a simpler website structure that will save…
Genesis 2.6.0 Search Menu Disappeared
Studiopress pushed out version 2.6.0 with extensive changes. Among these, they’ve “deprecated” the search function – among others – which has been around for quite some time. This means that they’ve changed how the function works, and replaced it with a different function. This means that any site that had the old function installed has…
About Theme Updates
We’ll clarify some questions and concerns customers have had about updating themes – why there’s been so much recently, and whether or not you should update. The two main points are: Your one-time theme purchase paid for a theme that was set up for the internet at the point in time that you bought it…
What am I paying for?
We’ll outline what the role of a theme is here, and what you’ve paid for when purchasing a theme. What does my $75 – $125 pay for? When you purchase a theme, you’re making a small payment to access theme files that are designed to work for that current version of WordPress (and Genesis) at…
Feast Design Co. Has Acquired the Cookbook Recipe Plugin!
Not a day goes by that we don’t get asked about recipe plugins. This is something that’s critical to food blogging and therefore, something we haven’t been able to ignore for the past few years. Our team was heavily involved in the creation of a particular plugin – during a period of time where bloggers…
Anatomy of a Food Blog Recipe Post
There are days when writing is a breeze, and others where the words just don’t flow. In both cases, having a structure to work off and knowing what’s important to answer helps the flow so that you can get more done in less time. Just like in baking, having a formula (or recipe) to follow…
heart_this Removed from Cook’d Pro
Why was it removed? The heart_this plugin was developed as a styling element for Cook’d Pro, which was removed from version 4.0.0 released on December 21, 2018. The issue was that nothing it conveys is important to the site visitors: The numbers are arbitrary without context – is 4 hearts good? 46 hearts? 211 hearts?…
Block Editor (“Gutenberg”) Development
Essentially, they introduced a new post editor, as a plugin, which will eventually replace the old editor. We’re following the rest of the industry and calling these the block editor and the classic editor. Thankfully, our themes to date have avoided touching elements of the post editor. This means, nothing has changed. All Feast themes…
Where did the “before header” area go?
The “before-header” area has removed in version 3.2.0, from themes that previously contained it. This was previously promoted as a space to put newsletter signups, or ads. Recent changes to search engine algorithms have started penalizing websites that place banner ads above the content, pushing the content further below-the-fold. This makes sense from a user…
Why we dropped support for Landing Pages
The “landing page” template has been removed from version 4.0.0 of all themes. We’ll be detailing the change here. Why Was It Dropped? Using a different page template (separate PHP files to control layout) causes additional work and confusion. This is fine when it’s critically important and the extra work is worth the trade-off, but…
Dear is now Brunch Pro // Permission Slip to Pivot
Today, we’re releasing an updated version of this theme, called Brunch Pro. By changing the name, we’re letting our audience, whom we’re sure our product has the most potential to serve, know that we’re there for them.
Foodie Pro is Now Translation Ready!
You asked, we listened! After we noticed an increase of support tickets requesting translation-ready code, we decided to look into things a bit. And what we found out was astounding. Foodie Pro has reached to over 173 countries–and counting! It would be foolish to assume that even most of Foodie Pro users are blogging in…
Behind the Scenes for the New Garnish Promo Video
So, some of you may know that I’ve been running a little ol’ e-course about branding and theme customization for bloggers. This entire process has been a huge splash in the pool of video production for me. It’s certainly not for the faint of heart, and I’ve been meditating on an affirmation of “screw perfection”…
Land of Nod’s Spiffy Foodie-Based Blog Theme
So, it turns out that Foodie really is spreading like wild-fire – and it’s not just making an appearance on food blogs! I’m a decent fanatic about kid products – I turn to mush around wooden toys and funky children’s room decorations. Seriously, it gives me joy. So, when I noticed a support ticket come…
