I just put up a site at http://www.recipesarefun.com/, purchased a recipe database to kick things off. It's pretty basic to start, the recipes are the "meat" of this site so to speak. Sure would like to know what you think of the concept? Would you visit a site to gather recipes or new ideas for recipes?
A few suggestions: - move your text more to the right since it's too close to the edge.. and maybe just use 2 rows instead of 3 - make your adsense ad links to green instead of blue for better blending
You should try different colors on that adsense. Try blue, green, red all others. And yes, I would use your site if I didnt have a site with enough recipes for 1000 years myself
Nice Look. You need to edit "breakfat items" and you MUST get a site search in place. In my opinion, recipe sites are useless if they do not have some type of search function. For some reason, the amazon ad box is bringing up a book on a topic I most recently researched there an hour ago - dog training - definitely not relevant to your site. I can't check out the Rate function since I don't want to register, but hopefully you have comments enabled since it adds to your content and adds to the value of the site - I always read through the comments on recipe sites. Christy
OK, few suggestions: 1. Get rid of the border around the AdSense. Helps to blend. Also, why only one tiny banner ad? Also also, the placement of the affiliate box is not in a visual hotspot. I'd bump it up right next to the main body text. People are used to ads. It won't bother them. 2. As stated before, search is needed. 3. Have you considered your source of traffic? I suspect you'll get mostly search engine traffic from people Googling certain recipes. 4. Some of the recipe titles ARE IN ALL CAPS LIKE THIS. That is hard to read. People scan on the web, and all caps makes it hard to do so. 5. I don't think the user-added content is going to amount to much. Really, your best bet is to just buy the rights to more recipes and publish them. Looks good otherwise. The thing with this type of site is that you're up against the Food Network site. They set the standard, and that's what people expect.
Thanks for finding the typo. As for search, I don't have it in place because for some reason it is not searching the recipes, trying to work the bugs out there. Yes, actually in order to rate you must comment and vice verse.
Hey, Well, for starters, the site looks OK. However i think it's a bit too plain. Also, the "Most Popular Recipes" panel in the right column.. it seems to me that it doesn't really have it's place there, doesn't fit very well.
Your site is good, but it needs some SEO work to ensure that it is found by the search engine spiders. PM me for a very special deal Cheers Pommy