| Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption |
| Barefoot Andrew |
Recipes - how do you browse them?We're thinking about making some changes to the recipes section soon, and would welcome some feedback.Currently, recipes are "navigated" by one of several categories - cuisine, cooking method, type etc. We're thinking of simplifying this into just one or two categories, and adding a box for entering search keywords. If you're looking for a recipe containing a particular ingredient, or of a particular name, or indeed featuring any particular keyword, you'd enter the keywords and click the button. Would a reduce set of categories be favourable? And if we were to have just one or two, which would be the most useful? All comments and suggestions welcome 
A. |
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| hedgewitch |
Do it. I hate the categories and can't bear to look at the recipes because of them. A keyword search is needed.
But.... who will decide on the keywords? These things can get messy... 
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| BahamaMama |
I use the receipe search but do find it difficult. I tend to search on the main ingredient/s.
And at the risk of incurring wrath, dodgy spelling makes it difficult to search successfully - I don't have the answers, I am just a dumb user. |
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| tahir |
I think I know someone who could work out a sensible system for this... |
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| Barefoot Andrew |
There wouldn't be any deciding of keywords as such; in the search box you would enter any old words you liked, and any recipe that contained that word/those words (anywhere - title, description, ingredients, method) would be returned as a "match".
As for dodgy spelling - problem acknowledged. The new software would make maintaining the recipes and correcting spelling or content issues easier. A. |
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| hedgewitch |
That sounds great 
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| Mrs Fiddlesticks |
it definitely needs simplifying and a keyword search is probably of more use than categories, but I can see with a lot of recipes there does need to be some division.
What about categories such as preserving (for jams, jellies and other things) wine and brew (self evident) dunno how to title the rest though |
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| hedgewitch |
The categories at the moment are all over the place. Could authors and/or editors add keywords for things like the different cuisines? I am not sure how people search, but suspect there are a number of pathways in...
"I have bought half a pig - I need some pork recipes FAST" type searching "I want to make a special birthday meal for my perfect partner" type searching "I need cake/sausage rolls/chocolate mousse NOW" type searching I do like the cuisine keywords too as sometimes I fancy spicy food or Italian... |
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| Mrs Fiddlesticks |
that may be the key thing here. If I'm looking in a recipe book at home its probably more likely to be by ingredient rather than occasion (unless its for Christmas stuff) |
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| Mrs Fiddlesticks |
BA I can feel a poll coming on - go on you know you want to... 
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| hedgewitch |
It would make for a great resource if we could work this out and then support it... I do tend to look for ingredients most often, but then something happens that I need to cook outside my comfort zone ("Kids? WTF do they eat apart from turkey twizzlers?!") and I want a different kind of search. |
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| Fee |
Aha, so you're going to beat me to it then That's probably just as well!!
Yeah, agree that the essential thing lacking in the current one is keyword search. That's all I ever use in an online recipe db, the keyword search. It might be nice to have a selection of 'featured' recipes on the front page of the recipe section too, rather than a boring list of categories, which does nothing to inspire me. A reduced number of sections also makes sense, perhaps bundling some of the various country cuisines? Incidentally, where would I go in the current system to find squirell recipes, anyone? |
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| Barefoot Andrew |
I'm resisting a poll for the moment (shock, horror!) because I'm more interested in thoughts & comment than poll results.
I am! Fee and I have been talking about who'll be first to tackle this overdue job for several centuries 
OK, interesting idea. A. |
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| hedgewitch |
Making seasonal recipes more prominent would be good too. There is a category, but this would be good to really promote. | ||||||||||||
| Jamanda |
My thoughts
A much reduced number number of categories and the ability to browse by key word as well as category. Preserving Homebrew/wine puds cakes pastry meaty things veggie thing cheesy/dairy things [Edit: added fishy things] Even that might be too many. The ability to see all the recipes (or at least a big number) in a category on a single page. Alphabetical order. At the moment I browse it by knowing where stuff is. Not a very satisfactory method. |
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| Fee |
I'd maybe add Wild food to that list, too, and perhaps a 'special occasions' or something similar. |
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| Barefoot Andrew |
OK, just been pondering.
The problem with any categorisation is the variety of opinion on what they should be - even as demonstrated by this short discussion - and the difficulty of maintaining them. When I re-categorised the web links database it took blinking ages. I can't help thinking that a well-worded recipe, and a keywords search facility, would satisfy most requirements. So I reckon a single category describing the broad type of the recipe would probably suffice, something along the lines of Jamanda's list. This would mean:-
A problem here is that it then becomes necessary to add multiple categories to recipes - e.g. wild food, dessert. My concerns are the overheads in maintaining this system if we change our minds about categories later on and need to re-categorise things. So... If a single category sounds OK, I'd welcome a running list on what we category names we thought suitable. We'd need to have this finalised in no more than two weeks from now. Further, I would propose that search results be ordered first by alphabetical category name, and second by alphabetical recipe name. One idea that occurred to me is that when one clicks search and results are displayed, the number of recipes that didn't match is also shown, with an option to browse them. Would this be useful? A. |
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| Jamanda |
I agree with all that Andrew, but I do think that one more category for wild food would perhaps put that special DS mark on it?
Merge cakes and puds if you want to lose one. |
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| Barefoot Andrew |
That is indeed a very good point. More pondering... A. |
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| Barefoot Andrew |
OK, I think I'll design for a single list of category names, but where recipes can be assigned to one or more categories.
A. |
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| Fee |
Sounds good, are you using any component as a base, or doing something from scratch? | ||||||||||||
| jema |
I'd always use something as a base, even a component doing something totally different will contain the core switches, toolbar, installation script and a myriad other things that are quicker to change a lot, then to write from scratch. | ||||||||||||
| Fee |
Yeah, I phrased that a bit papply I meant a recipe component 
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| dougal |
I've been trying not to get involved! Keywords. Simple thing surely is full text search, rather than specially selected 'keywords'. I think "radio buttons" for 'all keywords' or 'any keywords' is the simplest presentation of search logic. And at some stage, having some sort of homophone facility (or fuzzy matching) would help with poor spelling/typos -- whether in the recipe or the search term. So modularising things to permit revision/enhancement would be important at this stage. Categories. Mmmm. Yes, the categories need to be non-exclusive. But... I think that a category that returns more than (just for now say) 50 hits probably needs subdividing. And one with two or less needs combining or PR. However, as more recipes are gathered, the number of categories will need to increase (rather quickly if a single recipe is categorised under plural headings) And to avoid confusion, related (ie newly split) categories need to be presented together in any category listings. Example: say "British" was to be split into "British Historical & Traditional" and "British Present-day", you'd want them to be next to each other... Having returned several hits for whatever category or keyword - how are they to be ordered? My thinking is that the ordering ought to be overtly explained (oldest first, newest first, most-read, least-read, most expensive, least expensive, whatever). And it'd be really nice to choose the ordering for oneself... And, it shouldn't be *too* difficult to search for keyword(s) only within one or more specific categories... As is done here http://www.mamtaskitchen.com/recipe_search.php (Useful link BTW )
And a "wiki" button on the recipe page would allow simple reporting of wrong or incomplete categorisation (or recipe mistakes/typos) so that admins didn't have to comb through the stuff themselves! |
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| Barefoot Andrew |
Ordinarily I'd utterly agree with re-use, but in this case I'm writing from scratch as an exercise in getting to know how it all works. A. |
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| Barefoot Andrew |
I was wondering where your voice was
Interesting idea - I'll keep it in mind. Needless to say, any well-written software project, in any language, is modular with well-defined internal interfaces etc.
I'm resolutely against this level of complexity - I don't see how it makes for a simpler system to use, to maintain (recipes editing wise). So... it's useful to have your thoughts recorded in this thread, but I will most likely be implementing a single category, multiple assignment policy.
OK, useful suggestions. I'll think on this.
Agreed.
A fundamental aim is to make this system easier to maintain; the present system has some unsatisfactory aspects in this regard. A. |
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| dougal |
The problem is the situation when you get screenfuls of results within the category. One nice way of dealing with that situation is to allow searching within results, or simultaneous use of keywords and categories (as with mamtaskitchen). I don't know whether you want to fuss with search logic like the + and - options on the mamtaskitchen search...
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| Mrs Fiddlesticks |
Agree, the whole point of the current system not working is that there are too many categories and therefore not user friendly. It can be as fancy and as 'bells and whistles' as you like but if no-one can get their head round how to use it or what actual category a recipe belongs under, then its an opportunity wasted. sorry I'll toddle off now, partly cos you guys wandered in to techie speak and it went right over my little (bottle) blonde head
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| jema |
I'm in the KISS camp, Keep It Simple Stupid.
Too much software these days has become unusable as it adds features used by a very very small minority. |
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| Barefoot Andrew |
Agreed. I plan to allow searching with keywords and/or a category selection.
MySQL does this for you, so if you know how to do it the new software will allow for it. Jema & Mrs F - agreed. A. |
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| bernie-woman |
Most of what I think would be good has been mentioned but when I search other sites for recipes I always use ingredient search as generally it is inspiration for a particular ingredient I want - I tend to browse through books rather than recipes on the net
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