I must say that there’s something to be said for working with an expert. Rather than trying to piece together random bits of knowledge and hundreds of Google searches like I did when I last redesigned the site, this time around it was a lot easier.

My goal for the redesign was to just clean up the layout and make it easier to read and interact with the content. Hopefully you’ll all agree that it’s an improvement!

The Highlights

There’s a few really cool featured on the new site some of which will take me a few weeks to get fully up and running.

1) Archives! The recipes pages (check out the Appetizers page for example) on the new site are awesome. There’s a nifty recipes dropdown that should make it a lot easier to find recipes based on category. The pages themselves are really slick and formatted with thumbnails of each recipe. Some of the thumbnails might not show yet, but they will over time as I go through and format the old posts for the new template.

2) Ingredients! The new ingredients page is exactly what I always wanted in an ingredients page! I’ve tried to do a good job over the years at categorizing ingredients in recipes as I write them and that makes this slick page possible.

3) Shop! I’ve had a vision for a shop page on Macheesmo for awhile now and so I finally took the time to make one with this new design. The page only has stuff on it that I’ve used. If you ever buy something off of the page, then you help support the site also because I make a small percentage from each sale.

4) Printing! The recipes with the new format are finally formatted nicely. Check out the pumpkin muffins from the weekend for an example on how the recipes will look moving forward. Also, the printed version is cleaned up and shows just ingredients and directions and not the full post. (This was true on the old site also, but I think this version is even cleaner.)

The Lowlights

Any time you make a change to a website, there’s always a few snags. I made the decision to move away from some of the old styling I was using on posts which, I think, in the long run will make the site a lot better as a resource.

In the short run it means I have to go back and reformat all the old posts!

As you might guess, this doesn’t thrill me, but it needed to happen and I’ve been putting it off for months. While I’m doing this incredibly tedious process, I’m sure I’ll be cursing the fact that I’ve posted six times a week for three years. But assuming I don’t jump off a cliff before I finish with the formatting, I think it’ll be worth it.

Feedback!

Of course, I’d love any feedback (positive or negative) that you have on the new design. We worked hard on it and I want to make sure it’s humming along nicely. If you notice broken crap or just stuff that looks wonky, I’d love it if you shot me a line or left a comment!

Guess what I did all day Saturday?

I compiled a huge holiday gift guide called “100 Gifts Under $100.”

You might be able to guess what’s in it. It has 100 really great gift ideas for people who like to cook, eat, or just decorate kitchens.

The guide is completely free, but I’m only sending it out to my Newsletter subscribers.

If you want to check it out, you can subscribe using this form!

If you happen to already be a subscriber, you should have gotten 100 Gifts Under $100 in your email already.

This is the kind of stuff that I’ll be sending out via email. Stuff that hopefully is really useful and not just waste of time. I don’t send a lot of mailings out though so don’t worry about me crowding your Inbox. I’ve been averaging about an email a month so far.

So, if you haven’t already, I’d love for you to subscribe, check out the guide, and let me know what you think of it!

But yes, I finally got around to making some pretty substantial changes here at Macheesmo. I’ve worked hard on it over the last few months and there’s a lot of cool stuff on the new site.

Here’s the breakdown of the new features!

Find a Recipe Section: I’m hoping that the section of links in the left column of the site, along with the next new feature, solves the number one request for Macheesmo which is, “Make it easier for me to find recipes I want to find please!”

This section is categorized broadly but I think every recipe on the site fits into at least one of these categories.

Recipe Index: If you have a general idea of what you’re looking for, there’s some other ways you can go about finding it. First, you could search for it using the cool new Google search I installed.

Second, you can check out the Recipe Index by Name which categorizes every recipe on Macheesmo alphabetically.

Third, and this took me a long time, you can use the Recipe by Ingredient Index (which is in the Recipe Index tab at the top). This page should be self-explanatory, but if you know for sure you want to make something with ricotta cheese, for example, you might want to swing by this page. (PS. I’m pretty sure the ingredient listing is about 95% right, but it was a pretty huge endeavor so I’ll take that.)

So, basically, if you can’t find what you’re looking for now, you might just be out of luck!

Random Recipe: This was on the old site as well, but if you want to take a spin through old recipes, clicking the “Random” navigation tab up top will bring up a random one for ya.

Daily Snaps: I’m going to start posting daily photos on Macheesmo! Sometimes these might be food-related (or cat-related), but you can always see the most recent one by clicking on the Daily Snaps navigation at the top of the site.

The Daily Snaps is a separate section on the site so the photos won’t appear on the homepage when posted. If you’re interested in seeing them you’ll have to click the link. I did this not to make you click again but to avoid cluttering the homepage for people that don’t like seeing photos of Tipsy balancing things.

The Macheesmo Newsletter: I occasionally have stuff that I want to send out to all of you but I don’t really have a way to do it effectively without making a new post which kind of clutters up the site. So I’m planning on using this newsletter to very occasionally send out special deals, recipes, and cooking tips. The newsletters will be short and sweet and I’ll never send out more than one newsletter per week.

None of the stuff in the newsletter will be on Macheesmo though so the only way to get it is to sign-up by filling out the form in the sidebar or clicking here!

Lots of Other Goodies: Besides those big things, you might notice that the new Macheesmo has a slick new comments section (powered by IntenseDebate), quick and easy ways to share posts, an updated list of my favorite links, and a generally sexy look and feel.

I know that the design and layout is pretty different from the old “minimalist” design, but I just felt that it was time to make a change. If you don’t love it already, I think it’ll grow on you as you use the pages and poke around.

I’d love to hear what you all think about the new site!

Leave a comment and let me know!

So over the next few weeks (probably a month realistically) I’m embarking on a fairly large redesign of Macheesmo. I’ve been spending a huge amount of time over the last 2 years producing what I hope is good recipes and content and now I need to focus some energy on making sure that it’s actually accessible and easy to use for you all.

Thanks to some 55 Knives sales, I have a bit of income to re-invest in the site which I think can really help make it more user-friendly. I wanted to spend a post outlining just a few of the things I’m hoping to do with the re-design and also ask for any other ideas you all might have!

1) Archive Overload – Wow. I can’t believe that I’ve written over 500 posts on this website, most of which are actual recipes. The problem, of course, is that it’s practically impossible to find any of the old (hopefully good) stuff. This will change very soon. The new site is going to have some slick navigation to easily find recipes that interest you as well as a complete recipe archives page that organized by Type/Dish instead of by Date.

2) Daily Photos – I take a lot of photos. Most of them I don’t ever post just because they don’t fit a recipe. That said, I heard that a number of people would be interested in this kind of thing. It’ll be a separate section of the site that you can visit if you’re interested.

3) Tricked Out Design – There’s going to be some cool design things coming with the new site. Maybe a new logo. Some new colors and layouts, etc. Of course the goal will be to make the site easier and more enjoyable to read.

4) The Shop – There’s going to be a new section on the site devoted specifically to tools and products. I’ll update it regularly with things I’m using in my kitchen. It’ll be based somewhat on what’s in my OpenSky Store, but it’ll most likely include some products outside of that as well.

5) Videos – It’s going to happen. Eventually. This isn’t exactly tied to the new design in any way, but I’m trying to get up the confidence and tech-savvy to show my face in video format for your mocking pleasure. I don’t want this to become a video blog, but ideally I would do a video post once every few weeks.

So Whatcha Want?! Those are the things I have on the books right now to look at. But, the thing about a website is that when I view Macheesmo, I’m pretty sure I see something that’s completely different than you. Not like, actually different, but I just see it differently. I see every little coding error. Every slight alignment issue. Etc.

So what’s important to me might not at all be important to you. That’s why I’d love to hear what you think would improve the site.

Leave a comment! Or shoot an email to nick AT macheesmo.com.

PS. For those that want a 90′s flashback, here’s the What’cha Want Video (Has audio obviously).

Photo by jphilipg.

Last year, Dan and I came up with the idea of having an Iron Chef like battle on our sites (My Entry and His Entry). We had so much fun doing it we decided it would be cool to start a second site that was just for online food battles. So Foodie Fights was born.

The site had battles every few weeks with 6 different competitors and some special ingredients. The idea was to give people an outlet to try new things and also meet new people online who were interested in cooking and food. Plus there was a competitive element which is all in good fun of course.

We started Foodie Fights 1.0 on a basic WordPress platform without too much thought honestly. We had some simple rules and a general idea of what we wanted to do and so we took a stab at it.

Over the next six months, we outgrew the WordPress site. The battles were kind of clunky and required multiple posts and there was no way for people to get really involved in the fights without their own websites that we could link to.

We received a lot of feedback that the Foodie Fights idea was awesome, but there were some obvious hiccups to the deal.

Stuff like:

- I want to compete but I don’t want to have my own food blog!

- I want to know the ingredients before I sign-up so I don’t get too far out of my comfort zone. (People used to sign up and then sometimes they would be saddled with ingredients that they couldn’t find or knew absolutely nothing about.)

- The popular vote should be more powerful! (We had guest judges for each fight and their votes were weighted way too heavily and would basically always override the popular vote.)

Well, guess what. We fixed all that stuff!

Ok. Let me be completely honest. Dan and some of his friends fixed that stuff. We decided to move the site over to a Drupal framework and I’m far from a Drupal expert. I learned a lot, but Dan did most of the heavy lifting. Go Dan go.

What’s New With 2.0

Besides a sleek new look which I’m kind of in love with, there’s some cool stuff under the hood also.

Profiles. You can now have your own profile on Foodie Fights which is awesome. Here’s my profile for example.

This means you can sign up for battles even if you don’t have your own food blog. If you do have your own blog, we’ll still link back to it to send some traffic your way though. There’s lots of cool stuff in the profiles like a way to make friends (or RIVALS) with other foodie fighters. Most importantly though, it’s really simple to create a new account.

Ingredients. On the new system, you’ll know the ingredients for a battle before you sign up for it. This was a tough call for us because we liked the mystery of secret ingredients, but we decided to do it this way because we were having a bunch of people sign up for battles and then back out when the ingredients were announced. In the future we might still have a “Mystery Ingredient” section on the site for people who are interested in that.

We’ve streamlined the whole battle process actually. Check out the new rules for more info.

The People’s Voice. On the new Foodie Fights, the popular vote will be a lot more powerful. There will still be guest judges, but we stripped them of some of their power.

And of course the last thing that this new awesome website (probably) has is:

Bugs. While Dan and I have ran through a few test battles and everything seems to be working okay. I’m sure there are a few bugs that we haven’t found yet. So if you find one, it’d be awesome if you emailed it to me.

The First Battle. The first battle will be announced tomorrow, which gives you just enough time to zip on over, check out the site, make your profile, and get ready to cook some fun stuff over the weekend!

I’d be interested to hear any feedback you all have on the new site, positive or negative! Leave a comment!

The spot where this bothers me the most is the top right ad space on the site (LOOK TO THE RIGHT OF THIS PARAGRAPH!). Because it’s so prominent, I hate it when “Get Thin Fast” ads from Google show up there.

So I’ve decided to start selling that sponsorship space which gives me more control over what’s shown there. You might still see some other ads throughout the site, but as always I encourage readers to shoot me an email if they see an ad that they find in bad taste. I do my best to filter them.

So, I’m excited to announce the first sponsor ever here at Macheesmo, Berkshire Grain! They’re a great small company in Massachusetts producing some healthy and tasty organic granola. So check them out! They have a set-up to give Macheesmo readers a discount and free shipping on orders for a limited time.

See folks… reading Macheesmo does pay off.

In other news, there’s supposed to be an epic snow storm in DC this weekend, so…

A few links…

The Ugliest Fruits – Looks don’t matter! It’s whats on the inside that counts right? Maybe… but these are some ugly fruits. (@ Huffington Post) PS. I’m always amazed by the range of stuff on Huffpo. Sometimes I think they’re a legit news source and sometimes they run stuff like this…

How to Wrap and Store Cheese – I figured that there was probably a better way to do this than the method I use which is… don’t worry about and assume I’m gonna eat it before it goes bad. The method is a bit of work, but probably worth it if you’re an expensive cheese lover. (@ Serious Eats)

Pancake Ice Cream and Bacon Candy – What?! This is insanity. And by insanity I mean that it’s something that I want immediately. A great guest post by Karen from Off the Meat Hook. (@ Thursday Night Smackdown)

Super Bowl Sunday Grub – If you’re at a loss for what to make for the big game this weekend, this is a fantastic start! (@ Kayotic Kitchen)

Have a great weekend everyone and go Saints?!

The last 60 post I did was pretty well received so I thought I’d do another one with 60 great warming dishes to make it through the last few months of winter.

You can hover over the photos to see original blog and recipe name and click through to the original recipe.

Phew! Ok. So I maybe could have named this 60 things in a bowl, but whatever. You get the idea. Click on some pretty photos, get to know some new awesome food blogs and most of all…

STAY WARM PEOPLE.

This might be all gobbledygook to some of you, but if everything went as planned (it didn’t) you would notice no changes visually on Macheesmo, but it would just have some slick new functionality. Turns out though I forgot a few things while testing it and some areas do look a bit different. And not in a good way. So if you see something that looks wonky, sorry. I’m gonna try to get to it this weekend. If you see something that doesn’t work at all (like you click a link and it breaks), please please please email me.

Enough computer speak. Let’s cook some food.

And some links as always!

Not Too Much. Mostly Plants. A friend and reader sent me a new food blog (yes another one) this week. Her goal is pretty straightforward - Stick to Michael Pollan’s rules for a year and document it. Will she succeed? Who knows. She takes pretty solid photos though and is humorous. What more could you want in a food blog that doesn’t rhyme with Blacheesmo? (@ Not Too Much. Mostly Plants)

The Best 11 Foods you Aren’t Eating. A list of some foods that are good for you that I guess the average American doesn’t eat. I think almost all of them have made a Macheesmo appearance before and two of them did just this last week! (@ NY Times)

My First Madeleines. Not my first ones obviously. I’ve never tried them. But Nicole’s first ones. I must say I would have to give her a grade of A+ based on photos only. If I had one of those nifty madeleine trays, I’d be making these suckers. (@ Pinch My Salt)

Have a good weekend everyone and guess what! If you leave a comment on this post, I will totally reply to your comment individually just to show off my new comment functionality that took me two weeks to achieve.

While I’m gone, I will have pretty limited Internet access so I’m not going to be able to work on Macheesmo actively during that time (don’t worry, I have some posts scheduled to give you all something new to look at). While I won’t be working on it, I am going to spend some of the airplane time and walking time thinking about where I want Macheesmo to go in the next 6 months to a year.

But I thought I would give you all the opportunity to chime in on what you would like to see on Macheesmo. I created a quick poll of some ideas I’ve been tossing around. Feel free to check off as many as you find interesting.

Also, if there are things you would like to see that aren’t in the below list, leave a comment or shoot me an email. Thanks for reading everyone.

Today is the first day of a new website that I have launched with Dan over at TFIMB. We had so much fun during our battle a few weeks ago, that we decided to make a site dedicated to nothing but food blog battles. We wanted to come up with a fun way for food bloggers to meet other bloggers, compete in a friendly way, and hopefully learn something by working with new ingredient combinations. We came up with Foodie Fights.

The new site, www.foodiefights.com, will allow up to 6 food bloggers to compete all at once. The rules for each fight are pretty basic. All you have to do is sign-up and submit an ingredient. Dan and I moderate each fight. All the competitors have to do is cook! Post your results on your website and the public will be able to vote on their favorites! We know that different blogs have different traffic levels and we wanted to make sure the little guys have a chance at success so we will have guest judges for every battle. Judge votes will be worth more than the popular vote.

There are going to befights every two weeks or so. Please check it out and if you have a food blog and want to have some fun, please sign-up for the first ever battle!