Do you like the redesign? What other features would you like to see?
Welcome to the Official Grand Reopening of AverageBetty.com! For Average Betty, this is the first significant redesign ever, and we’re super excited to share the new look and cool features with you! We’ve come a long way, Betty.
Like a good recipe, we wanted a clean, simple and (hopefully) organized design. The website redesign felt a lot like a restaurant renovation, but in lieu of fresh paint and new vinyl seats we have a new theme and widgets! Let me show you around…
SEARCH BAR
Have you used the search bar yet? It doesn’t suck, I promise. It’s powered by Google and works fantastically well. Type in what you’re looking for and bingo!
RECIPE SUBCATEGORIES
The navigation bar has a brand new Recipe button with SUBCATEGORIES! Looking for pizza dough or dinner roll recipes? Just hover over the Recipes button and click Breads. You will also find the recipe subcategories in the Categories sidebar just below the fold. Give ’em a try — they’re a quick way to find recipes.
SUBSCRIBE & SOCIALIZE
Now, it’s easy to friend up and subscribe at the places you like to go online! YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, iTunes, Zune, Flickr, and RSS to keep up on new posts, recipes and videos super easily. Just click a thumbnail and voila!
TAG CLOUD
There are new ways to navigate the site, like the Tag Cloud in the sidebar tab widget. Ever wonder what recipes use avocado? Just click the TAGS tab and then click avocado in the tag cloud.
You can also get to the LATEST posts and COMMENTS, and POPULAR posts in the sidebar tab widget… just click the tabs (not in the image to the left — scroll to the top of the sidebar)!
POPULAR POSTS
Speaking of popular, everyone wants to know what’s HOT! Perhaps the feature I am most excited about is the POPULAR posts tab. This cool feature shows the (top 6) most popular posts in the last 24 hours; it’s a cool way to discover new recipes and see what others are checking out.
GRAVATARS
Bloggers love comments. It’s a fact. And now with gravatar-enabled comments we can all get to know each other better! Coming from the old site with no user photos to the new gravatar-enabled site, it’s so exciting to see your faces appear in the comments! So, if you don’t have a gravatar, please get one! Otherwise you’ll be rep’d as a mere gingerbread man. It’s super easy to sign up with Gravatar to put a face (even if it’s your cat) to a name and make everything more fun!
SHARING
You know what else is fun? Sharing recipes, videos and stories with your friends! At the bottom of each post, you’ll find icons that make sharing a lot easier. In fact if you scroll down just a bit, you will see the sharing icons for this post. There’s even an email icon so you can share the “classic” way if you’re not all over the Twitter. Give ’em a whirl!
So, what do you think? Do you like the site redesign? What do you like? What don’t you like? How can we make things better? You don’t want this old thing back, do you?
Love it! Nice sophisticated design while still keepin’ it fun. You just set the bar a little higher for food bloggers. Good work!
Woohoo! Thanks, Michael! Quite the compliment coming from you… one of my favorite food bloggers :)
You already know I love it! Great Job!
Thanks Angie! Oh how I love to see your pretty face in my gravatars! YAY!!