# How to choose a good design for a recipe website?



## Marketing 2.0. (Sep 4, 2018)

Hi,
I'm *starting a new cooking blog* to post recipes. I would like to know that platforms or templates are for this type of sector. Does anyone use WordPress or Blogger ?? To choose a theme that visual editor you use?

Should I publish more things besides the recipes?

Thanks for the info!


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## phatch (Mar 29, 2002)

Blogger is simpler, wordpress theoretically more powerful.

Read this: 
And this: 
Figure out your tagging standard and stick to it. By ingredient, technique, verb form (-ing or not, past, present infintive...), Ethnic origin...

Affiliate advertising and linking. Consider your Pinterest, Facebook and image social media presence. Ad layout can reduce your content to a single character colum on a phone. Put them above or below. In a margin can work, but you increase the risk. In body ads will play havoc with layout and design.

Template is secondary to knowing good design.

Remember that mobile will probably be your majority viewer. Small screens. Tables generally translate poorly.

Choose graphics that will still be meaningful at 2 inches across but also at 8 or so on a PC.

Negative space. Keep the layout, border and such mostly empty.

Wrapping text around an image is fun layout but will probably not work well on many phones. A simple column is your friend. Because your column is narrow, choose your indents and nested indents carefully.

Narrative or list?

Most cookbooks use an intro to give history and substitutions. Then a list of ingredients IN THE ORDER used. Personally, I would include things like water in this list as it's a peeve of mine if they call for it in the body of the recipe and not in the list.

A minority such as Joy of Cooking have a narrative format mixing instruction with ingredients in order.

Online, sans serif fonts still reign supreme for readbility. In print, serif fonts are preferred. Don't get cutesy with fonts. You don't know how they'll display or be supported on other devices. Pick a very common font widely supported across PC, Macs, Android and IPhone. Google and Microsoft have some they widely distribute for this and your blog platform will recommend some choices.


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## phatch (Mar 29, 2002)

Links are weird today. Recipes into type is the first book. will write for food is the second.


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## Tracy Turner (Nov 21, 2017)

Definitely go for Wordpress! You can do so much with Wordpress when it comes to creating menus, widgets, categories, custom urls and more! It might seem a little overwhelming at first. But, after spending a couple of hours with WP I am sure you will get a hang of it.


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