What began a project to make this website load faster ended up turning into a weekend project to totally redo the framework this website is built on. I ended up scrapping my custom theme and buying a copy of Thesis, which I’d recommend to anyone looking for a highly customizable WordPress Theme. I’ve also added some new features like thumbnails for all the archive pages, a recipes index with a list of all the recipes on this site organized by cuisine, and our comments are now powered by Disqus. What this means for you is that you can now use your Twitter, Facebook, OpenID, or Disqus account to leave comments, and you won’t have to type in your info every time.
I’ve also decided that rather than post a bunch of short mentions of all my scribbles around the interwebs, I’m just going to wrap up my week of writing in a single. This week, my first post for Tablet Hotels went up. Those of you that have been long time readers know I have an affinity (well more like an obsession) with the history of food. Not history as in boring textbook dates and figures, but the epic journey that the foods we eat have taken, before winding up on our tables. They’re stories about war, conquest and mass migration and if you go back far enough, it challenges your notions about what “authentic” really means. In my first post, I’ve written about the journey of a couple of foods, but stay tuned for more posts on the intersection between travel and food.
Over at ReadyMade this week, I discover the wonders of packaged food knock-offs, and during a moment of deep introspection, I discover the zen of peeling mangos.
Check out the articles, poke around the new site, and have a great week!. I’d also love to hear your feedback on the site changes, so please leave a comment and let me know what you think:-)
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{ 16 comments }
Still exploring. Looks great so far
I love it, Marc. Very cool design and i'm loving the disqus comments. Love that it picks up feedback from everywhere. Way to go!
I like the new look. I didn't have any prior problems with loading time, though- in fact, I thought your site was one of the faster and cleaner ones. Do you think there's room to put your newest video on the sidebar or is that over-egging the pudding?
I am working on a wordpress site for a new venture, so I will check it out, Thanks. I do like what you have done!
Thanks, it's a pretty easy switch if you ever want help doing it on your site. Also, thanks for the tip on the index thing, it saved me a lot of time!
I'd like to do something with the sidebar design, but I was more concerned about getting everything to work this weekend. I like your video idea, let me think about it. Also about the load times, I guess it was more about the server load, the site was making so many queries to the server, apache would crash every time I got stumbled. Hoping this setup works a little better.
Wonderful new look on your site! Love the thumbnails of your archived posts! Great seeing you tonight!
Very nice, although not had time to look in detail yet. Be sure to check out Cliff Wright's site for great Med food history rolled into some great recipes. Keep up the good work brother!
love the new look!!! you're gonna love thesis too – its amazing!
New layout looks LOVELY! I just re-did mine as well. Every once in awhile, they need an overhaul. You have such a great site here!
I like the new design, and the top navigation bar. The recipe index will be very useful!
Love the clean look mate, also as noted disqus is fantastic. I'm impressed how clean the new site looks even though you have squeezed in quite a bit of content on the sidebars etc.
Loving your new site! I wanted to buy thesis a long time ago but I heard you had to have at least some working knowledge of macro or HTML or something along those lines – none of which I have…
Thanks! Actually you need a lot less html knowledge than with any
other theme I've used because a lot of the interface elements can be
controlled through the Wordpress dashboard with drop down menus and
such. If you really want to customize you need to understand CSS, but
even that isn't super difficult if you have some time.
I am really liking the new layout, it is quite a pain to have to enter in your info every time you comment and then there's those pesky passcodes too! I like it, I give it two thumbs up. I am also digging the thumbnails as well, great job Marc
bookmarking this page, thanks for the post, really enjoyed reading this
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