BigOven.com has a whole new look!
A brand new version of bigoven.com is now live at www.bigoven.com.
We've been working very hard on this upgrade and would like you to take a look when you get a moment, and jot your comments.
This new update brings many new features and improvements, among them:
- NEW: Foodie Q & A: A group-discussion area with an emphasis on "Getting Your Cooking Questions Answered". Please see below for more information on this new area.
- NEW: Get to work more quickly. You can sign in from any page without clicking off to a new page.
- NEW: Your chef page has been redesigned, making it much easier to find your (and other people's) stuff
- NEW: "Photos by member" (found on the member's page) now only displays the photos submitted by that particular member; previously, it would display all the recipes that have photos submitted by the member. In this way, it's a much more accurate view of the photos that a particular member is responsible for.
- NEW: Easily show recipes with photos only (recent raves only right now)
- NEW: Top medal-winners for the past 30 days now featured prominently on the home page.
- NEW: More recent raves -- you can now scroll back to over 200 "recent rave" recipes
- NEW: High-res photo support -- new recipe image uploads can support up to 1280x1280 pixel sizes, so get those high-quality photos uploaded! (Higher res photos are currently stored but not yet displayed.)
- NEW: Recipe results display shows more of what you want in search results (larger recipe photo, number of comments). See the number of comments a given recipe's gotten right on the results page.
- NEW: Toggle on and off "recipes with photos" more easily (currently limited to "recent raves", soon spread across all search results)
- NEW: Simplified signup, all on one page
- NEW: Access the Leftover Wizard, What's Fresh and Flavor Combiner from most pages in a single click.
- NEW: You no longer have to be a member of a group to post a question, comment or answer to it.
- NEW: Want to look up a recipe quickly? Just type the recipe id # into the searchbox at the top of the page
- NEW: Submitting recipe comments just got easier; just look at the bottom of the page.
- NEW: Search for cookbooks by name right from the top menu
- NEW: Search for kitchen appliances by name in our kitchen store right from the top menu
- NEW: Several performance caching improvements are focused on speeding page-loads.
Introducing "Foodie Q & A"
We took a hard look at the "groups" area of BigOven.com, and noticed that well over 80% of the usage of this area was when one individual posted a single cooking, food or diet question as a new topic, and then was looking for feedback or answers.
With that in mind, we've reshaped the groups area and are now introducing "Foodie Q & A".
BigOven.com still permits (and encourages!) free-form discussion of cooking and food in the Community Area, but has the added benefit of being able to track Questions and Answers.
Here's how it works. When you post a new topic, you can mark it as a Question or just a Comment. By posting it as a Question, your discussion bubble is color-coded yellow, and that'll signal to others that you're hoping for an answer. It also allows the website to show and sort on "unanswered questions", and also track (and perhaps someday reward) those who are most helpful at answering questions. When an answer comes in for your question, you can mark it as a "best answer", which will be color coded for easy reading by everyone later. In addition, you can vote up or down the helpfulness of anyone's question and answers, to help rate the discussion further. (You are currently given 500 voting points over the course of the month; this will likely change as we see how folks use this new feature.)
I hope you'll try out the new version of the site, and jot an email with your feedback. Happy cooking!
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