CookPortal.com Review

**LookPortal** · 04:39 PM

After some time of this project being off then on again CookPortal.com is now officially live. Please tell me what you think. We also have a search box you can add to your site for recipes. Thanks

See it here at cookportal.com

**jucream** · 11-24-2003, 03:06 PM

Just FYI:

There was no link in your discussion so I hit the www button at the bottom of your posting and it took me to look-portal.com, I think you were trying to get reviews on cook-portal.com, so here it is:

Appearance Colors, Fonts, Graphics, Logos, Layout, Backgrounds

Very nice, clean and clear. The colors and graphics complement each other very nicely and the site has a consistant and clean appearnce. The images do not slow down the page load and look very clear. Nice job.

Functionality: Navigation, Links, Load Time, Bugs

The nav is very easy to understand, and it is easy to get around your site. I ran into no bugs or errors while running through the site. The Load time was good.

Overall & Content Purpose of site, and Does appearance and purpose of site match

The content seems rich, and was well catagorized, using images and icons that complemented the site very nicely. There is a wealth of recipes and it is really neat that you have resources for other webmaster to add a reciepe search to their site.

Technical Typos, Wording, Grammar

No errors of any kind found by me. Overall really nice site! Great job, my only question is can your visitors submit reciepes? Or is it only posted by you, I didnt see anything that would allow visitor postings, but it may make it a much "cooler" resource.

jc

**LookPortal** · 11-24-2003, 04:50 PM

Wow Thanks, I am kicking around the idea of having user submitted recipes. It would save a lot of time because i entered all the recipes by hand. But i haven't so far because i use a public database of recipes and i wouldn't want a recipe that is someones intellectual property.

**jucream** · 11-24-2003, 05:00 PM

True --

What I have seen in the past for sites with similar user submission features (although not reciepes) is to put a little disclaimer at the end of the page, or a little icon right on the listing, that a user can submit to notify you of such positings that may be violating I.P.R. Although, i guess this might get kinda hectic.

An idea though.

jc

**Martin Sojka** · 12-03-2003, 08:55 PM

hello,

it looks a bit chaotic to me.. I dont like especially the icons at the home page (icons related to the categories).

Also you should try to change the grey background for the main content area so it will corespond with the header and the logo.

**myrealtypage** · 12-03-2003, 11:11 PM

I'm not a lawyer so don't take my word for this, but recipes are not generally patentable. I don't know what other kind of protection they can get, but I think they are usually kept as trade secrets, which I think, just means they are kept secret if people don't want anyone to know.
That said, I would certainly put something up there saying that you aren't responsible for user's posts and that they are not allowed to post protected recipes.

I like the look of the site in general. Nice colors and kept simple.

I'd make the categories spaced out a little more evenly and probably with 3 columns and probably have the whole thing centered.

The images of the foods are nice, but since they aren't really pictures of the dishes that the recipes are for it is a little off.

The ratings application is very easy to use. I rated Tomato Basil

**myrealtypage** · 12-03-2003, 11:17 PM

sorry, accidentally hit return

I rated Tomato Basil Fettuccine a 5 just to test it so you might want to remove that rating.

The add a recipe search is very cool. I may try it out. I make websites for realtors and some of them may be interested in having that on their sites.

The CookPortal image at the top should be a link to home.

I would definately use the site if I cooked anything and I'm sure it will be better when you get more recipes and have more ratings.

**Fleet** · 12-06-2003, 07:09 PM

I like it a lot, only thing I would suggest is making some dividers on the listings page, just to seperare stuff out.