Adding magazines to Cookbooker is, how shall I put it, imperfect (okay, how about confusing?). I’ve noticed that a number of members have added magazines that already exist on the site, which I’ve deleted – but the fault is all mine. I’m going to work at making it simpler, but at the moment, I’ll try to explain it as clearly as I can.
- Check the magazines page to see what magazines we already have – it’s preloaded with most of the common food magazines from the US, Canada, Australia, NZ and UK. You can click the ‘browse’ tab at any time to get to the list of magazines.
- Click the title of the magazine you want to add. You’ll see a main page for the magazine itself.
- This is the important/confusing part. You then have to add the issue you want to have on your bookshelf. Since recipes are published in particular magazine issues, we have to treat each issue as a separate publication, just like cookbooks. Someone may have put your issue on already. If so, click the little green + button to add this to your bookshelf. Otherwise, you’ll have to click ‘Add a New Issue’.
- Once you add an issue it will appear in the magazines tab in your bookshelf and you can add individual recipes to it.
Hope this helps!
I’m addicted to “Fine Cooking” magazine and I own nearly every issue (around 100!).
Any chance of supporting the ability to add an entire year of magazine issues at a time?
Hi Jay – alas not at the moment. The problem with this is that each magazine has different publication frequency, so if there was some sort of ‘add a year’ button, it would have to know if each magazine was monthly, bimonthly, quarterly, etc. Not only that, but some magazines change their frequency over time, so that a magazine that’s now monthly might have been bimonthly five years ago. Much better to rely on the wisdom of our members. However, there may be a way to make it quicker to add lots of issues. I’ll see what I can do.
I too love Fine Cooking. In addition to their regular issues, Taunton (the publisher) also puts out (pretty often — some might say too often) “compilation issues” — They have titles like The Best of Fine Cooking — Dinner Parties” or The Best of Fine Cooking — Quick and Delicious” (there are three of four compilation issues with this title). Is there a way to add these to the magazines?
Maybe have the Magazine title be The Best of Fine Cooking — you would still need the issue date field, but maybe add an optional field for the issue or compilation name to be included if needed. This could also work for a magazine like Southern Living that issues an annual compilation.
Just a thought…
AJ
This is a good point indeed – I see already some people have added special issues, but it would be best if they were all under the main sponsoring magazine. Do you know if they’re usually dated? I could see having a second form area for special issues where you could put the title and date, which would keep them collected under the magazine. I’ll work on something after the holiday weekend.
Taunton doesn’t really make it easy for you — they have vastly increased their special issues over the last few years (kind of diluting their brand to the distress of some long-time subscribers). Some of these are one-offs (like “Soups and Stews” and “Dinner Parties” and “Real Italian”) and others are series like “Make It Tonight” (which used to be “Quick and Delicious”) and “Fresh”. The one-offs are undated, other than year of publication, and have no volume number. With the series, they have been inconsistent. Lately they use a volume number for some of the series, but “Fresh” for example is dated with the season (Spring or Fall) and the year. Maybe it is as simple as adding a field under the Magazine Title (which would be “The Best of Fine Cooking) for an “Issue Title” (e.g. “Real Italian”) field. But then you might have to make completion of the Issue Date optional for these issues.
Or change the Issue Date field to an “Issue Title or Date” field and make it an alphanumeric field … although I suppose (knowing next to nothing about webpage design) this would mean giving up the scroll down selection of month/year.
Anyway — hope this is helpful. And if it doesn’t work out, it is always possible for the FC lovers among us to get the original issue number and page number for every recipe in these compilation issues at the FC website, so that has been what I’ve been doing. And then in my review I mention that the recipe is also in the specific compilation issue. If it is available at the website (not all are), I provide the link in the review as well.
Oops… spoke too soon … it looks like in recent years the one-offs do have volume numbers on the spine (my first one — and I have most of them — is 24) but they don’t appear to have a volume number (on spine or inside) the earlier ones. There was an editorial change a few years back and maybe they shifted to adding volume numbers at that point. The regular issues have always had volume numbers. Anyway, sorry about the misinformation above.
PS — If you decide you want to add an alphanumeric field for issue title/volume number, I ‘ll be happy to spend some time on a week-end to get these special issues entered.
Thanks for all this AJ! I’ll work up some test pages and see what makes the most sense. It would be great if you can give me feedback once I put up the updated page. There may not be a perfect solution, but I’m sure we can at the very least create something workable and flexible enough to handle most special issues. I had a look at some other magazine special issues today in a magazine stand and they’re fairly popular, but vary in how they’re presented (some just have a ‘display until date) so definitely we’ll have to work to include them properly on the site.
Hi Andrew,
Great site! You are right that adding magazines is tricky, thanks for working on improving it. If anything, I think i will find this site most useful for magazines, I can never remember which issue a recipe I like is in.
The green ‘add issue’ button next to magazines isn’t working for me. I can add them if I open that magazine as a page, but not from the list of issues. Also, for Donna Hay Magazine, the issue number rather than the date is what is shown on the spine so it is hard to locate them on a bookshelf from only the date. Could you please add an issue number field as well?
Donna Hay fans might find the list of back issues a useful way to quickly translate between date/cover/issue number. http://www.donnahay.com.au/magazine/back-issues.php
Thanks again, N
Hi Andrew,
You might point out on the first numbered para of the blog that the way to the magazines page is through the browse tab.
I notice that The New York Times Food Section* has an entry. Do you know if this is an actual magazine or an insert in the NYT newspaper? I often keep the cooking insert (Epicure) in my state paper The Age for a few weeks and try some of the recipes. I wouldn’t catalogue them here because a) I eventually throw the insert away, and b) they are so much more accessible via the website (which I must get around to cataloguing).
*This list sorts on the ‘The’ as the books pages used to do, you might want to look into that.
Jim
I added the Times Food Section (appears every Wednesday) into magazines before there was the option of adding websites. It probably makes more sense to have it as a website than a magazine; I always add the link anyway since that’s the best way for non-subscribers to get the recipe.
Naomi: Thanks for finding the ‘add issue to bookshelf’ bug. I’ve fixed it now so it will properly add a magazine issue to your bookshelf. I’ll add an issue number field as soon as I’m able.
As for newspapers, lots of them have recipes but as JustJim noted, people discard their newspapers, or save the recipe as a clipping, so having it indexed in Cookbooker wouldn’t be very helpful for finding it again or having others find it again. It may be best to just use the website feature for this and not have any newspaper sections at all. Would you mind if I converted it to the website area AJ? I’d move your reviews over too.
Oh, and I’ll fix the sort bug in the magazines list. I’ve made a note in my first paragraph about how to find them. And I’ve realized that a drop-down menu for ‘browse’ would save people a lot of time if they wanted to see any of the complete lists, so I’ve put that on my to-do list as well.
I think moving the Times food section to the website section makes perfect sense.
Great website! How about adding the magazine, La Cucina Italiana? Thanks.
Larrianne: it’s already on the site here: http://www.cookbooker.com/magazine/24/magazine-of-la-cucina-italiana
Naomi: I’ve added issue numbers to magazines now, so feel free to do so. If you’d like me to add them to already added magazines on the site, let me know which ones by email and I’ll do it.
Rest of the magazine changes are underway (slightly delayed, I’ll sheepishly admit).
AJ and others – I’ve now added the special issues feature to magazines. When adding a new issue, there’s a separate section for special issues which currently allows you to add the issue title, date (month is optional) and optional issue number. I’ve also changed the magazine display so that special issues appear separately from regular issues.
I’d be delighted if people with special issues could try this out and let me know if it makes sense and works with the issues in their collections. Comments are, as always, welcome.