Dear Readers and Bloggers,
It’s Shen here, the handyman, assistant photographer, and recipe taster behind Just One Cookbook. As of January 2013, Nami and I have been food blogging for 2 years. Even though the concept of food blogging itself is pretty simple…
- Make the food.
- Take photos.
- Write the recipe.
- Share the recipe on blog.
- Repeat.
…being very non-technical, we went through our fair share of challenges when we first started Just One Cookbook.
Since we didn’t know a thing about blogging, we definitely made a few mistakes along the way. As a result of making these mistakes and facing challenges, we actually learned quite a bit of new skills over the past 2 years.
In this post, we’ll break down our thoughts into the following categories, which we think will be the most helpful for new bloggers.
The content is divided into the following sections:
Platform
We’ll tell the story of how we ended up choosing self-hosted WordPress instead of a Blogger, Movable Type or free WordPress.org account.
Hosting
We are with our third hosting company and so far it’s a happy marriage – but it hasn’t always gone so smoothly.
Blogging Technology Tips
We’ll review technology like CDN, theme and other helpful tools that we use ourselves.
Food Photography
We’ve learned that it’s not always easy to take a good photo. We’ll give you a quick recap of how our photography skills are improving.
Growing Visitors to Your Site
You have a food blog – now what? We’ll give you some tried and tested tips to help you grow your visitor base.
Best wishes for your blogging adventure and we hope these tips are helpful.
– Mr. JOC (February, 2013)
So wonderful of you both to share such wisdom and your lessons learnt, thank you.
🙂 Mandy xo
Great job Shen. Superb article.
Kudos to Nami too for your 40-50hours a week dedication. I love Japanese food…n JOC is my 1st to ‘browse’ n read … 😀
So many things to learn from this post and things that go behind the scene. Thank you, Shen and Nami for sharing all of these information both technical and creative. You guys work really hard. Great job and more success.
Oh yes I can relate to it all. You guys have done a great job over the last 2 years and you have always been helpful when I experienced blog issues. Thank you! =)
Thank you for sharing good recipes.
Thank you Sujitra for following my blog! 🙂
Wow what a great series and post. So much info and so detailed. I love your blog it is one of my favorites. I can toy understand all the hours you spend on it, you can tell. Congrats on hitting 2 years and growing so fast. I love the recent small changes you have done to the blog too. 🙂
Thank you Ewa! xo
Hi Shen & Namiko san,
I think you have done a great job! Your blog is such interesting, informative and I love following your post. In fact, it inspired me to cook some dishes again, yes again, especially some dishes I find it troublesome to prepare.
Appreciated with your generousity of sharing cooking tips :)!
Hi Sandy! Thank you so much for your kind words and I’m very happy to hear you like my blog/recipes! I enjoy sharing my recipes and talking to you and other readers as well. 🙂
Hi Shen & Nami! Thank you so much for putting this together and sharing with us…. Really appreciate it!
Very timely. I’m dealing with some issues with my rss subscription base, and considering moving off of Blogger now. Thanks for this.
I look forward to reading all your tips. It’s always good to hear what others have learned.
Thanks so much for breaking such a complicated process down into step-by-step tips that a newbie to the food blogging world can understand. Some other guides I’ve read are full of terms, acronyms and concepts that are completely over my head. Your is clearly explained and well thought out. Bravo, and ありがとうございます。
Thanks so much for sharing, Nami and Shen. I have learned so much!
Great tips!! I always LOVE your photos – they are stunning!
Shen & Nami, just want to say, THANK YOU SO MUCH….. for sharing with all of us of your great photos (especially the tutorial photos), and most of all the recipes! I have learned so much from Just One Cookbook! Really !!
I’ve just read this entire post–awesome job!! The Shen and Nami team has done an excellent job in the last two years and I’m sure it will just keep getting better. What a treasure trove of information for people just starting to blog–or for those who don’t, it gives people an idea of how much goes into each post.
Nicely done!!!