Making An Automatic Updating Recipe Index in Blogger

3/31/2013 Latest version at Blog Within A Blog

I try to be a good food blogger. It is just a hobby since I have a more than adequate day job. But I always try to be good at what I do.

Several months ago Dave at Inspired by eRecipe had a post on making your blog better with a separate page for a "Recipe Index". It seems all the "cool kids" are doing it. I blew it off since with over 200 recipes, it seemed impossible without days of work. It just didn't seem that important. But it bugged me... I want to be one of the cool kids but really it was just TOO MUCH WORK. Already to create a post, I edit photos, upload them, and create the basic post in Blogger. Then I enter it into Recipe Wiz to get a rich snippet. Paste the snippet into the post. Go to Google sites and create a printable version. Manually edit the snippet code to print correctly. Do a little formatting. Publish the post. Check it in the Rich Snippet Testing Tool. Then also post to FaceBook and eRecipe. That makes me a bit dizzy...

Well my mind just wonders sometimes (ADHD???) and it seemed to me that the data is all there in digital form. The Labels widget can get it, why can't I? Well I (and you) can. By using a feed of specific Labels, you can generate a linked list that you can publish on a static page but that will update with any additions to your site that contains a specific label.

Step By Step Instructions

1) You need to figure out how your feeds work. I use Feedburner from Google. The label specific feed for my BBQ label is

http://www.101cookingfortwo.com/feeds/posts/default/-/BBQ

 2) You now need to be able to create a JavaScripe of this feed. I used http://www.tanjabaumann.com/feed/build.php . There are others out there if you Google. Go to the site and follow the instructions.
Update note: Several times the feed for the code at the above site seemed slow so I have switched to http://feed2js.org but be sure to validate your feed at http://feedvalidator.org/ . If your feed errors here, just hit validate a second time and it will usually work. Then copy what is in the window as your corrected feed address which will have special charactors in it.

3) In a simple text editor (I used Wordpad), enter the title you want for that section and then paste the code you get under the title. Repeat for as many labels as you want listed. DO NOT do this in the Blogger editor - every time you save it, many characters are added to the code. Be sure to save your document from the word processor.

4) Now go to your blogger account and create a new page. I titled mine the creative name of "Recipe Index".

5) Now go back to your text editor and copy your newly created code. Go to the new page in blogger and in the HTML editor, paste your code. You can go to the "Compose" tab and add more text and change the formatting on your sections.

That is it. It will keep those labels updated when ever you publish. No manual labor. This is what I call great blogging.

I hope this helps some of you become a "cool kid" too.

Regard
DrDan

PS I would think this would work on Wordpress and other platforms but don't know.

Limitation: It appears that only about 25 posts will appear in any one feed. So I had to break up large categories into smaller labels. I split chicken into split breast, whole, drumsticks and skinless boneless etc.
This is now resolved. Read the comments below. Special thanks to Bong Mom.

Two updates for Oct 15 2012 
First, the you click the quote marks on the HTML edit page and insert all you HTML between the blockedit tags that are generated, all the stuff about blogger screwing with your code will disappear and you can edit within the blogger editor as long as you stay inside the tags.

Second, my issue with an apparent limit of 25 posts is now resolved. Special thanks to Bong Mom. See the comments below. It is a combination of a modification of the feed address and using a different RSS to Java converter. Doesn't work.... See update at Blog Within A Blog 

Updated

March 31 2013

DrDan