Food Blog Resources

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Here’s a list of blogging resources to help you get started building your own blog. My recommendations for equipment, host, themes and more.

Just to note: some of these links are affiliate links but I use and/or recommend everything listed.

Equipment

Canon EOS 60D – I finally upgraded my camera in November 2014 from the Canon Rebel. I have thoroughly enjoyed using this camera and it’s able to take HD video which is a huge plus for me lately as I making lots of food videos as of late. I love the features of this camera and would highly recommend for anyone making the jump to a DSLR. This won’t break the bank and it’s a good in between from the basic to the pro.

Canon 50mm f/1.8 – After using the stock lens that comes with the Rebel XT for almost a year, I finally upgraded to this lens. It’s definitely not the best lens you can buy but for the price tag, it sure can’t be beat! I used this lens faithfully for about a year before upgrading and for this money, you can’t get a better lens.

Canon 24-70 mm 2.8 – I saved up for a long time for this lens. So it’s definitely not budget friendly. But it is so versatile and my go-to when I need to travel with my camera. Great for food as well as everything else you want to photograph. I love that it can go from my food photography to taking pictures of my kids to landscape photos. It’s such a well-built lens. And I don’t regret purchasing this at all. Money well spent since I enjoy photography so much.

Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 macro – This lens is amazing! It’s perfect for close-up shots of food. The detail and clarity are excellent.And that’s all this lens is really good for is close up shots. Think wedding rings, food, and bugs. This is where I decided to save a bit of cash and I chose not to get the Image Stabilization which is perfectly fine since I almost always use a tripod for my food photography. But if you don’t you may want to go with the IS version.

Manfrotto Tripod –I’ve used tripods almost since the beginning of my photography journey but once I noticed the remarkable difference in sharpness and clarity I decided to use it on a regular basis. This tripod stands the test of time. It holds my heavy camera and lens easily and does a great job. My previous tripod was great when I was just shooting with the 50mm but this heavier lens needed a little more strength behind it. Love my tripod!

Western Digital External Hard Drive – It’s amazing how much space photographs and HD video take up on a computer. I don’t know what I would do without my external hard drive(s) This is definitely a key piece of equipment to store all your photos.

Setting up your Site

Genesis Is the best framework for your site in my opinion. You can use as-is or add a “child theme” to it (I use their Metro Theme). Genesis is cleanly-coded and you can customize fairly easily.

WordPress.org is the self-hosted platform of WordPress, meaning that I pay to have it hosted somewhere as opposed to having WordPress host it for me (WordPress.com). You’ll get the most control with self-hosting your blog.

If you’re just starting out I highly recommend the following 2 options for creating a simple look that doesn’t cost much at all!

Restored 316 Designs – This site offers a great variety of feminine themes. They can be customized to match the colors and scheme you are going with. It’s easy to install and then just add your own content.

Pretty Darn Cute – This site offers a wonderful array of pretty themes. As with the previous, they can be customized to match. They offer videos to walk you through the process. And you can even score a few of these for less than $50!

Bluehost – I started out using BlueHost for the first two years of blogging. They offer an easy way to get up and running with your blog on WordPress.

BigScoots – My current host is BlueScoots and I highly recommend them. With decent pricing and wonderful chat support, I’m sure you will find them to be a wonderful resource for your host provider. Plans start at just $35 a month and they have a great array to meet your hosting needs.

Vaultpress – I use Vaultpress to backup Gather for Bread. There’s 4 years worth of content on the blog now and I would never want to lose all that I’ve worked so hard on creating.

For Food Bloggers

Food Blogger Pro – Food Blogger Pro is a great online space for individuals that want to learn how to start or grow a food blog. Check here because sometimes they offer coupons to new members. Great way to try it out! There are two primary parts of the site, the video training, and the community forum. The videos give easy-to-understand tutorials for getting started with your food blog and step-by-step instructions for how to do things like install advertising code, create a branded email address, or use the manual settings on your DSLR camera. A community forum is a place where you can go to get questions answered by other food bloggers.

Tasty Food Photography Ebook – Pinch of Yum is a site that has helped me on this journey since the beginning. This is one of the very first resources that I purchased to help with my food photography. Lindsay is amazing at showing you how to take photos with natural light and how ISO, many others aspects come together to take a food photo.

Making Things Easier

Mailchimp – Mailchimp is the email marketing software that I used for the first few years. It’s fairly easy to navigate and use. I love the RSS Driven campaign feature that created automatic emails of my posts to send to my subscribers. So helpful. I used MailChimp until I found out about my current email marketing tool, Convertkit. MailChimp is great when you are getting started but now that I want to target my specific audiences I’ve moved on.

ConvertKit – Convertkit is an email marketing tool.

Tailwind – I don’t know what I would do without Tailwind. This app allows me to post to Pinterest at regular intervals throughout the week. A key part of success on Pinterest is pinning on a regular basis. Tailwind allows you to do this by setting up a pin schedule that will post automatically for you. So if you want to pin 30 pins per day to various boards, you can do it all in one sitting for one hour for the entire week. Saves time and the frustration of forgetting to pin. A great resource that I’ve been using for almost 2 years.

Editing and Graphics

Adobe Creative Suite: My food photography has come a long way since I first started. And I have to give many thanks to the Adobe Programs. I use the both Adobe Creative Suite applications Photoshop and Lightroom for my photos. I’ve also just started using Illustrator. I’m having fun with it! And now thanks to all the rage with Video, I’m also using Premiere Pro to edit my videos. So this suite of products is so valuable to me. I don’t know where I’d be without it!

If you don’t want to learn Adobe programs right now, you can try one of these:

Canva: I use Canva regularly to make the graphics for Pinterest or my round up posts. It’s a great tool that’s doesn’t cost much. They offer custom fonts now and it’s super easy to make your own awesome-looking graphics for blog and social media posts. You can use the free version or Canva Work, which is the one I use.

Creative Market: I love Creative Market! This is where I go to purchase fonts, graphics, icons, textures, and Photoshop and more. Plus, check out their weekly freebies. I can’t tell you how many great things I’ve gotten there for free. I use this website regularly when I creat printables for you guy.

WordPress Plugins

Akismet – Spam stinks! No doubt about it. Want to rid yourself of the annoying comments that are left on your site? This plugin is great at catching them and holding them for moderation until you can review.

Yoast SEO – Optimizing your posts for search engines is a must if you want people to find your content in searches. Yoast SEO is one of the top plugins for this helping you make sure you have good SEO practices in place with each blog post.

WP Recipe Maker – This is what I use for the recipe section of my posts so that the recipe is styled and formatted as you see it and, more importantly, for search engines to “read” it as a recipe and therefore index it appropriately so people can find your content when searching. I’ve used a bunch of recipe plugins in the past and while it stinks to have to rely on a third party for something so integral to a food blog, this is the best one I’ve found to date.

Til we meet and eat again,

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FOLLOW ALONG: Gather for Bread