So we're happy to announce that we're opening Forkd for public registrations! If you've not yet signed up, please do, or if you know of someone who might like it, let them know. And if you have a blog, spread the word!
To all our chefs: thanks for the great recipes and all your suggestions so far! Please keep them coming. Meanwhile, we're still beavering away in the kitchen making Forkd even better.
]]>Well, those are the main changes. There have been many other smaller changes and bug fixes behind the scenes too. As always, please let us know what you think via the contact form.
]]>Thanks to all you forkers out there (over 100 of you now) we have over 120 original recipes to date. Why not stick your fork in and try some? You could even change the recipe and see what everyone thinks of your improvements.
Don't forget you can invite people to join in too. (And if no-one's invited you yet, just ask us.)
]]>Add a Comment: Ratings not enough? You can now also add comments. Tell the chef what you thought. If it is a suggestion on how to improve the recipe though, why not fork it and change it, and see if your recipe gets a higher rating that the original. (See http://forkd.com/help/#fork for more info.)
Add Contacts: Found someone on Forkd who likes the same things you do? Add them as a contact so you can keep up with their latest recipes. You can also mark people as friends or family to give them access to private recipes.
Invite a Friend: Know someone with lots of recipes? You can invite as many people as you wish, so spread the word!
Remix recipes
Save your favourite recipes forever. Share them with the world. Add photos. Remix recipes. Make friends.
Forkd is a recipe site with strong community features. At its simplest it lets people easily find recipes, and create a searchable online recipe book for themselves. But it will also foster relationships with other users, allowing people to share their recipes, ideas and enthusiasm. It is designed to tap into the universal desire to build up an online reputation, and support rather than replace any existing investment into your online reputation. Its unique "forking" model makes visible a recipe's evolution and patterns of influence.
]]> How and why do people store recipes?Many ways and reasons. Some people create recipes and write them down. They're a minority, but there are still many of them. The majority of people simply find recipes in various places (magazines, friends, etc.) and cut them out or write them down and file them. But most people will customise those recipes when they make them, and usually try to remember/save their customisations. They also have a big problem finding their recipes later -- where in the house? which file/book? where in the book?
Forkd helps with all the above scenarios.
Photos play a key role in Forkd, tying in with the massive growth of digital photography. It leverages Flickr, a phenomenally popular photo sharing site owned by Yahoo!, whose API is designed to make it easy to "mash up" its content with other web services. This intimate relationship between the two sites also prevents them from competing for users' loyalty, diluting the user's online presence and reputation and duplicating their effort: rather, they support each other.
However, Forkd doesn't require Flickr, as we allow users to upload as many photos to the site as they wish, directly.
Rather than a traditional hierarchical classification system based on a predefined taxonomy, Forkd (like Flickr) uses "tags" to organise recipes for re-findability. These could be ingredients ("carrot"), types ("starter"), cuisine ("asian"), or words with entirely personal meanings ("grandma", "summerparty06"). This makes it much easier for contributors, allowing them to classify things the way that makes sense to them -- hence the moniker, "folksonomy". When browsing recipes, it also promotes serindipity, making the site more fun.
Clicking on a tag will bring up recipes using that tag or synonyms, as well as related tags, as well as (coming soon) a Wikipedia-powered definition. Tags can easily be combined (say, the entire contents of your fridge), or if you prefer you could simply do a search.
Tags can be entered using an AJAX-based text field, or the "tag brush" tool makes it quick to add tags that appear in the recipe. Simply turn it on and double-click or drag-select the words you wish to turn into tags.
Forkd is designed to be as easy and enjoyable to use as possible. For most simple interactions with the page (e.g. adding or re-ordering photos), we use AJAX methods to make it feel as close as possible to a desktop application, with dynamic dialog boxes, drag and drop, and no screen refreshes.
A 'Fork' is (at first) analogous to a 'Favourite' (e.g. Flickr's 'Fave'). But there's a key difference. On a photo site, if you like someone else's photo, it's OK to simply save a link to it, which is what a Fave does. On the other hand, if you cut out, photocopy or write down someone else's recipe, it becomes yours. It should never matter if the original is ever deleted. It's yours to customise, and describe, and photograph, and for others to copy from you, from then on.
When you Fork someone's recipe, you copy it. It's like you've stuck a fork in it. It's yours whether you customise it or not. But critically, the original author is justly rewarded, in community terms. The "family tree" of a recipe is always available. A recipe would clearly show "Forked from..." -- showing the avatar of the immediate parent and links to all previous -- and "Forked by..." These become lines that trace influence and reputation, lines that can be navigated. For this reason, recipes are published by default under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike license. (Other licenses, including All Rights Reserved, will also be available.)
So when I Fork a recipe, I could simply be saving it. But it could also become "my version". A vegetarian version, say, or a less spicy version, and so on. Cumulatively, additional value builds up around a recipe, so you can easily find variations, and other people's photos of the same dish.
As a happy coincidence, "Forking" also means something very similar in geekdom. (The analogy referring to a fork in the road.)
These features are pretty standard within community sites and photography sites.