My Site Build It Journey

Pumpkin Flan

I have added a couple of new recipes to my website at cooking Mexican recipes, in fact I added a yummy new catagory - desserts.

So if a flan recipe is of interest to you, I'll show you how easy it is to make it with a delicious caramel topping.

I've also have recipes for pumpkin flan and coffee flan. The coffee flan has Kahlua in it so it is perfect for an after dinner dessert. I'm sure you can guess what the pumpkin flan has in it.

Within the next 3 days I will be including dessert recipes for my top 3 best desserts- peanut butter balls, toffee, and good old chocolate chip cookies. So check back for my upcoming desserts, they are pretty good.

Success to you,
Robin

I got another healthy recipe for you. This one is a Mexican salad recipe that I fondly call tostada compuesta. You won't find a tostada in restaurants like this one. We used to serve this one in our restaurant and it was a hit.

Check out this Mexican salad recipe and find out the secret ingredient that makes it so special.

If you are a meat and potatoe kind of person then you might be interested in my chile verde recipe. You'll love the tender chunks of pork that have simmered in Mexican spices.



Stay tuned as I will be adding some dessert recipes soon.

Success to you,
Robin

Well I've added a new recipe and it's one of my very favorites. And yes it contains nothing except vegetables. If you have never tasted roasted vegetables you are in for a treat. Check out this roasted vegetable recipe. These are the best tasting vegetables you will ever eat. You can even pick your favorites like broccoli, asparagus, carrots, onions or even sweet potatoes.

Start eating healthy and enjoy it too.

Success to you,
Robin

Strawberry crepe - Mexican style

So how does this picture look? It is the second one posted on my site at www.cooking-Mexican-recipes.com If this picture looks like something you want to eat, you can get the recipe there.

I do think the picture adds visual interest to my website. Now I want pictures on every page.

I used a Canon Digital Rebel for this picture. I am a definite novice photographer but I do know that lighting is key. I don't have any special lighting and just used natural light for this picture. I set up a card table in my backyard with a nice light colored tablecloth.

When you use an approach like I did, you have to play with the sun a bit. I chose to get my dish ready around 2:30 pm when the sun was lower in the sky and not directly over head. This makes for softer light and doesn't wash out the picture. We had clouds the day I took this picture so the sun was hiding off and on. The pictures were better when the sun was out.

Take a lot of pictures. With digital you have the luxury of taking all you want, basically for free so shoot away. I took about 25 on this one plate and it was a good thing I did. Only 3 or 4 had good lighting.

With Site Build It it was super easy to add my picture. I was pleasantly surprised. I just uploaded my picture using the graphic library first. Then when I went to the page to add the picture, I added it where I wanted it with a graphic block. I was able to choose whether I wanted it centered, left, or right on the page. I also had the option of whether I wanted the picture to be a link. I chose no link. And that was it. I previewed it and built it. Couldn't be easier.

I kept my picture size around 20KB and the width was 281px by 300px for height. This size seems to load relatively fast.

Optimize a Picture With Photoshop

I use Photoshop to resize my pictures. Unfortunately I don't know how to do much else with that program. In Photoshop I click file> open. Click on the photo I want and click open. With the picture now open I can resize it. Click on image > then scroll down to image size. The image size window opens up. Where it says width I change the numbers to 300. The height changes automatically to keep the picture proportunate. Click ok. Now the picture is smaller. I like to maximize the picture so I can see how big it will look. So click the mazimize button or square at the top of the picture.

Go to the navigator window on the right side of the screen and click on the little triangle that says zoom in when you hover your mouse over it. As you click this triangle you will see the size of your picture increase. Take it up to 100%. This is how your picture will look in size.

Now go to the top of the screen and click file > save for web. On the save for web window click 2-up near the top of the page. You will see two pictures on the page. One is the original and the one on the right is the one you are optimizing for your webpage. On the right side of the screen, make sure you click JPEG. I've heard pictures are better in JPEG in terms of colors. JPEG supports 16 million colors. Where GIF only supports 256 colors.

Keep in mind though that JPEGs lose detail when compressed so always save the original photo and work from it if you need more than one size. You don't want to resize a picture and then reasize that one again. You lose picture quality.

Click on the quality button and a little slide bar pops up. This controls the quality of the picture based on size of file. Slide it and let go to see the changes at the bottom of the picture on the right side. I adjust the quality so that the size of the picture is around 20K. The smaller you pick the faster the picture will load.

Click save and the save as optimized window pops up. I add a letter or number to the picture name that's highlighted at the bottom so that I know my picture is optimized for the web and is different than the original picture. Remember you want to save the original as it is.

After you change the name a bit click save. Now you are back to the main window with your picture displayed. Click the x to close the picture. A window will pop up asking you if you want to save changes to what ever the name of your picture is. It is asking about the original picture. Say NO. This is important. This saves your original picture.

And that's how you optimize a picture in photoshop.

I added one more picture to my website for guacamole dip.
You can see how it turned out here and get the recipe if you like.

Success to you,
Robin

It's amazing! I got listed in the Zeal.com directory yesterday, the day after I submitted my site. I was very happy about this. What I don't know is how long it will take to notice say at Alexa that I have a new incoming link.

I went snooping around Alexa.com at another Mexican recipe site to check out their incoming links and found another directory for me to submit to. Since my site is a recipe site about Mexican recipes I needed to find a directory closely related to that.

I found the Latin America Network Information Center (LANIC). I submitted my site there which only took the time to type in a small amount of information and that was it. Now I will just have to wait and see on that one. I'm hoping it will be as quick as Zeal.com.

Success to you,
Robin

I feel it's time to try and get listed into a free directory for my website. I have 20+ pages, so that should be enough to start this process. Incoming links help you in search engine rankings. Site Build It provides many ideas and tips on how to do this in the action guide.

If you would like to get the action guide that SBIer's use to build their sites, you can download the action guide here for FREE. Check it out and see for yourself what's involved before you commit.

So I went to Zeal.com today to see how it all works. First they make you take a quiz. The quiz really just makes you learn all of their requirements for submitting a site.

You learn what they want for a title and description for when you have to write your own.

I flunked the test the first time but passed great the second time. I want to point out that Zeal.com is a pretty neat directory and if you want to get in, your site must look like a hobby site and not one only out to sell.

After passing the test, I had to decide which catagory my site should be in. After figuring that out by looking at the catagories, I clicked on the link to submit a site, added my url, title and description (which I now know how to write correctly with all my practice) and submitted it.

I also found out I can submit my site to more than one catagory. The more exposure the better I'm sure. I'll do that in a little later.

Now I just have to wait and see if they will accept me. Could take a couple of weeks to a couple of months. I'll just have to go back to what the action guide says: keep building more content.

I will update on how it goes.

Sucess to you,
Robin