Dinner, then Dessert Has a New Look!

If you’re reading this page you probably got here on purpose so you didn’t hop over on a Pinterest pin. This means you’ve also probably seen the site before this morning when the whole new theme went live. If so, I seriously love you for being a loyal reader and also, EEEEEEEKKKKK!!! Do you love the new look? I certainly hope you all do.

The new look has been a LONG time in the making. I joined an email list to hear about when a wait list would OPEN in November 2015 and here we are going live in June 2017! We’ve been actively working on the new design of the site since the beginning of March and I’m just so thrilled to finally get to share it with you all!

Dinner, then Dessert has been a site I’ve owned for almost ten years. For most of that time it served as my business website for my services as a private chef. At the end of April 2015 I began this blog as a way to replace my job while staying home with my kids. Today the blog has done that and more and I couldn’t be prouder to share this experience with you all.

So, honestly, thank you from the bottom of my heart for sticking around with me, reading these recipes, making the recipes, having fantastic Pinterest fails with my recipes (these were seriously hilarious) and all the amazing feedback you all give me. I really thought I would miss cheffing more than I have because I didn’t expect this experience to be as amazing as it has been.

So without further ado let’s take a quick tour around the new site!

RECIPE INDEX

If you look above this post you’ll see a toolbar says: 

This will be your fancy schmancy new way of getting around the site. One of my biggest frustrations with the old site was how hard it was to navigate around to other recipes you guys would love. The indexes and categories have been completely redesigned so you can browse around the site with ease and you can see more than five results per page (seriously, it used to drive me nuts!).

There are indexes for categories or ingredients! Yes (give me a few weeks to get all the recipes converted over, there are almost 500 of them), you can actually click on an ingredient and you’ll find yourself on a results page with all the recipes that include that ingredient. Have a lonely zucchini you don’t know how to use? You can click on “zucchini” in the new index and see all recipes that include zucchini in them!

By all means, please go play with those indexes and if you’re like me (you’re probably not because it probably bothered me way more than anyone else) you may actually squeal you’ll be so happy with how much more fun it is to browse on the site now!

SHOPPING & RECOMMENDATIONS

On the recipe pages themselves you’ve probably gotten used to the fact that I talk about relevant ingredients and products just above the recipe in a small paragraph. You can now see relevant items I’ve tagged under the card in pictures too!

Speaking of which there is also a SHOP page! All of my favorite things in one central location so you won’t have to click around from post to post finding all the different tools I’ve mentioned. <– Seriously sorry about that, I totally listened to all your emails about wanting them all in one place so it was one of the first things I asked my designer for.

Aside from the facelift you can now easily see my most popular posts on the sidebar, you can see my Instagram Feed on the bottom of the page (hey, go follow me on Instagram if you don’t already).

If anything seems out of place, please please please let me know, I am hoping to get this new site running like a well oiled machine in the next couple of weeks, so any help you guys can give me if you see anything funny looking would be awesome!

Also, I would just pretty much LOVE to know what you think of the new site, so please tell me in the comments!

COMMENTS

I heard from you all that it was hard to decipher when I was answering questions/comments when the messages got so long, so I’ve had my username coded to be a light green background so you can easily see when I’ve replied to a comment. Hopefully this will cut down on time you spend looking through the comments for an answer.

THINGS THAT HAVEN’T CHANGED

• If you were signed up for my mailing list you still are, so no need to re-subscribe.
• If you pinned recipes to your Pinterest account, it all still works, the links are the same.
• Recipes themselves did not change, pictures are still there and my wordy posts are all still the same.

I hope you all enjoy using the new site, if you have any questions I’m totally here to answer them!