All recipes

Allrecipes is a community oriented culinary portal which claims to be the world’s largest social network for home cooks and provides innovative meal ideas for both special events and every day meal. The information bank of the site has every thing from ‘directions to proceed with recipes’ to ‘sizes of the advertisements’ and has over forty thousand free recipes. It enables sharing, downloading of recipes, photos and ideas for food. Also, one can search for top culinary schools by clicking on the option provided on home page. It also houses a planner divulging ideas on how one can make an occasion really memorable. Recipes have been presented with a lot of information like rating, preparation time, cook time and reviews. One can subscribe to a number of newsletters which communicate to the user a plethora of things like dinner ideas for families, advices for better cooking, site improvements, special offers, coupons and lots more. The website also has localized versions tailored for various countries which content customized to those regions. This Seattle based website came to life on 28 July 1997. It is presided over by Lisa Sharples. It provides thousands of recipes and inspires millions of visitors every month. With the strong features, it has built a base of millions of clients. However, this did not come spontaneously, rather has been a gradual process that started with cookierecipes.com. As it spread with the internet, it covered every type of food and came up as ‘Allrecipes.com’. It is a part of Reader’s Digest Association Inc. The elaborate range of information stuffed in the pages of this website is surely its plus point. However, this has its own flip side. The problem experienced with such applications is that nearly anywhere a user clicks; it is likely that she gets to yet another place which is brimming with data. When one needs to handle so much, it might get troublesome for uninitiated visitor. It distinguishes itself from others by displaying recipes accustomed to specific holidays and events. These keep changing throughout the year, as do the occurrences. On the whole, in addition to the info-bank, it provides tools to manage it. That makes the task pretty simple. Various shades of red, yellow, green and blue have been used on a white background. The very multi-colored webpage appears good to eyes but the overdose of information makes one take a while to figure out the things. The boxes have been put in a standard manner, so it does not have much to offer to the user in the form of structuring. However, the left side of the home page has various sections that help in managing one’s Recipe Box that is created with time as one gets into the application usage. The home page itself has a lot to give, ranging from recipes to tips to membership to popular collections. Logo has a small animated creature with clouds and bright sun behind it. This does not appear to be very connected with the purpose the site. Advertisements do exist in the form of textual and graphical adverts but the site does avoid pop-ups. The process is easy and does not consume a great amount of time. During the process the user is asked for the preference of the newsletters. User can click in the box if one wishes to subscribe to any of them. No confirmation mail is sent to check the email address provided by the new user. Further one does not need to give any credit card details. All services offered by site are free of charge and it is unlikely to charge anything from users in near future. Contextual advertisements present on the web pages are expected as the major revenue source. Allrecipes can be of immense help to people who engage in cooking or are interested in a healthy lifestyle. Also, ones who are looking for some culinary schools can try it.