Recipezaar.com is an online community for people with an interest in cooking. It features a collection of recipes and a host of other features, including cookbooks, recipe reviews, a community forum and personal pages and email. The site was launched in December 1999 by two former Microsoft employees in Seattle. It originally was named Cookpoint.com. The company first turned a profit in 2002, and today has over 2 million users and hundreds of thousands of recipes. Scripps Networks bought Recipezaar in 2007 for a reported $25 million. Scripps Networks is the company behind HGTV and Food Network. The name of Recipezaar was changed to Food.com in July 2010. Recipezaar offers more features than Cooks.com and Allrecipes.com, but a premium membership is required to access most of the extra features. What really sets Recipezaar apart is the large and active user community, organized around user reviews of recipes, user cookbooks and menus, and community forums. Users can also create and share cookbooks, so Recipezaar contains one of the largest collections of cookbooks in existence. There is also a section for user-generated menus for complete meals. The “print recipe” function really stands out, bringing up a printer-friendly page that is formatted like a page out of a cookbook. Cooks.com lacks the cookbook and menu features of Recipezaar, while Allrecipes.com offers some of the same features for free that require a premium membership at Recipezaar. Overall the site is quite well organized and user friendly. The basic (free) membership is ad-supported, but the site still has a clean overall look. Navigation is easy as the main sections are well labeled. The site is quick and responsive and searches come back with results almost immediately. There are convenient sections for recipes, cookbooks, menus and the community forums. Searches can be based on recipes, ingredients or cookbooks, and browsing can be done by course, ingredient, cuisine, diet, occasion or preparation. Registration is not mandatory, but is required to review recipes or participate in the user forums. The registration process for a free membership simply asks for the user’s email address, which becomes the login name. No other information is asked for. An activation email is sent to the user’s email address and must be confirmed. Premium membership requires a Mastercard, Visa or American Express credit or debit card and a billing address must be furnished. A basic membership is free, and includes the ability to rate and review recipes, share recipes, save favorite recipes in a personal cookbook, participate in the community forums, and print recipes and shopping lists. Basic membership is also ad-supported, but the advertising is relatively unobtrusive. Premium membership costs $24.95 per year and includes a host of extra features, including the ability for users to organize and share custom cookbooks, plan their own menus online, host photos of their own cooked recipes, and message and email other Recipezaar users. In addition, there are no advertisements displayed for premium members. Recipezaar is recommended for most anyone with an interest in planning and cooking meals. The active user community is quick to give help and advice in the forums, and the organization by recipe, cookbook and menus makes finding the right meal a snap. The basic free membership is useable, but premium membership is really necessary for users wishing to make the most use of the site. Beginners should have no trouble using the site, as no advanced computer knowledge is required.

• Recipe reviews – User-written reviews of the recipes others have posted
• Hundreds of thousands of recipes organized in a number of different ways
• Menus – Thousands of complete menus for any occasion. Premium members can save and share their own custom menus
• Cookbooks – Thousands of user-contributed cookbooks organized around many different topics. Premium members can save and share their own custom cookbooks
• Convenient “My Page” to store recipes, cookbooks, menus and access email and instant messages from other members
• Formatted printing of recipes – printouts look like recipe book pages

http://www.recipezaar.com/