la.foodblogging

It must be a sickness. After updating the look of la.foodblogging, I have been working on an update to the Digesty family of sites.

Here is a preview look at the new design:

Digesty Los Angeles

I worked hard to accomplish some very basic goals with this design. I wanted to focus on a few features.

• The latest posts from all blogs are now listed on the top left of the page, I estimate that this is the number one reason that people come to Digesty, so I made it the first thing they see.
• The main section of the page is now more compact. Instead of listing a number of headlines, I know just show the latest headline from each site, and then allow the reader to mouse over the dates for earlier posts to see the headlines pop up.
• I added search back to the page. This is a customized search that will only look at sites listed on Digesty. I used to have it on the pages and it was used fairly often.
• Added a list of random posts under the most recent posts on the left. The theory here is that many foodblog posts are relatively timeless. A review that is useful this week will also be useful six months from now, and the random stream will help highlight posts.

There are more features to come, including:

• The ability to receive a list of new topical foodblog posts via email. Digesty is meant to make it easier to find new content, this will make it even easier for people so that you don’t have to come to the page
• Adding more sites, please let me know if you have any local foodblogs that you would like to see added.
• An updated user submission method. I am working to make it easier for people to add individual posts to the stream
• Site wide, I am adding more topics, including the return of Wine and the addition of topics like Coffee and Molecular Gastronomy

Digesty LA test site

My request of you is to take the site for a test drive, let me know what you don’t like or what isn’t working. I appreciate any constructive criticism you can muster. Email to Digesty [at] gmail.

By Jonah (see more of his posts). Jonah is the founder of la.foodblogging and also created Digesty, a food blog aggregator and Cheww.com, a spam free foodblog search engine.