Looking for self hosted recipe-page (or an editable long document)
March 13, 2022 4:54 AM Subscribe
I've been using one long docuwiki page for years to log the recipes I love or want to make in the future. Recently I keep getting "Internal Server Errors" - and the volatility of Docuwiki becomes frustrating. So I'm looking for a better solution.
Or other suggestions of how people log their recipes without being dependent on an external platform that might be bought up by competitors.
How it works at the moment:
When I am inspired:
- I copy a recipe from a site, or get one from a friend
- Go to my docuwiki site, hit the edit button, and paste the recipe with a link (without logging in actually)
- After update the recipe is added to my long list of recipes
- And it updates a table of contents
When I am in a supermarket or less inspired, or try to remember a recipe
- I scroll through the table of contents, or do a text search for "sweet potato" - often on my phone in the supermarket
- Scroll to my recipe.
What I like
- it is free (self hosted), and I am not dependent on a platform
- it is lean & can easily be accessed on my phone
- it is accessible without password
- it is editable without a password (though this is not required)
- it is text based. I don't need pictures
What I've thought of:
- Google Docs (though I don't want to be dependent on Google)
- Notion (I just tried to copy my content into this, and it crashed the site)
And I'm out of thoughts.
any suggestions are welcome
[I'll add my site in the profile - unfortunately I can't edit it at the moment to select my favorites]
How it works at the moment:
When I am inspired:
- I copy a recipe from a site, or get one from a friend
- Go to my docuwiki site, hit the edit button, and paste the recipe with a link (without logging in actually)
- After update the recipe is added to my long list of recipes
- And it updates a table of contents
When I am in a supermarket or less inspired, or try to remember a recipe
- I scroll through the table of contents, or do a text search for "sweet potato" - often on my phone in the supermarket
- Scroll to my recipe.
What I like
- it is free (self hosted), and I am not dependent on a platform
- it is lean & can easily be accessed on my phone
- it is accessible without password
- it is editable without a password (though this is not required)
- it is text based. I don't need pictures
What I've thought of:
- Google Docs (though I don't want to be dependent on Google)
- Notion (I just tried to copy my content into this, and it crashed the site)
And I'm out of thoughts.
any suggestions are welcome
[I'll add my site in the profile - unfortunately I can't edit it at the moment to select my favorites]
I save online recipes to PDF and save them to a Dropbox folder. I choose cloud hosting for the simplicity, but obviously you could put the folder anywhere.
posted by COD at 6:30 AM on March 13, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by COD at 6:30 AM on March 13, 2022 [2 favorites]
I stumbled on Mealie the other day; it looks good.
posted by Hardcore Poser at 6:37 AM on March 13, 2022 [2 favorites]
Mealie is a self hosted recipe manager and meal planner with a RestAPI backend and a reactive frontend application built in Vue for a pleasant user experience for the whole family. Easily add recipes into your database by providing the url and Mealie will automatically import the relevant data or add a family recipe with the UI editor. Mealie also provides an API for interactions from 3rd party applications.In beta, so expect some hiccups. The message boards are active though, which is a good sign.
posted by Hardcore Poser at 6:37 AM on March 13, 2022 [2 favorites]
Evernote is a possibility as it can be accessed over the web, through PC app, or mobile app. The free tier is perfectly fine for most people.
If you put it in the cloud, you have to entrust it to someone, whether it's Microsoft, Google, or anyone else.
I suppose you can create a GitHub account and put it in there, but you know who owns Github, right? (Pssst, it's Microsoft!)
posted by kschang at 6:49 AM on March 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
If you put it in the cloud, you have to entrust it to someone, whether it's Microsoft, Google, or anyone else.
I suppose you can create a GitHub account and put it in there, but you know who owns Github, right? (Pssst, it's Microsoft!)
posted by kschang at 6:49 AM on March 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
If it is just a text file, I'd keep it as a note in my phone, synced with a few other cloud services as a backup. If the file is too big, you can split it up and most note taking apps will still search across all of the files.
posted by soelo at 9:30 AM on March 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by soelo at 9:30 AM on March 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
Your mileage may vary on this.
While I'd *like* to do something else fancy that allows things like resizing of a recipe, in all reality, I don't have the time. So at this point, recipes almost always end up as a pdf, and saved in a folder. (Printing to PDF is fast and easy.) Sometimes, they're just jpgs, if I took a picture somewhere - or was emailed or messaged one. I even have a few that are text files, or word documents. There's even a couple fancy spreadsheet ones with many recipes that someone else made. The main thing is, they're saved, and I can find them and print them with ease if I want to.
However, I discovered something REALLY COOL. At one point, I was trying to put them all in Evernote. (Which reminds me, I still need to copy those out of Evernote.) But I moved the folder that I was storing them on my computer into my Google Drive. That let me have them on my computer, AND back them up in the cloud if my computer died. Plus, it's relatively easy to copy them to a USB or memory card for backup.
One day, I was searching in the Google Drive searchbar for a recipe by an ingredient that I thought was in the name for it. Well, my search gave me the correct recipe as a result, but it ALSO gave me all the recipes that included that ingredient. It didn't matter what sort of filetype they were in. It showed me text files, PDF files, and even (this was the coolest part!) a JPG!
And it works on both my desktop and my phone.
I had no idea prior to that discovery that Google Drive turned JPGs of HANDWRITTEN pages into text it could search... but it does. And I was absolutely sold on that being my solution for now. I don't expect Google to go away anytime soon, and I use my drive enough that I pay a small amount for extra storage.***
So... there's my solution. On my desktop, it's easier to use the Everything app (free) to search for particular recipes than to go to the Drive search, which is the same thing I'd use to search USB drives/memory cards. But I use the Drive search if I'm on my phone, whether at the store or in the kitchen.
Another thought - having it in one long file would make me utterly crazy. I like being able to dump my recipes into folders, if and when I feel like sorting them, so I can browse through them by type of recipe when I'm in the mood. But the quality search means I don't have to when I don't want to.
***I'm terrified of fire - and have always lived in a wildfire-prone area. I need that online backup for other things, so my recipes might as well be there, too. If that devastation ever were to happen again, the more things I could retrieve, the more likely I would stay sane.
posted by stormyteal at 10:31 AM on March 13, 2022 [3 favorites]
While I'd *like* to do something else fancy that allows things like resizing of a recipe, in all reality, I don't have the time. So at this point, recipes almost always end up as a pdf, and saved in a folder. (Printing to PDF is fast and easy.) Sometimes, they're just jpgs, if I took a picture somewhere - or was emailed or messaged one. I even have a few that are text files, or word documents. There's even a couple fancy spreadsheet ones with many recipes that someone else made. The main thing is, they're saved, and I can find them and print them with ease if I want to.
However, I discovered something REALLY COOL. At one point, I was trying to put them all in Evernote. (Which reminds me, I still need to copy those out of Evernote.) But I moved the folder that I was storing them on my computer into my Google Drive. That let me have them on my computer, AND back them up in the cloud if my computer died. Plus, it's relatively easy to copy them to a USB or memory card for backup.
One day, I was searching in the Google Drive searchbar for a recipe by an ingredient that I thought was in the name for it. Well, my search gave me the correct recipe as a result, but it ALSO gave me all the recipes that included that ingredient. It didn't matter what sort of filetype they were in. It showed me text files, PDF files, and even (this was the coolest part!) a JPG!
And it works on both my desktop and my phone.
I had no idea prior to that discovery that Google Drive turned JPGs of HANDWRITTEN pages into text it could search... but it does. And I was absolutely sold on that being my solution for now. I don't expect Google to go away anytime soon, and I use my drive enough that I pay a small amount for extra storage.***
So... there's my solution. On my desktop, it's easier to use the Everything app (free) to search for particular recipes than to go to the Drive search, which is the same thing I'd use to search USB drives/memory cards. But I use the Drive search if I'm on my phone, whether at the store or in the kitchen.
Another thought - having it in one long file would make me utterly crazy. I like being able to dump my recipes into folders, if and when I feel like sorting them, so I can browse through them by type of recipe when I'm in the mood. But the quality search means I don't have to when I don't want to.
***I'm terrified of fire - and have always lived in a wildfire-prone area. I need that online backup for other things, so my recipes might as well be there, too. If that devastation ever were to happen again, the more things I could retrieve, the more likely I would stay sane.
posted by stormyteal at 10:31 AM on March 13, 2022 [3 favorites]
I use Recipe Keeper (which I got from an Ask here a while ago) and I love it. I don’t think is is self-hosted, but it’s no more cloud-based than some of the other suggestions here. Most features and some limited number of recipes is free; syncing across devices and unlimited recipes cost a one-time payment of I think around $8 or 10 for iOS, which covers iphone and ipad. I believe you do have to pay for the app separately for other platforms. You can export as a PDF “cookbook” (I haven’t done this but it looks straightforward) which would at least provide a backup that could be saved somewhere self-hosted.
posted by 2 cats in the yard at 11:43 AM on March 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by 2 cats in the yard at 11:43 AM on March 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Thanks for all the great answers! I discovered Mealie and also had no idea that Google Drive would make even JPGs searchable.
But flabdabet actually inspired me to add a line about memory to my .htaccess. And then I contacted Dreamhost about missing log files, and for some reason now it works again.
So for now I have a functioning solution.
And when it stops working, I'll have some solid alternatives.
Thanks!
posted by Thisandthat at 12:34 PM on March 13, 2022 [2 favorites]
But flabdabet actually inspired me to add a line about memory to my .htaccess. And then I contacted Dreamhost about missing log files, and for some reason now it works again.
So for now I have a functioning solution.
And when it stops working, I'll have some solid alternatives.
Thanks!
posted by Thisandthat at 12:34 PM on March 13, 2022 [2 favorites]
I have a setup somewhat like yours:
I copy a recipe (or use a browser plugin called MarkDownload) and put it in an Obsidian notebook. Obsidian is like notion only a desktop app and all your files are on disk as markdown files, which makes them very portable. I keep the files in my Dropbox.
I used to use Evernote for the same but wanted control of my files.
I also put recipes that I actually cook into Paprika, a special app for recipes that will download all the parts of the recipe into appropriate spots given a URL (or they can be manually entered). The data is local but also held by them.
posted by miscbuff at 9:14 AM on March 14, 2022
I copy a recipe (or use a browser plugin called MarkDownload) and put it in an Obsidian notebook. Obsidian is like notion only a desktop app and all your files are on disk as markdown files, which makes them very portable. I keep the files in my Dropbox.
I used to use Evernote for the same but wanted control of my files.
I also put recipes that I actually cook into Paprika, a special app for recipes that will download all the parts of the recipe into appropriate spots given a URL (or they can be manually entered). The data is local but also held by them.
posted by miscbuff at 9:14 AM on March 14, 2022
I'm late to the party but I use a site/app named Copy Me That. Here is a link to my recipes, https://www.copymethat.com/recipebox/joe/2397780/
I used it for free for a good while but I decided to pay the lifetime $25 fee mostly to support the creator but it adds several features that are pretty nice like being able to adjust the recipe amount by simply changing the number of servings you want to make. It has IOS and Android apps and the website and it all stays synced.
The best feature for me is the chrome extension. When you go to a recipe site, you just click the extension and it magically pull only the recipe out and ignores the 72 pages of story that precedes the actual recipe. It does an incredible job and I have almost never had to make an edit before I saved it. And that works on the free version.
Finally, you can export your recipes to either a single html file with images OR text files, one per recipe.
It isn't self hosted but I've been using them for years with no problems. Even if you wanted to use it to help standardize the formatting of your recipes, you could put them all in and then export into something else if you wanted. In fact, if you wanted to stay self hosted, you could put all your recipes in, export the html file, then host that. Then when you added a new recipe, export and replace on your host.
Who knows? Maybe you could use the chrome extension on your site and ingest all of your recipes all at once!
posted by CuJoe at 4:50 PM on March 15, 2022
I used it for free for a good while but I decided to pay the lifetime $25 fee mostly to support the creator but it adds several features that are pretty nice like being able to adjust the recipe amount by simply changing the number of servings you want to make. It has IOS and Android apps and the website and it all stays synced.
The best feature for me is the chrome extension. When you go to a recipe site, you just click the extension and it magically pull only the recipe out and ignores the 72 pages of story that precedes the actual recipe. It does an incredible job and I have almost never had to make an edit before I saved it. And that works on the free version.
Finally, you can export your recipes to either a single html file with images OR text files, one per recipe.
It isn't self hosted but I've been using them for years with no problems. Even if you wanted to use it to help standardize the formatting of your recipes, you could put them all in and then export into something else if you wanted. In fact, if you wanted to stay self hosted, you could put all your recipes in, export the html file, then host that. Then when you added a new recipe, export and replace on your host.
Who knows? Maybe you could use the chrome extension on your site and ingest all of your recipes all at once!
posted by CuJoe at 4:50 PM on March 15, 2022
« Older How to navigate long distance relationship which... | Forgotten alt 80s dance floor bangers Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.
Has Docuwiki been unreliable for you in multiple ways, or are the Internal Server Errors you mention here the total of that volatility (and possibly a new thing)?
Because if it's the latter, then your best option is probably to track down and fix the cause of those errors. The whois for your site shows you're with Dreamhost, which is reputed to have pretty good customer service; maybe start there?
The issue might be as simple as some .htaccess file somewhere needing a bigger memory limit number edited into it, and if that's all it is, it would be a pity to have to uproot something that suits your present workflow so well.
posted by flabdablet at 5:19 AM on March 13, 2022