Create a blog that uses faceted browse?

December 4, 2007 4:03 PM

I'd like to create a recipe blog that lets users search for recipes using faceted browsing. For instance, searching recipes by ingrediant, cooking time, etc. Is there a MoveableType-like solution I can use to easily create this site?
posted by xammerboy to Computers & Internet (13 answers total)

Drupal's taxonomy module would let you do this.
posted by bricoleur at 4:05 PM on December 4, 2007

WordPress now also has built in tagging...
posted by DarlingBri at 4:14 PM on December 4, 2007

I don't know if this would meet your needs, but I've seen a wiki site work well for recipes. It was done as a wiki so multiple people could contribute (obviously) but the search function has always worked well for me. It's done using pbwiki, with a lot of tagging.
posted by gingerbeer at 4:16 PM on December 4, 2007

Wordpress 2.3 now has proper tags (where previously you had to try and shoehorn categories to do your bidding, or use 3rd party plugins), in a manner that I believe will allow you to support faceted browsing. Haven't played with it yet, though.
posted by mumkin at 4:19 PM on December 4, 2007

Actually, I don't think Drupal's taxonomy module would be right, because that's hierarchical and would have no way to analyze ingredients or the like. But there is a recipe module for that.

Of course, a mefite has already gone and done this, sorta, with Metakitchen.
posted by adamrice at 4:26 PM on December 4, 2007

See also Epicurious.
posted by autojack at 4:44 PM on December 4, 2007

Wow - thanks for the great answers! If anyone knows of example sites that use these tools, that would be much appreciated too!
posted by xammerboy at 6:23 PM on December 4, 2007

For faceted browsing, I'd recommend Exhibit from the MIT Simile project. Really easy to work with. You can even serve the data from on an online spreadsheet. Here's an example of what a nice recipe website might look like.
posted by imposster at 6:38 PM on December 4, 2007

about a year and a half ago i put together snacksby, which might do a bit of what you're looking for. the platform is custom, and it's as neglected as can be, but it might give you some ideas.
posted by soma lkzx at 7:05 PM on December 4, 2007

@ adamrice: I don't see how the hierarchical nature of Drupal's taxonomies gets in the way. You can assign a node to multiple taxonomies. It may not be perfect for what the OP has in mind, but it seems to me it will do what he asked for.

Alternatively, you could create a custom content type for recipes with fields for the ingredients and cooking times, etc., and then use the views module to present views based on any of those.

Yet again, you could use free tagging, which Drupal also supports, but then you'll have a fuzzier classification, which I don't think would really be appropriate in this application.
posted by bricoleur at 3:24 AM on December 5, 2007

Actually, Movable Type (including the free version) has tags built in which can let you do exactly this. Elise Bauer, who's the proprietor of Simply Recipes as well as Learning Movable Type uses it exactly this way. Heidi Swanson of 101 Cookbooks is doing something very similar, too, but using categories. MT's tags support gives you pretty much everything a reader would be looking for in terms of faceted browsing, and is augmented by the hierarchial categories in the system as well. Drop me a line if I can help you out.
posted by anildash at 6:47 AM on December 5, 2007

Thanks so much everyone! I had a feeling someone would point out that Moveable Type could, in fact, do exactly what I wanted. Also, thank you imposster for sharing your site, which gave me some great ideas. MeFi to the rescue!
posted by xammerboy at 6:30 PM on December 5, 2007

If you want faceted browsing in a site, you could do a lot worse than Exhibit. The good thing about it is that you can keep all your data in whatever format you want(Excel, CSV, whatever) and easily convert to structured data, either periodically or at pageload, using Babel.
posted by Mr. Gunn at 4:16 PM on December 6, 2007