Internet cookbook Edesia.cz

In the last post I mentioned that I started working on a new hobby project - internet cookbook Edesia.cz (in Czech language). I didn't write anything for some time but in the meantime successfully finished basic implementation with which I am quite satisfied - I strived for a clean UI with only important functionality and not much advertisements. But back to the beginning.

My original motivation to do this project had not much to do with cooking - I merely wanted to learn Python and Django. I realized that I don't want to fall into the trap of starting something new and never finishing (as was the case with Tomix). So this had to be a real project which I would have to be able to program in my spare time. I needed something relatively simple but with real value, I didn't want to develop yet another CMS or blog engine.

When I thought about the options I remembered that I already created a simple cookbook in C# a few years ago. I used it only for myself but the WinForms UI was very clunky and it had a few bugs I had no intention to fix. I decided I will just rewrite it for the web. I thought about basic functions I'd like to have in there, analyzed and draw wireframes.

The only problem I had to solve was how to motivate myself after the initial excitement fades out. I solved this by spending some time thinking about a reasonable name for this kind of website that was not yet taken and immediately bought the domain and paid for hosting (here "immediately" means about a month after I started development - I never said I was quick :) ). By the way, the site is named after Roman goddess of feasts and good food. So, I went on with the development. I didn't really bother with the UI design, knowing that I can't create anything nice and expected that I'll find some designer later. I found a reasonable free template (Styleshout's Keep It Simple) and by mid-April I deployed first simple version. That allowed me to fill in the recipes while working on other improvements. I did not really propagate the project so I was kinda excited when I saw that soon the visitors started coming on their own.

While working on important features, I was also looking for someone to design the final version of UI. I didn't want anything expensive because Edesia.cz is only a hobby project. Fortunately a friend of mine agreed to create the design and logo for a reasonable price. The work took longer than expected, partially because of my inexperience in this part of software development and partially because of some unexpected (work unrelated) issues. We did a few iterations of design, a few more of logo and during July site went public. Today the site is almost the same, only with a few bugs fixed and a few improvements implemented.

After the nice design went public, I registered the site to a few catalogues and promoted to friends on Facebook. I didn't do more marketing yet (mostly because I don't know how best to approach it) but so far the number of visitors to site is slowly increasing.

Today the site is still really small - I have over 350 recipes in multiple categories and about 80 visits per day. Two weeks ago I added some simple PPC advertisements because I'd like the site to at least pay for it's hosting costs. So far the results are not very exciting which is not surprising given the fact that the number of visits is still very low and the ads are at their first iteration. I don't want to have many advertisements there so I will probably have to bear the costs myself for some time.

Altogether, I am now satisfied with the results I saw so far. I am now able to do at least basic development in Django, I learned a little about SEO and specifics of web development and I also found quite a few good recipes to try :) For the future I plan to improve the rating system, add possibility to display recipe images, write articles and lots of other stuff. And by adding all this, I want the site to stay simple and clean unlike most of other recipe websites. I hope it'll work :)