
Show HN: Github for recipes - dpick
http://www.forkingrecipes.com
======
orangethirty
You need to hire a designer for this. Cooking/recipes/food markets are really
visually driven. You also need to define what a fork is right on the landing
page. A fork for a cook is not the same as a fork for a programmer. What you
should have is a good header area that has the application work flow explained
in graphics.

Example:

    
    
        Alice liked Juan's recide for thai rice. 
        She wanted to create her own version. Alice
        forked Juan's recipe and modified it to fit
        tastes.
    
        In forkingrecipes, the act of forking is when
        you give someone else's recipe your own touch.
        Thus creating a new recipe for others to use and fork.
    

I know a good designer who can help you with this, by the way.

~~~
dpick
I totally agree, unfortunately I don't have money to pay one and finding
someone to work with me for free hasn't been easy :(.

~~~
Tyrant505
Send me an email. Working on something similar and am a designer :)

------
chewxy
We launched Fork the Cookbook about the same time as Forking Recipes too. You
might want to check it out: <http://forkthecookbook.com>

We try not to call it Github for Recipes because that's not our target market
(although other people have called us Github for Recipes)

We blog over at <http://theforkingchef.com> so you might also want to check
that out.

OK, self promotion over

~~~
BHSPitMonkey
I like your site's presentation quite a bit more (ForkingRecipes just comes
across as data carelessly tossed into Bootstrap), though I don't quite like
how the food images are mostly obscured until you hover over them
individually.

~~~
chewxy
Understandable. We're working on a variation that doesn't do that. UX is hard
yo.

Fork the Cookbook has existed longer than Forking Recipes, and we've done
hundreds of user tests. It turns out users really like certain things, and so
the current darkened background is a compromise on that solution.

We found out that users liked pictures, and also liked text (surprise?). In
the next test we're doing, we're going to be swapping the order of appearance
to see if the CTRs increase

------
Swizec
\o/ I asked for this 16 days ago
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5033978>) and now it exists. God I love
HackerNews :D

Probably not related, though still cool.

What I'd like to see though, is for all the pictures to be of food. There's a
lot of happy faces, but the point of a cook book is to make me feel hungry
when looking at the pictures. Not sure how to achieve that though.

~~~
chewxy
Hey you may want to check out Fork the Cookbook [0]. It was there long before
you asked the question.

<http://forkthecookbook.com>

------
gingerjoos
Cucumbertown does this very well. They allow you to take a recipe and fork it
– called “Write a variation” (on the left) [1]. IIRC quite a few recipes there
are created this way.

[1] <http://www.cucumbertown.com/recipes/55228/baked-mac-cheese>

------
ChuckMcM
I like it, although I think there are other organizing principles to explore.
Seconded on all the 'fork' comments its not at all intuitive to a chef what
you mean here.

At present the top level abstraction is the recipe which you've sort of
equated to 'source code' but when you look at something like Github or
Sourceforge the high level abstraction is the 'project' and in the food world
the closest I could come up with is 'cuisine.'

Consider one of my daughters favorite sites: <http://smittenkitchen.com/> this
site has lots of interesting recipes, and one might use them as a top level
abstraction. So you've got the 'smittenkitchen' project equivlent or maybe
'smittenkitchen-breakfast' project which is breakfasts from smitten kitchen.

Then there are chefs which are much more important in the cooking world than
individual developers are in the programming world. That is because the chef's
'taste' really defines the product in a way that is fundamental to the
enjoyment. So you might want to build a '<Chef>-<category>' type model. Then
you could do a pull of <Ramsay>-<appetizer> and get various appetizers that
Gordon Ramsay makes.

Of course that will get you into a licensing battle. Because like fonts,
recipes have this weird quasi relationship to name vs instructions (can't
copyright instructions, can copyright the name, google Font Copyright for more
info)

Conceptually I think this is a really winner idea (sadly easy to copy) but if
you get the right mix going and critical mass it could easily be as successful
as github or sourceforge.

~~~
chewxy
Hey, at Fork the Cookbook, we're doing just that right now! It's one of the
primary reasons why we said Search is Hard [0]. And we're working hard on
search.

We've also put a lot of time and effort into researching the licensing issues,
as well as design issues: how to present certain things like diffs, and stuff.
So if you like, you should check out Fork the Cookbook:
<http://forkthecookbook.com>

[0] [http://theforkingchef.com/post/40890655560/search-is-hard-
pa...](http://theforkingchef.com/post/40890655560/search-is-hard-part-1)

~~~
cdr
From a quick browse, I don't see any way to view diffs?

~~~
chewxy
Hey there, it's not a feature we've pushed out live yet. There is code to see
diffs, but no on the public facing UI yet.

The reason is this: We don't want to aim at the tech crowd (which is why you
haven't seen a Show HN from Fork the Cookbook). The tech crowd knows what
diffs are. We're used to reading things that look like this:

    
    
        + def function(var1, var2):
        - def oldfunction(var1, var2):
    

But the public aren't used to reading stuff like this. What we're working on
is a comprehensive way to explain what diffs are, and what it means. So we're
back at square one, designing a representation that is human worthy.

It'll take time. Sorry

~~~
cdr
I'm working on something in a domain not dissimilar to recipes, so I'm always
interested to see different diff presentations.

~~~
chewxy
Tell you what, I'll let you know first thing when we have diffs ready to be
presented to the public

------
kepzorz
I like how easy recipe discovery is on forkingrecipes. I think the waterfall
layout and search bar were good decisions.

Mappum and I made something pretty similar for the last Node Knockout.

<http://foodhub.jit.su/>

Like orangethirty said, foodies tend to be really visual, so we encourage the
user to take a high quality photo by making it the focus of their recipe page.

Good job, I'm excited to see where you go with this. :)

------
webology
[Forkinit](<http://forkinit.com/>) does a good job of this but hasn't been
updated in a while. You might check them out for other ideas in this space.
Looks like you have a great start.

------
the-kenny
Just like every other cool page for managing recipes: Please add automatic
conversion from/to metric units.

~~~
MartinCron
And even between standard units. I have a re pie that calls for 6 tablespoons
of water. I always have to translate that to fractional cups

------
fosap
I like it. It seems you are aiming at geeks. And I think geeks want a powerful
search interface and this is why I haven't found a website i really like. I
want to make queries like "Recipes with Tomatoes, Paprika but without meat of
type soup" or "I only have Garlic, Paprika, bread, Cream, flour, and sugar,
eggs and spices , what is the closest meaningful lunch? Not in natural
language, but with a interface. Like a textarea for "what i have" "what i
don't have/like", and "What kind of meal would it be" each.

~~~
justincormack
"I only have Garlic, Paprika, bread, Cream, flour, and sugar, eggs and
spices". Thats not a sane way to cook. You can season your eggs on toast
(scrambled eggs with garlic makes a change), but there is nothing else sanely
cookable form that list. You need to shop better, this is not a search
problem. (I appreciate that you made up that list, but thats not the point).

------
twiss
Quoting <http://www.badstartupidea.com/>:

First, go and find out about Github. Figure out what it is they do, how they
attract users, and how they make money. Github is already operating well in
the Programming space, but perhaps the same basic ideas can be applied in the
Cooking space. That's where you come in.

Edit: I think it's a great idea, it's just funny that that site mentioned this
after only a couple refreshes.

~~~
yuxt
I assume that's where it started <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5119787>

~~~
twiss
That's really cool, actually.

------
Thrall
Having looked at some of the recipes, it might be nice to take the job of
layout/formatting away from the recipe submitter and offer some differnt
layout options to the person viewing it.

For example, some recipes include the accompanying photos inline, while others
collect the photos at the end. If instead, the submitter merely tagged the
photos according to what step they accompanied, then the website code can lay
them out beatifully in a number of different ways to suit different viewers.

I think I'm thinking something along the lines of LaTeX philosophy: You
provide the content and leave the layout to the experts/computer. So you don't
write that "Zest of 2 lemons" should be part of a bulleted list, you write
that it is an ingredient and leave it to the layout to put it in a suitably
formatted ingredient list.

Another advantage is you reduce the ability of less savvy users to make parts
of your site look ugly.

~~~
dpick
That's a great idea, thanks!

------
gurraman
I started something similar[1] last Christmas (but lost interest as I never
documented my own experiments). It's a great idea and there's need for a de
facto standard source for recipes and cooking instructions.

My "next step" was to contact sous chefs of famous restaurants.

[1] <http://palatelab.com/>

Edit: rephrased.

~~~
tazzy531
Maybe Google's Recipe microdata?

[http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...](http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=173379)

Which is standardized at schema.org: <http://www.schema.org/Recipe>

------
papa_bear
I've thought a lot about this idea as something to add to my site Eat This
Much (<http://www.eatthismuch.com>)

I have a pretty basic implementation of it right now - you can click a
"personalize recipe" button on recipe pages to make modifications to it, and
watch the nutrition change as you make changes. As a premium member, you can
then have the meal plan generator suggest your modified version of the recipe
in place of the original. When I have the time, I'm hoping to make all the
existing branches and variations browsable.

There are some pretty great suggestions here I think. It would be really cool
if you could build out an API similar to yummly's for serving up recipes. With
different branches for each recipe, you could easily search through the
variations to satisfy filters based on a user's tastes.

------
dpick
Hey Guys,

I'm the creator of Forking Recipes, I'll be happy to answer any questions you
have and thanks for taking a look!

~~~
guptaneil
I agree with the other commenters: _great_ idea, but needs a designer.

By the way, are you based in Chicago? I met somebody at the Chicago HN meetup
last year who was talking about building this exact idea, and I loved the idea
back then too. Are you that person by chance?

~~~
dpick
I am actually in Chicago, but I haven't been to a HN meetup so you're probably
thinking of someone else.

~~~
themckman
To the GP, that was probably me. Unfortunately, we never got anything off the
ground.

dpick, I'd be happy to share the ideas we were kicking around when thinking
about this if you want to shoot me an email: john [at] nineteeneightd.com.

------
cyriacthomas
<http://www.cucumbertown.com> does this very well. Cleaner UI and seamless
experience. Also has a lot of celebrity chefs onboard as users.

------
kidh0
I know that twitter boostrap is a great tool to start a project and to prove
the concept. I love the idea as a amateur cook and developer (not amateur :D),
but if you want to reach a larger public (non developers) I think you should
invest some time (and probably money) into a good designer (by the way, is a
website where we could really "rent" a webdesigner? I know some where you coul
rent a coder but not a designer).

~~~
bxbb
99designs and designcrowd, to name some..

------
guynamedloren
I love this. Every time I look up a recipe, I read the comments to see popular
modifications and tweaks to the original recipe, and thought it would be
awesome if those could branch off and become their own, with the most popular
'forks' floating to the top (even dethroning the original recipe, if they are
indeed better). I'm glad to see this come to fruition!

------
quasque
Interesting application of software development paradigms to cooking. I think
it would be useful to have categories, e.g. breakfast/dinner/dessert,
hot/cold, and suchlike. And maybe a regular 'featured menu' on the front page
to illustrate a meal combination, with a nice photograph shown and some
encouraging body text.

------
jfaucett
this idea is awesome. The "forking" idea is great for recipes, but you need
almost something like a difftool to be able to tell what's different and why?
I think with a better UI and way's for users to interact with each other this
could be extremely cool. Stick with it and good luck :)

~~~
dpick
There actually is a really basic diff tool right now (Click on revisions on
the recipe page). I'm working on creating a more advanced one now. Any ideas
on what a good interface might be?

~~~
MartinCron
A diff visualization for ingredients should be pretty easy, you could show
left and right and the delta between them as three distinct columns.

As for other distinctions, such as "mince" instead of "dice", that would be
tricker, but you could probably do that with a human-friendly strikethrough
coupled with a handwriting typeface to indicate what was changed.

------
juliennakache
<http://www.chefday.com/> is Heroku for cooking :)

~~~
alanctgardner2
I thought Heroku for cooking would be that I, as a user, upload a recipe, and
the food is cooked and delivered to me as a completed dish. If anything this
is more like Arduino for cooking, maybe? An accessible jumping off point for
an intimidating task?

~~~
juliennakache
Fair point. But with Heroku, you still need to build your app yourself. Coming
up with a recipe is really easy compared to build an app from scratch. Maybe
we're the Ruby on Rails of cooking. What do you think?

~~~
alanctgardner2
That seems like a fair assessment. I didn't give it much thought before, but
now I'm really curious about the model; it this supposed to be exclusively for
dinner parties, or a way for bachelors to learn to cook? I don't live in New
York, and there isn't a ton of detail on the front page. How far in advance do
I order? Do I pay a flat rate for n meals a month/week? I'm guessing the
invite comes with more details, but looking at the landing page I have a lot
of "How does this fit in my life?" sort of questions.

~~~
juliennakache
Thanks for the feedback. I'll update the landing this week. The most common
use cases we have so far: dates / young couples that want spend quality time,
friends dinners, supper clubs, cooking enthusiasts who want to learn new
recipes from top Chefs... You just order the recipe you want: no subscription
yet(people have requested it). Cut off time is 10pm the day before your
delivery. If you have friends in NYC, feel free to share the joy of cooking :)

------
6thSigma
You should remove all of the pictures that do not show the food and replace
all of the low quality pictures as well. When I went to your website the first
thing i saw was a bunch of faces and non-appetizing looking onions. You want
to make the food look amazing.

------
Turing_Machine
Very nice! I'd like to have the option (but not the requirement) to log in
with oauth(2) from Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc.

Your site will get a lot more traction if you implement that, I think. Most
people (even non-techie folks) are suffering from account proliferation.

~~~
thedufer
Actually, its been shown that the confusion of which account type to use is
worse than the bonus of having options at signup. I forget who did the
testing, but non-techies have trouble remembering which they used as well as
understanding what it means to "sign in with..".

~~~
Turing_Machine
I'd be interested in seeing the study. For me, at least (and I think for many
others) the thought of creating yet another login is enough to make me back
out.

~~~
thedufer
Okay, I misremembered a bit. They showed that a tiny portion of people used
social login (~3%) and that the gain they thought they'd made with them (fewer
forgot password/username issues) was due to an unrelated change. The tiny
portion shows that it can't be that important (plus, how many of the 3% that
took advantage of it would have left without those buttons?).

The study can be found here: [http://blog.mailchimp.com/social-login-buttons-
arent-worth-i...](http://blog.mailchimp.com/social-login-buttons-arent-worth-
it/)

I apologize for the misinformation in my first comment, but I think my point
remains. That said, I feel similarly to you - I just think that a much smaller
portion of people feel that way than you realize.

------
hello_newman
This is awesome. I think it's a coincidence because the other day on HN
someone said something about a "github for recipes". I'm not saying that to be
coy or to be condescending, simply coincidental.

Keep up the good work! As an avid amateur chef, this could be fun.

------
rpledge
I like it. You need to improve the editor (normal people won't understand
markup, just have a text box for ingredients, another for directions and a
list for images).

You also need tags so I can tag a recipe as 'Asian' or 'BBQ' to make it
organizable.

------
dguaraglia
This is pretty amazing. I had thought how cool it'd be to have something like
this a bunch of times (specially when I want to find simplified curry
recipes.)

I seem to recall someone put something similar on HN a few months ago. Any
ideas who it was?

------
Zafarian
That's cool!! Can this be adapted for curriculums? I am a medical student and
have been posting medical curriculum at
<https://github.com/aloo/hack_medicine>

~~~
dpick
It totally could be, send me an email and we can discuss it.

------
kristiandupont
Neat. When I saw the headline I thought that this would be too technical to
get traction with non-geeks but it looks nice and I could see it becoming
popular especially with particular diet communities like paleo etc.

------
d0m
I find it waaaay too geeky for a cooking website. The idea could be useful but
as it is right now, it's very hard to understand how it's supposed to work.
(Revision 2, what?)

------
nullspace
Great idea! It seems obvious in hindsight, at least to people who understand
forking and dvcs. Which is great.

Let's see how non-tech people are able to understand and use such concepts.

------
mappum
We made something very similar for Node Knockout (the 48-hour hackathon),
<http://foodhub.jit.su>.

------
diegogomes
User experience still needs a lot of improvement, but I love it.
congratulations.

~~~
dpick
Thanks!

------
niftylettuce
<http://startupsupper.com>

~~~
quasque
Nice idea but the design looks like an poster for Trainspotting. Expecting to
be emailed recipes for deep fried mars bars any time now.

~~~
niftylettuce
u just wait...

------
vinrob
Great idea. Needs a better app and UX but really good idea. Good job!

------
duiker101
You missed the opportunity to use the name GitCipes.

~~~
biot
And the average visitor would end up asking themselves "What does 'git sypes'
mean?"

------
trhaynes
Why not build this right on top of GitHub?

~~~
siddhant
Because most cooks are not developers and don't have Github accounts, I guess.

~~~
tantalor
I think trhaynes meant, Why not build this on the Github API?

------
emdosmar
What an awesome idea! Love the site.

------
sabat
Man, I had this very idea a few months ago. :-)

