Site Description
Their 'about' states that:
"StudentRecipes.Com was originally setup by James Bailey in 2004, when he was a first year student at the University of East Anglia. Since then the website has grown with use generated content and now is visited by 50,000 unique users every month.
As a student himself at that time, he struggled to find recipes that were quick and easy to cook and most importantly cheap. We hope you enjoy using the website and it's growing list of recipes."
In summary, I propose the following are the main technical services that the site offers:
- A portal of recipes uploaded by the community
- A search facility allowing you to refine by recipe title or ingredients
- Register
- Comments facility
Similarities and Differences in Concepts
Although the concepts are very similar, there is no abundant message on the website which states that the recipes hosted are those of students. Once browsing the site however, it becomes clear that the recipes are community generated because when you click on 'soups' for example you are fed a table with descriptions such as "Really yummy soup" - hardly a professional description.
Structural Layout
The website is coded using PHP, which is the same language that I will be using to code mine. This means that there could be similar techniques used in both projects, such as the features included on studentrecipes.com
When you first enter the site, it feels slightly cluttered because there is a lot of information being presented. You have sections of the site displayed on the left, A brief welcome statement centrally and a large advertisement on the right hand side. I want my website to contain breathing space for the user so that they are confused about what to do first - there is nothing wrong with designing a website vertically rather than horizontally.
There are preloaded video recipes which are embedded in each recipe page. These are professionally created videos which are not student generated. This is obvious as at the end of each video there are credits and the majority of videos seem to have been filmed in a domestic, family kitchen.
The site doesn't appear to have a proper content hierarchy in place as there are some arbitrary subsections. For example there are categories simply for 'pork' and 'quick'. Surely 'pork' would be under the category of meats rather than mixing it with other (what could be considered 'main') categories? This is certainly something I will try to implement properly - proper organization of sections.
It seems an odd addition to have a link named 'search' as well as an actual search form on the page. Which one should you choose? I presume that the main search form would be quicker so therefore the link in the navigation is an unnecessary addition. Once you click on the 'search' link, you are then directed to a search page. This then gives you four separate links with the word 'search' on them further fueling confusion. The search page you are redirected to also seems to throw out a blank form. When entering a term and then clicking 'search' you are redirected to the same page with no results. Using the newly added search form on the right hand side with options to search through titles or ingredients does seem to provide results however.
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