WP Recipe Maker 9.4.0

We just released the very best version of WP Recipe Maker up until today: version 9.4.0. Read on for the highlights and a full changelog or update right away!

Shoppable Recipes with Walmart

A brand new integration, powered by eMeals, can make your recipes shoppable with Walmart, the USA’s largest retailer. This collaboration brings the vast selection of Walmart’s grocery aisle to your recipes, making it easier than ever for your audience to shop for their favorite ingredients at the best value.

The integration can be enabled with a simple click on the WP Recipe Maker > Settings > Integrations page:

Once you do that, a “Get Ingredients with Walmart” button will automatically appear right where your visitors need it. With just a few clicks, readers can add all the necessary items to their Walmart cart directly from your website, bridging the gap between inspiration and action.

Only available in the United States at the moment. You can give the new Shoppable Recipes feature a try on our demo site.

All Ratings Require a Comment now

As warned with notices on the Manage page in our previous updates, Google does not consider anonymous ratings to be trustworthy anymore. That is why as of version 9.4.0, WP Recipe Maker will require a comment, name and email alongside any rating.

While getting a lot of anonymous ratings was definitely fun, having hundreds of 5 stars without knowing who gave these stars or what they actually thought of the recipe was not useful to visitors, Google or site owners. It also made it too easy for spammy sites to inflate their numbers, leading to unfair advantages.

Since ratings are now accompanied by a comment, anyone can see who gave the rating and what they really thought. And you as the site owner can reply and clarify things where needed. Because of this transparency the recipe rating is not just a number that looks like it could have been grabbed out of thin air anymore.

While you might get fewer votes now, the ones you do get will provide you with actual feedback and you’ll know that there is a real person on the other end providing it. All other commonly used recipe plugins have taken this step, so this new requirement will be the same for the majority of food blogs. This levels the playing field and improves the integrity of recipe ratings.

User Ratings Modal Improvements

Since most of your ratings will go through the User Ratings Modal now, we have made some improvements to it. It is now no longer possible to accidentally close the modal by clicking outside of it. And if someone does accidentally close the modal, any comment text they had already added will be remembered.

The modal should behave better on mobile as well (not getting zoomed in at on iOS, for example) and ads should no longer overlay things.

We’ve also added a new action to the Call to Action feature. In the Template Editor you can edit the block and set the action to open the User Ratings Modal:

This will add another place in the recipe card where you can entice visitors to leave a rating.

Jump to Comments instead of using the Modal

To make it as easy as possible for visitors to leave their review, the User Ratings Modal allows them to just click on the stars and comment in place, without having to leave the recipe card. If you prefer handling things through the comment form that’s already on the page, you now also have the option to redirect visitors there, once they click on the stars.

The “User Ratings Mode” setting can be found on the WP Recipe Maker > Settings > Star Ratings > User Ratings page.

Recipe Metadata includes Comment Reviews

With the new focus on comments, we’ve also enhanced the recipe metadata. Not only does the metadata include the aggregateRating (which is the total number of votes and average rating), but also up to 20 of the latest individual reviews.

This makes it clear to Google that actual visitors have rated this recipe. The review metadata includes their name, comment and date, adding trust signals to the recipe metadata.

For an example, have a look at the “Review snippets” in the Rich Results Test of our demo site.

Full Changelog

We highlighted just a few of the new features/improvements/fixes above. Below you can find the other changes in version 9.4.0. Check out our documentation for a full history.

WP Recipe Maker Premium 9.4.0

• Feature: Comments are required alongside any rating
• Feature: New action in Call to Action that opens user ratings modal
• Feature: Allow scroll to comments instead of opening modal
• Improvement: Set different modal title during user ratings thank you
• Improvement: Remember comment text when user ratings modal is closed
• Improvement: Prevent accidental background clicks from closing the modal
• Improvement: Hide user ratings comment placeholder text on focus
• Improvement: Prevent zooming in on user ratings modal input fields on iOS
• Fix: Prevent ads from overlaying popup modal
• Fix: Prevent Amazon update product queue from overloading

WP Recipe Maker 9.4.0

• Feature: Shoppable Recipes with Walmart powered by eMeals
• Feature: Import recipes from WP Delicious
• Feature: Include reviews in recipe metadata
• Feature: Use recipe slug in print URL
• Feature: Change date when recipe post type is set to public
• Feature: Optionally set pin button to pin any image on the page
• Improvement: Recognize equipment amounts during import from text
• Improvement: Allow text block with only header text set
• Improvement: Better replacement of blocks imported from other plugins
• Improvement: Ability to cache API requests by non-logged in users
• Fix: Editing comment rating stars when editing comments
• Fix: External recipe roundup image pinning setting affecting own posts
• Fix: Assigning parent post when using Site Origin Page Builder
• Fix: Sanitization of recipe roundup credit attribute
• Fix: Prevent Rank Math sitemap generation from timing out

Updating should be possible through the Plugins page in your own WordPress backend. If there are any issues, check out our documentation on updating WP Recipe Maker.