WP Recipe Maker 9.6.0

We just released the very best version of WP Recipe Maker up until today: version 9.6.0. Read on for the highlights and a full changelog or update right away!

Comment Review Moderation Tools

Comments, and especially comments with ratings, are becoming increasingly important for your website. And with the FTC recently announcing their final rule to combat fake reviews, it is also increasingly important to stay on top of the comments your posts get.

Our new 9.6.0 release introduces several moderation tools to help you out with exactly that. When editing a comment in your backend, you will now be able to leave private notes, flag comments and optionally email the site admin about that note or flag.

It also keeps track of any changes to the star rating, so you will know when someone changed, removed or added a rating. Especially when working with a team, this makes it a lot easier to moderate comments, while making sure there’s a record of any change made.

As of WP Recipe Maker 9.4.0, comments can be part of the recipe metadata as “Reviews”. We now introduced some settings on the WP Recipe Maker > Settings > Recipe Metadata page, giving you more control over which comments get chosen for that metadata.

Any comment that has a rating can now be marked as a “Featured Review”, meaning that it will be used in the recipe metadata. Or on the contrary be marked as “Excluded” to make sure it does not show up as a review in the recipe metadata.

These settings and options give you even more control to optimise the recipe metadata and get the results you’re looking for. To make it easy to navigate, you also have the option to filter by any flagged, featured or excluded comments on the Comment overview page:

And don’t forget about the WP Recipe Maker > Manage > Features > Ratings page that was already there. It still gives you a great overview of all ratings and the “Bulk Edit” column could be used to easily remove multiple ratings at once. For example, should you want to remove all ratings that were given by your own user ID.

Preview Recipes before Saving

If you’re editing a recipe, you might be wondering what your changes will look like in the actual recipe card. Our new “Preview” button gives you the option to preview the recipe without needing to save any changes first.

When you click it, a new tab will open (make sure pop ups are allowed in your browser), previewing the recipe in its actual recipe card, in an example post on your own site.

This makes sure the preview represents as best as possible what the recipe will look like:

Not happy with your changes? No harm done! Just don’t save the recipe, and nothing will have changed.

QR Code Block

In our Template Editor you’ll find a brand new “QR Code” block that can be added to the recipe template. It can be used to generate a QR Code for a specific URL, custom text or a link to the current recipe or its video.

We also have a new setting on the WP Recipe Maker > Settings > Print Version page to easily add a QR Code like this at the bottom of the recipe print page, linking back to that recipe.

This gives your visitors an easy way to get back to the recipe after printing it. You can see it in action at the bottom of any recipe that you print on our demo site.

Recipe Collections & Shopping List Improvements

The latest 9.6.0 update also comes with various improvements for our Recipe Collections feature. First of all, you’ll find all sorts of color settings on the WP Recipe Maker > Settings > Recipe Collections > Appearance page to easily change the look & feel of the collections feature, and have it match your site.

You also have the ability to change the image size or even move the image to the top for a different item layout that highlights your gorgeous recipe images.

We also recommend changing the “Change Recipe Structure Layout” setting to “Change the structure in a separate modal”, on that same settings page. What this does is moving all of the structure related options (like creating, duplicating and reordering columns and groups) to a separate modal. The result is a layout with a LOT less icons and a focus on actually adding items to the collection:

You’ll notice the new grid-like icon at the top. Clicking on that will open up the new modal interface, giving you the same options you had before, without having to click (and figure out) lots of different icons.

Another improvement we’ve made to make the collections feature less complicated is having the shopping list “auto-save”. This means that the user does not have to worry about manually saving the shopping list, and there is one less icon to complicate the UI.

For the shopping list we also added a new warning that indicates when a user is looking at an existing shopping list, which was generated before some changes were made to the collection. This makes sure they can still access the shopping list they created before, if needed, while giving them an easy option to regenerate to get the latest ingredients.

For the shopping list there is also a new “Smart Combine Units” setting on the WP Recipe Maker > Settings > Recipe Collections > Shopping List page. If you enable this, the shopping list will try to automatically combine some of the standard units. Like in the example below:

Finally, we have some improvements for those of you creating your own meal plans with the Saved Recipe Collection feature.

While editing a saved collection you now have an easy way to reload all the recipes in that collection, using the button at the top. This makes sure the collection uses the most recent name and recipe image. And when clicking on the recipe item menu, you will find new “View Recipe” and “Edit Recipe” options, making it easy to check the recipe post or making changes to the recipe, if needed.

Take note that we don’t want to suddenly change things up. For existing users, most of the features mentioned above will be disabled by default, and you can enabled what you want to use on the WP Recipe Maker > Settings > Recipe Collections page.

Full Changelog

We highlighted just a few of the new features/improvements/fixes above. Below you can find the other changes in version 9.6.0. Check out our documentation for a full history.

WP Recipe Maker Premium 9.6.0

Feature: Simplified collections interface by changing structure in separate modal
Feature: Settings to change colors of recipe collections grid layout
Feature: Setting to change image size and position for collection items
Feature: Auto-save for the Recipe Collections Shopping List
Feature: Smart combine units for the collection shopping list
Feature: Optional internal category for Saved Collections
Feature: View and edit recipes easily when editing a saved collection in the backend
Improvement: Conditional shortcode support for custom fields
Improvement: Store timestamps for collection items for future use in reports
Improvement: Aria-label for some recipe collection buttons
Improvement: Prevent WP Comment Policy Checkbox from blocking user ratings
Improvement: Prevent hCaptcha for WordPress from blocking user ratings
Improvement: Exclude user ratings without comment from recent comments widget
Improvement: Raw output option for a text custom field
Improvement: Option to ignore existing recipes during import from JSON
Fix: Keep HTML in amounts after changing serving size
Fix: Make sure plural of unit is used in shopping list if set
Fix: User Ratings not displaying correctly when Comment Ratings disabled
Fix: Advanced Adjustable Servings problem with comma as decimal separator
Fix: Issue with with recipe having a second unit system set before having disabled the unit conversion feature
Fix: Prevent fractions changing for recipes that do not have a second unit system set
Fix: Adjustable servings issue in some edge cases when using 3 different values in the amount field
Fix: Use correct name when exporting diet terms in recipe JSON export