Making Gling Work For You: Part Five

I’m excited about this installment of Making Gling Work For You because it is all about one of my very favorite subjects, FOOD!

As we go along into this wing of the Glingaverse, there will be a lot of things to explore. Some of them are similar to things we have already seen when exploring Recipes, covered in Part Four. We’ll go over the similarities here, as well as venturing into new territory. First we’ll cover Searching for Food, then we’ll move into posting your own tasty treats. Finishing the exploration today, we’ll take a look at the back passages that connect everything together and I’ll show you How It All Ties Together.

Searching for Food

You can get to the food section of Gling by clicking on the bread icon. One of the most interesting things about this section is the plethora of information available. Food can be ANYTHING! Whether you are looking for a quick snack or new ingredients, you can find them here.

Much like in the Recipe section, the tabs at the top will show you foods based on who posted them. You have the option of looking at your foods, your friend’s foods or all foods.

Also like in the Recipes section, the sidebar holds the secrets of a successful search.

Search by type- Use the drop down box at the top of the side bar to search for either Recipe Ingredients, Food, or Brand Names. Searching this way is helpful when you are looking for foods that fit a particular purpose (i.e. snacks).

Search by Date- Use the drop down box to select whether you want your results to be listed in Alphabetical Order, By Author or by most recent post Date.

Search by Gluten Score- How gluten free is it? By clicking on the gluten score boxes in the side bar you can decide to see only the listings with a certain gluten score.

Tag Cloud- Clicking tags in the tag cloud will take you to the main search page for that item. It will include Recipes, Photos, Blog Entries, and anything else that is available. For more on tags and tag clouds, see Making Gling Work For You: Part Two.

Each one of the listings in Food comes with scads of information! The title of each food is a link that will take you to the listing for that food (which will include instructions on how to use it). There are also voting triangles, a heart to favorite, descriptions, author and date posted.

Here’s the fun part! Each listing also has these links:

Recipes that Include- Find a new food that catches your interest? Click this link to find out what to do with it.

Locations One Can Purchase- Find out where to find this tasty tidbit by clicking the link.

Articles That Reference- Find out what others on Gling are saying about this item.

Posting Food

To post food, click on the +Add A Food link. This will take you to the posting page.

Name- What is the name of the food that you want to share with other Glingsters?

Description- Fill in this box with the best description you can come up with!

Gluten Score- Choose and label the safety of the food you are adding.

Type- For this, think of what your food is most often used for. If you are adding flour, select ingredient. Apples, on the other hand, could be ingredients or food. Selecting ingredient will link your food listing to all of the recipes on Gling that use apples. Use your best judgement here.

Image- Upload a tantalizing image of your food.

Tags- For tips on tagging, see Making Gling Work For You: Part Two.

When you have entered all of your information, click UPDATE to finish and post your food.

How It All Ties Together

The Glingaverse is very well constructed. Everything is interwoven and linked together to create the best experience possible for you (and me), The Glingsters. The information that follows creates the hallways of Gling, the places where the information links together. As you know, a house would not be functional without a few hallways. Unfortunately, neither is Gling.

It will take all of us together to make Gling the super-user-friendly-linked-up-site it is designed to be. Following these tips can make it happen.

Before posting a recipe, make sure all of the ingredients for that recipe are listed in foods. If one of the ingredients is missing, add it! That way, the network will be complete and all the links will be in place.

When you add a food, tell others where to buy it by posting the location (which we’ll cover in part six).

If you see a listing for a food and know where to get it locally, add the location.

Taking these extra baby steps will ensure that everyone on Gling will have all of the information they need right at their fingertips.

Thank you for following the journey this far! It has been a lot of fun writing this guide, I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it! Next Tuesday, join me for an exploration of Locations, favorites and Tweets.