The New Future of Cookbooker
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Hi everyone:
Although everything is not completely finalized, I'm pleased to let you all know that Cookbooker is not going to vanish into thin air in the near future. One of our members put me in touch with someone from ValuSoft Cosmi - the sellers of MasterCook software, and we've agreed that I will transfer control of Cookbooker to them. They have plans to eventually use it to support the selling of e-cookbooks and continue to support social interaction around cookbooks (which it kind of already does).
No money has changed hands. They'll be covering the hosting costs and I'll hang around for a while to support the transition, so I don't anticipate any near-term changes. Of course, once it's theirs, future changes will be up to them.
Essentially this seemed like the best way to keep the site intact as it is, which I know was a strong wish of our membership. -
Thanks so much Andrew for keeping us updated and going.
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Happy dance here! Thank you Andrew! And thank you, MasterCook software!
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Now if those new MasterCook folk would make MC available on Mac again, I'd have all my eggs in one basket, so to speak! :-)
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Glad to have this news for people. Nothing has happened officially yet; we'll be deciding on the transition over the next little while. Meanwhile, I see we still have spammer issues sometimes cropping up, so I've decided to give a few of you power to remove spammers yourselves. @kaye16, @queezle and @southerncooker - you'll see that you can delete posts now, and that if you go into the 'dashboard' tab you can delete accounts too. That way if I'm not around or if there's not someone on the job yet at MasterCook, the forum will not fill up with crap!
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Thanks, Andrew. I'm not totally clear on how to do this (dashboard tab?), so you could send me an email. Sorry if I am being dense.
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@queezle, I think you'll see a Delete "button" in the heading of each message (next tot he name), where we didn't see this before.
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Ah yes, thanks. I was being dense!
I cannot tell you how happy I am that our cookbooker family gets to remain intact. Now if my new kitchen could just be finished... our (old) oven keeps being removed and then hooked back up, as we struggle with removing a load-bearing wall. -
So glad we will continue!
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We went through the kitchen thing last year so I know a bit what you're going through. Our sink and its counter were on wheels with long flexible plumbing for well over 6 months so they could be moved in and out from the wall as needed. Shelving, cabinets, and their contents moved from room to room. So glad that part's over! Yours will be one day, but never soon enough. :-)
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Chiming in a little late, but I am very happy with this solution - thank you Andrew for making this happen! And I'm very curious to hear what their plans are with Cookbooker, of course!
Hehe, we had our whole apartment renovated when we moved in - not before, but while. we spent two months camping in our bedroom, the only room not affected, where we installed a Raclette grill (on which we even made our coffee/mocha), a microwave and a rice cooker... I'm also glad it's over, I hope you'll have your kitchen back soon! -
Thanks friederike. My mother will visit in June (for a high school graduation), and that is our target. Should be possible.
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Andrew: I'm thrilled that it has worked out and that you are joyful about the idea. :) It was a long overdue 'lightbulb' moment for me (!!) that was met with nothing but positive reactions.
Bye the way, Mac folks: Mastercook plans to create a Mac version in the future. Some Mac users are presently using Mastercook -- I'm not well versed on the subject. They install a windows partition? (Or something. All I know is there IS a way because there are folks doing it.)
HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY!!! THRILLED even. :) COOKBOOKER LIVES ON!
Thank you so much for everything, Andrew. And good luck in all you do in the future. You really made something awesome and useful when you made Cookbooker.
Hugs,
Brenda Badams007 (catbatty)
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I know I'm a little late here, and if this works out I will be totally happy.
However, how are our books going to fit on MasterCook? I see only room for internet recipes there. And of course you can put any single recipe on there, but I don't see an option to put existing cookbooks in. Please correct me if I'm wrong. -
My guess - and its only a guess - is that MasterCook ebooks will be featured, and perhaps be an add-on to the existing framework. At least that is my hope.
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Looking into this a bit further doesn't do much to alleviate my worries.
No forum? No search function for any recipes other than your own? How are we going to keep in touch with each other? -
I took comfort from Andrew's original comment about 'continuing to support social interaction around cookbooks.'
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Isn't it time for someone from Mastercook to say hello and tell us what they're planning?
I do share wester's worries - while Cookbooker may complement Mastercook by supplying it with reviews, I hope that it will stay independent and not become a limited component of the software. -
Hey everyone - this transition has not yet happened, so don't start getting worried yet. I have to make some hosting changes and I also want to talk to Mastercook in more detail before anything official. Right now I still run Coolbooker. My understanding is that they are planning on keeping Cookbooker as it is, then adding some stuff to the site around selling cookbooks etc. But the reason I thought they were a good fit was that they'd proposed keeping the site going. This would be a cheap side project for them. Of course I don't know what would happen down the road in the long term, but nobody has said anything about major changes to this website.
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That's great to hear, thank you!
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I will definitely keep people in the loop about changes. There has been nothing here because nothing has officially happened yet. But I will post about future developments.
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As we await changes in cookbooker, I was wondering if we could change the challenge on the home page. The NYT challenge was over long ago -- perhaps we could direct members to the thread about informal challenges, e.g. football and world peace related? That very old challenge might be a turn-off to potential new cookbookers. What do my pals here think??
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Yes, it's something I'm planning. I'm going to move Cookbooker to a cheaper host so it won't be actually costing me any money to run. When I do this, I'll strip out the articles and the challenge pages so that there's nothing old on the site that's not being updated any longer. I hope to do this before the end of summer.
What I'm thinking now is that I'll just keep Cookbooker running along as long as it doesn't need any major repairs. With a cheaper host it will be sustainable as the small amount I make from ads and Amazon recommendations should cover the cost. -
Hi Andrew, nice to hear from you. Very generous to keep it running, we love it. With the demise of 101cookbooks recipe group, there is a niche market for this site (people were grumbling about missing the 101cookbooks recipe review site on EYB, which motivated me to consider the home page from an outsider's perspective).
Is Mastercook out the picture? -
Mastercook was a bit of a dead end. I didn't hear anything else from them after the initial communication (to be honest, I didn't have much time on my end to communicate with them in the first place, so it was partly my fault) and I got the sense that this would be a low-priority side project for them. After a while, it just seemed that it would be the wrong direction. And I realized I could find much cheaper hosting than I'd been using, which took care of the money issue. Now I just have to find some time to move and edit the site!
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Andrew so happy to hear cookbooker is staying around. Happy to hear you found cheaper hosting.
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Hurrah!
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Oh my gosh!!! I am so thrilled!!! LOVE YOU, ANDREW!!! THANKS SO MUCH!!!!
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Just to update on Queezle's post, I've removed the articles and formal challenges, and put a link for members to the forum to point them to the new, informal challenges. So the site will be a bit more slimmed down. I'll move to a new server, maybe this weekend, so the site may be down temporarily, but not for long.
Onward and upward! -
Thanks Andrew!
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Excellent, Andrew, and I was so happy to see you add a book to your library.
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Great news!
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Good to hear that the site will be staying around!
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