How I created a recipe thumbnail page the easy way using Pinterest

This blog is just a place I am collecting some of the things I have learned to do along the way.  I am not an expert but have learned by trial and error and hope this will help others along their blogging journey.

This post is about the easy way I created a page showing thumbnails for all my recipes.  There are no doubt other, better, ways to do this - but this is how I did it. ( To see what it looks like go to my main blog Carole's Chatter and look at the tabs at the top - this is the link)

You will need to be registered with Pinterest.  It is free.  Then you will need to create a new board and give it an appropriate title.  I called mine Carole's Chatter Recipes. (If you want people to be able to Pin your posts, don't forget they have to have at least one reasonable sized image before they can be pinned at all)

You will then need to have a way to pin the recipes on your blog to the Pin board.  I put a pin button onto a sidebar.   You need to go to your Dashboard and then to Layout and add a gadget - the one you want is Configure HTML/Jave Script.


This was the code I used:

<a href='javascript:void((function()%7Bvar%20e=document.createElement(&apos;script&apos;);e.setAttribute(&apos;type&apos;,&apos;text/javascript&apos;);e.setAttribute(&apos;charset&apos;,&apos;UTF-8&apos;);e.setAttribute(&apos;src&apos;,&apos;http://assets.pinterest.com/js/pinmarklet.js?r=&apos;+Math.random()*99999999);document.body.appendChild(e)%7D)());'><img alt='Pin It' onclick='doPinIt();' src='http://i493.photobucket.com/albums/rr300/blogsbyheather/PinIt.png' style='margin: 0 0 0 0;'/></a>

Once you have got your pin button, then all you do is pin each of your recipes to the Pin board you have created.  But a warning - I didn't realise until later that you can't change the thumbnails around on your board later - they will appear with the first pins at the bottom and the later ones at the top.  So give some thought to the order in which you will pin your recipes.  If you want to change it later you would have to do a whole new board.

Now you are almost done.  All you need to do is to create a tab up the top or a sidebar for the place where people click to find your recipe thumbnails.  I have actually found it very useful myself when choosing recipes to link in to blog hops etc.

Once you have your tab or sidebar you just link it to the url for your Pinboard.

Don't forget to pin all your new recipes as they are posted so you keep it up to date.

Hope this is helpful

PS  I have now started creating Pinterest pages for my other top tabs.  Have done Art and Books at this stage.  I may even, over time, do boards for each Food on Friday!