Wholesome Cook
Guides and How Tos

The Best Recipe Plug-in Every Food Blogger Should Use

If you want a recipe plugin that HAS IT ALL then WP Ultimate Recipe is the plugin for you. Here are 7 reasons why you should consider the change and why I am so glad I did and some additional tips to help you set it up quickly and smoothly. 

Importing from an existing recipe plugin is easy!

I was using Easy Recipe Plus but I’ve found that over time it became limited in what I needed it to do – the biggest hurdle: helping an international audience make the most of my recipes.

Swapping over to WP Ultimate Recipe was as easy as importing the content over on the live site. The process may seem a little slow as you have to click import for each recipe in the dialog box (you can stop it and go back to it at your convenience), but because the ingredients are visible during that step, it gave me the ability to update a few spelling and formatting errors and ingredients across the board. The import will not convert recipes which include 2 recipe cards in a single post. Older posts that did not use a plug in, will also need to be checked manually (I am still working through some of them).

The import function is included in the paid version US$79), or can added to the free version, but boy the paid plug in is so worth it because it packs a real user-friendly punch elsewhere.

Supported recipe imports include the following plug-ins: Cooked, Easy Recipe, Recipe Card, ReciPress, Yummly, Ziplist, plus XML and FDX.

5 Tips to Avoid Confusion

1. The import will not convert recipes which include 2 recipe cards in a single post. Any older posts that did not use a plugin, will also need to be done or checked manually. 2. You might wonder where all your posts have gone after completing the import – this could give you a freak out – but don’t worry, they simply live under Recipes now, yet the entire posts including the recipes within them. 3. Make sure to add cups (metric) and cups (imperial) to the Unit Conversion > Unit Systems. This way your recipes will not confuse the presence of cups with the units being imperial. 4. Make sure to update your Top Posts widget, if you have one, to know pick Recipes in the line up instead of posts. 5. Make sure you tick Recipes as a category in your search widget so that those can be indexed as well.

User-generated unit conversion from metric to imperial

Running a blog means that many of your international readers are probably frustrated with only the metric measurement option on your recipe cards and quickly leave in search for a better alternative. Queue WP Ultimate Recipe – with a click on a button you can set an automatic conversion from metric to imperial, or vice versa. Amazing and so perfect.

User-generated serving size/ingredient amount adjustment

So, you recipe serves 4 but I’m cooking for 3. Instead of dragging out the calculator and going back to high school math to figure out the amounts of ingredients, readers can simply set the number of servings right within the recipe card and voila! They know exactly how much of each ingredient they’ll need. Smart.

Ability to customise the recipe card templates

The default recipe card template is pretty good already and that’s what I’m currently using, but WP Ultimate Recipe lets you change everything about the layout and the design – colour, font, size, picture preview, printing preferences and more.

Nutritional panels with each recipe

If I had a dollar for every email someone sends me asking if I have a nutritional breakdown for my recipes, I’d be holidaying in the Bahamas every year. With WP Ultimate Recipe you have the ability to add nutritional panels to each and every recipe. You might have to go back and do it for all your imported recipes or start from the next recipe post. That’s what I’ll be doing.

It’s Google Recipe Search optimised

Straight out of the box, the plugin is optimised to show your recipes in the Google recipe search. No glitches. No hassles. No tinkering, it’s all done for you and what a blessing that is.

Create Meal Plans, Shopping List and more

There are other features like Meal Plans (which I am yet to fully explore) and the ability for readers to generate shopping lists from a number of recipes and with serving size adjustments.

This post contains affiliate links – this helps to keep this blog running. x

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.