The entire team at Rouxbe would love feedback. How are we doing? What can we do better? Oh... by the way, here's your team:

http://rouxbe.com/team

When using the forum (thank you for adding this important tool), I found it difficult to navigate. The breadcrumb on the left don't function like normal breadcrumb systems. If I want to return to the Support & Feedback section, I have to click the Forums link and then navigate back into the Support & Feedback section. The Support & Feedback section should be a link as well!

I'll have them comment. Appreciate the feedback.

the only thing missing is fullscreen or maybe double size option

I love this site, really I do. I've used it many times and I got it from a Metrokitchen purchase I made, otherwise I would have never found it. I have been touting your site for weeks now to friends and colleagues. I think you are missing some basic additions that I am sure your developers could create (btw, I'm a systems architect). So here are some suggestions:
1. Categorize your recipes and do some trending to find out what users visit while looking at certain recipes, that way when I find a recipe I like, Rouxbe can tell me what other people liked as well so that I could get a suggestion on another recipe.
2. Difficulty: Tell me up front how hard this recipe is to pull off, also, suggest other recipes with the same difficulty that I might also like to try.
3. Improved Search: Give me some other ways to search for recipe's, how about by style? Or cuisine? What about an ingredients search (ie: I've got 2 onions, some milk and a chicken breast, what can I make?) that would be cool, and fairly simple to create for your devs.
4. I can't select a state within the US as my location? It defaulted me to Alberta, even after I selected the United States as my country.
5. Recommended Hardware: Tell me what knives and other accessories go well with a recipe, and work with online eTailers to recommend certain ones. Say I commented on 5 recipes that would require a garlic press, or a microplane... you should suggest that I buy one to make my life easier.

That's all I can think of for now. BTW, this site is awesome.
-Paul

There are some terrific conversations going on in the Rouxbe forums. I'd love to be able to bookmark or watch certain topics (without posting to them first). Ideally, it'd be great to have these bookmarks accessible from the MyRouxbe dashboard.

One such example of a thread I'd bookmark would be http://rouxbe.com/community/forums/7/topics/398

Is there a way to do this that I have not noticed?

Thanks everyone for your feedback again. I'm adding these suggestions to our development plan. Karen, there is no way at present to bookmark a topic (or subscribe) by My Rouxbe integration is coming.

would it be possible to add "bookmarks" to the drill-downs? I have found some wonderful information there, but tend to forget about it...then I can't remember where i found the information. My brain does need some work, but in the mean time, a way to bookmark favorite drill downs would be great.

Karen H: As you can see, you can now permalink forum comments.

Dave G: You can now link back in Forums that have multi-levels (breadcrumb). See here: http://rouxbe.com/community/forums/16

Christopher R: full-screen is on our wish list too. One day you will see it.

Linda C: Great idea. This is on our radar and will happen as well.

Paul R: Improved categorization, difficulty levels and global search enhancements are high on our list of priorities. As for selecting a state, this is a minor bug. If you select the country and then save, you can then select a state. Hardware information is coming as well, but not in the very near future. I agree, this is very important. However, everything you see in our store is highly recommended by Rouxbe. We don't use anything we don't believe in and don't accept any product placement $'s from suppliers. Never will. But you will see products linked directly to recipe sometime soon.

Cheers Everyone!
Joe

A Rouxbe iPhone app would be something great to have.

Would definitely love the ability to browse the recipes and watch them on the iPhone - be very handy to have the iPhone in the kitchen with you while following along with a recipe.

Plus I like the idea of been able to brush up on some of the cooking school lessons without needing to be tied to the computer.

I know it would be a lot of work, but I was just curious to see if it's something you have given any thought to.

Hi Benjamin:
Creating an iPhone App or even making Rouxbe more mobile-friendly is definitely something we all want to do at Rouxbe. As you correctly mentioned, it is a fair amount of work and our team is currently focused on other web-centric features.

However stay tuned, and hopefully we will get to the mobile wishes a bit later as well.

Till then, you can follow us via Twitter (username: rouxbe), or also use our xml feeds to get pinged when we have new content.

I am confused as to where to post. To the Forums or the Blogs?
They seem to be somewhat redundant.
A clarification of what to use when would be helpfull.

Hi Donald, I think that some of your confusion is my fault. I thought your forum post about "food books" was so good that I decided to do a blog about it and now there is quite a discussion about this on the blog post.

Generally the forum and the blog are separate and therefore so are the answers/post or responses.

Sorry for any confusion. Feel free to ask anymore questions you may have, I am here to answer them.

First of all congratulations to a great cooking site. I'm loving it more and more with every successfully cooked recipe.

When searching through all recipes it would be nice to be able to filter by time to prepare the dish. Sometimes I don't have much time and would like to search for a quick meal.

We are working on dramatically improving our search, and this will be one of the things.

Thanks for the suggestion and keep up all the great cooking! :-)

Dear Dawn T
Thank you for that absolutely wonderful chocolate chip cookie recipe! I had been searching for a recipe that would yield just the right texture; crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside. This one is perfect! Thanks again for ending my search! You rock!

I love to cook. I am in no ways a chef but I enjoy experimenting. I am so happy to have found ROUXBE. I look forward to the many recipes and I will for sure purchase the life time membership.

First off, I would like say I absolutely love this site. However, for the past few months I didn't bother registering. Now, I've had my fair share of websites, being in the web application development line. To me, the impression I had from the homepage was this is a regular video recipe site. Instead of instructional cooking videos, recipe videos were placed on the homepage. And even that was confusing due to the lack of title and/or description of the video recipe. The overall feel of the homepage just doesn't compel me as a first time visitor to move forward and explore the site.

IMO, the mentioned issues can be fixed by having more instructional based content in the home page; e.g. a few blocks, each listing the latest/most popular instructional videos, drill downs and recipes. More content up front would definitely prompt me to move forward rather than have me click the links to other section of my own volition.

Also, there seem to be lack of information regarding the membership system. I would be more likely to register if I know that by registering I would get a 30 day trial paid membership and access to all the instructional videos and such. Besides that, there isn't any info on paid membership either. The homepage come across as rather mysterious and elusive when it should be straightforward and inviting.

I hope my comments are taken constructively because I really would like to see this site succeed. Before I part, I would like to share some helpful links in regards to homepage design:
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/homepagegoals
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20020512.html
http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000212.php

Hope I don't come of as a being critical :)

I'd have to echo Sam's comment about the homepage. When I came here I thought it was "just" a recipe site, albeit a very cool one. Believe it or not, it wasn't until I saw Sam's post here that I was compelled to sign up and check out the cooking school, which is excellent.

Of course, my original interest in rouxbe.com was not because of the content but the interface (I am trying to do similar video-based instruction for music on our site, toneway.com). But now that I know what's on here, I may even get a membership. Either way, now I'm excited to try omelets again after watching the video! :-)

Thanks both for your comments. I responded to Sam via email but will post some of my note here for all to read:

We are in the process of re-working the home page to reflect a shift in our positioning. In fact, it's not really a shift, but rather a reflection of our desired intent from day 1 (three years ago).

As we live in a very recipe-driven world, we new we had to create some compelling recipe content up front to capture initial interest. Skill & technique videos and the Rouxbe Cooking School were always going to be our driving motivation as we all know at Rouxbe that you cannot learn to cook through recipes. In cooking school, recipes are only used to practice technique (note: I'm a professional chef by background as is Dawn Thomas - co-founder - and our partners at Northwest Culinary Academy).

From here, we were then going to develop short technique videos (Drill-downs) and then from Drill-downs to the Rouxbe Cooking School. Well it took some time to execute, but you can see a great example here:

http://rouxbe.com/recipes/1544/preview

In short, expect a relaunch soon including this repositioning. We will also be position the Rouxbe Cooking School and Technique content upfront with recipes lower in priority. We are not a recipe site. We are the perfect compliment to every recipe resource out the (book, web, or TV).

Are there any plans to add a course on nutrition/nutritional analysis?

Just want to express interest in an iPhone app! Thanks!

Thanks for your interest. Might help drive us there faster. Hang on.

I just learned of Rouxbe - now that the school year is almost over. Hope that for next year there will be more techniques lessons, groupings by cuisines, groupings by ingredients.... as well as the ability to put together "lessons" into a folder or play list or something so that I can present a lesson on say poultry, then appropriate drill downs with a recipe demo etc. with out having to jump around the site while in class - especially if I have to do the same lesson 3 times that day in a short period while trying to keep the attention of high school students! Really great potential as the information is very accurate and concise. A little dry / monotone for teenagers?? I'll find out tomorrow in class. Wish me luck.

Hi,

I wanted to say that I am very much enjoying the sight. I also wanted to ask if you could tell me when the pork, lamb, soups, fish, etc., sections in the cooking school section will be available. Ok, thanks again.

SG