The WordPress Magazine

Heather Mitchell and Chris Wildman have been writing the Yorkshire Dales Food Blog for over a year.  It helps them to bring their mouth-watering local produce to dining tables across the UK and screens across the world.

I met up with Chris online to talk about how blogging is important to their online local food business, about blog promotion and WordPress.com.

Hi Chris, since we’ve got readers from across the world it’d be great if you could tell us a bit about Yorkshire.

I’m based in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales in England, in a village called Malham just outside Skipton.  A couple of major landmarks or geographical features include Malham Cove, Gordale Scar and Malham Tarn.  You can see the area on malhamdale.com.  It is a beautiful spot, gets plenty of tourists, mainly walkers.

Coming from Wales, photos of your area do remind me of home, the scenery is quite similar!  What inspired you to start blogging about Yorkshire food?

Well I have an interest in the subject, who doesn’t!  I recently started an online food business and the blog is to support that.  It’s an online farmers market called “Paganum”, which is Latin for “rural tradition”!

With Paganum Online Farmers Market you’ve smashed the traditional and the modern together, which I think is fantastic.  I’m sure there are traditionalists though who think you’re taking a lot of the point out of a “farmers’ market”.  How would you respond to that?

With a traditional farmers’ market you do get the feel-good factor of actually attending and talking to the producers, but we have found that many of the producers are not selling enough at the farmers’ market to make production sustainable.  They are always looking for additional routes to market which we can supply, we are producers as well so we can promote our own products  By turning it into an online farmers’ market we can promote lots of other local producers at the same time and create a one stop shop for when you’re not local or cannot get to the farmers’ market near you.

That’s awesome!  There’s nothing quite like chatting to producers every week, who know you and know what you like to buy, but it simply isn’t practical for many people’s lifestyles, and in many areas.

Yes that’s the point.  We also preach the local message and try to be as environmentally friendly as possible.

I saw your sheep’s-wool insulated meat packaging, that’s amazing!  Your blog is a combination of recipe ideas and your experiences eating out.  Do you prefer blogging about one more than the other?

Well I don’t exactly have a plan for the blog, it just kind of creates itself!  Some experiences from eating out, some from cooking myself and then I try and touch on a few business issues or features.  Of course I also want to write more about our fantastic producers here in Yorkshire and their products of course.

Looking through your blog as I’m chatting to you makes me want to get in the kitchen!  I love that it has a “mail order cheese” tag, that’s great.  Funnily enough no one else on WordPress.com has tagged anything with that yet.  Do you find that many people discover your blog via the tags at WordPress.com?  That’s something that self-hosted WordPress users miss out on, and I personally have very little experience with.

Yes I am amazed how quickly blog articles appear in search results both from the meta tag description and the WordPress tags, not sure how it works exactly but it does!!   I did a review of a new pub near Harrogate that Neil Morrissey has just opened and the hits have gone ballistic.

Haha, really?  I’m going to say “Britney Spears” now, just as a test for Google.

I am just trying to decide if I should self-host or leave on WordPress.com?

Someone earlier today on Twitter asked me about that, and mentioned they get a lot of traffic from the WordPress.com tags too.  I’m not sure what I’d suggest with that really.  I suppose you have to decide what portion of your traffic comes from there, and how much you want to customise your site with plugins and a wider choice of themes.

Yeah that’s the problem I am getting really into the blog now and want to add additional functionality and more widgets that are not currently available on WordPress.com

What other channels do you use to promote your blog?

I only really just started to do more promotion, obviously got a link from my main site, then I have also recently signed up for fuelmyblog.com, blogcatalog.com, foodblogsearch.com, mybloglog.com, recipemuncher.com and foodieblogroll.com.  I’m sure there are lots more out there, just not found ‘em all yet!  The site was listed today on WordPress Blogs of the Day amongst the growing list!  That’s good because I don’t have many inbound links yet.

I haven’t come across blog listing sites like that before, that’s a really good idea.  I’m sure some people are thinking I must live in a cyber black hole by now.  That’s brilliant getting on the WordPress Blogs of the Day list!  You said you’re outgrowing WordPress.com.  Which new features would you like to add there if you could?

Not so much outgrowing but looking at the options, some cool widgets that can’t be added and your own analytics for example.

Any particular widgets you’ve got your eye on?

Twitter integration - that’s how we started this conversation, on Twitter.  Also different themes and more options for layout, top posts, top friends, comments,  follow me options, Technorati, Digg, etc.  A Twitter follow me button would be good for starters!

Yes, Twitter is my “new thing”, and I’m really seeing the power of it as a networking tool.  I’m planning a Twitter special issue in the future, looking at various options for using it with your blog.  You could do a Twitter link with a text widget.  Add something like <a href="http://twitter.com/cwildman">Follow me on Twitter</a> or even replace the text with an <img> tag for an image.

I’m just trying that now!

You mention comments there.  Without meaning to sound rude, your blog seems to suffer from the same thing that many do - including WP Mag.  There are lots of visitors but relatively few commentors.  You really have the basis of a fantastic local online food community there, if you could somehow get people talking on there.  I wonder what the solution is to that?

Yes absolutely but I often think the comments areas look hidden and maybe not everyone looks at the comments?

I must admit, when I read blogs I very rarely leave comments myself.  In fact, I’ll be more likely to switch to Twitter and reply to authors on there about it.  A self-hosted WordPress would allow you to make the comments area stand out more by editing your theme.  I’d be interested to see if that had much of an effect.

I think photos are a big thing on blogs as well and some people just don’t bother or they look rubbish.  I use a couple of different cameras depending where and what I’m doing.

I agree with that.  I skimmed down looking at your delicious-looking photos before I read a word!  Your photos all look really good, is photography another big interest of yours?

Yes again I’m just picking it up as I go along, I used to do a bit with SLRs but now everything is digital so it’s slightly different, but the basics of light and composition are the same.

I like playing around with GIMP, but give me a film camera and a darkroom any day!

Yeah but with digitial results are instant and you can even go back and do it again if you don’t like it.

Yes, I admit for speed of getting things to the web using film is not entirely practical.  Do you have a favourite post on your blog that you think new readers should take a look at?

Lunch at Ye Olde Punch Bowl is very topical because of the TV show on Channel 4.  I am also wanting to do more blog posts on beer.  Real ale and small micro breweries fit in nicely with the local produce and buying direct from the producers, knowing exactly where stuff you eat and drink has come from.

Sounds idyllic!

I could talk all night about provenance of food, local food networks, seasonal food, food miles, organic (good or bad?) and sustainability of food production and supply…  Plus actually talking about the stuff itself - the black pudding terrine went down a treat with a pint of Morrissey Fox Blonde ale!

Morrissey Fox, like it.  Well, I like the name, but give me a glass of wine any day!

Really, a Welsh wino!  I would never have guessed!

Many, many people at Cardiff Uni tried to convert me you know, no luck whatsoever!

There are some really good English wines now, we even have a Yorkshire vinyard!  Wine is going to be the next big product to launch on Paganum, I’ve just sorted out the logo!

Vinyard, really?  I know we’re going off-topic here, but I can’t wait!  I could talk about sustainable food production all night too.  I encourage everyone reading to take a look at the Yorkshire Dales Food Blog, particularly if you’ve never really considered how far your food travels.  It’s an inspiring and mouth-watering read.  Chris, thanks for taking the time to talk tonight when I know you have an early start tomorrow.  If anyone has questions for you about local food, if they leave them on your blog or below this article I’m sure you’ll share your knowledge, yes?

No problem, I would love any feedback on what we are doing and how to improve and grow Paganum - thanks!