Welcome to A Beautiful Plate: A Fresh Start for Your Culinary Journey!

The moment has finally arrived! My heart is pounding with excitement, and it feels like I’ve been running on pure adrenaline for weeks. After months of anticipation, I’m absolutely thrilled to pull back the curtain and share this incredibly special secret that I’ve been keeping close for the past three months.

What you’ve known and loved as Blogging Over Thyme has undergone a transformative rebranding and is proudly relaunching as A Beautiful Plate. This isn’t just a simple name change; it’s a complete revitalization! We’re kicking off 2016 with a brand new name, a fresh tagline, and an entirely new look and feel. Get ready for a monumental start to the year!

When I first launched this blog back in 2010, I had no idea of the incredible journey it would lead me on over the next five years. From that pivotal day, this space has grown into so much more than I ever imagined. It inspired me to enroll in culinary school and ultimately transform this passion project into my dream career. More importantly, this platform has allowed me to forge amazing connections with a vibrant community of readers and fellow bloggers, which has been truly invaluable.

The name Blogging Over Thyme will always hold a deeply sentimental place in my heart – and yes, please continue to share those delightful thyme puns with me! However, I am beyond excited for the immense possibilities that this new name and refined focus will bring, both creatively and professionally. It feels like I’ve truly ‘put on my big girl pants’ and stepped into a more mature, focused vision. A Beautiful Plate perfectly encapsulates my core passion: sharing simple, yet exquisitely beautiful recipes. This involves everything from celebrating the inherent beauty of real, wholesome food, to discovering innovative ways to present everyday ingredients, and of course, sharing my profound love for the art of food photography.

Seamless Transition: Important Housekeeping Notes for Our Valued Readers

To ensure a smooth transition and a delightful experience on our new site, please take note of a few important administrative details:

• Links: Rest assured, all your existing links, including every single recipe link you’ve saved or shared, will automatically redirect from www.bloggingoverthyme.com to our new home at www.abeautifulplate.com. We’ve worked hard to make this transition effortless for you. If, by any chance, you encounter any technical hiccups or discover a broken link today or in the coming weeks, please don’t hesitate to reach out! Your feedback is incredibly valuable, and it will earn you my eternal gratitude.
• Social Media: In alignment with our new name and fresh design, all of our social media handles have been updated. If you are already following us on Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, or Facebook, you will seamlessly continue to follow A Beautiful Plate. Our new, universal handle across most platforms is @abeautifulplate, making it easier than ever to find and connect with us!
• Email/RSS Feed: For those of you subscribed via email or RSS, there’s absolutely no action required on your part. Your subscription will automatically update to reflect the new blog (in fact, you should have received this very post in your inbox or feed!). You don’t need to re-subscribe or adjust any of your preferences.

A Brand New Look: Elevating Your User Experience

Beyond the new name, we’re unveiling a completely fresh and sophisticated design (including an amazing new mobile view!) packed with incredible features designed to enhance your experience. For the past three months, I’ve had the distinct pleasure of collaborating with the exceptionally talented Lindsay Landis of Purr Design – truly one of the best in the business. Together, we’ve poured our hearts into bringing about these exciting changes to this digital space. I warmly invite you to take your time and explore every corner of the new site (I highly recommend viewing it on a desktop to truly appreciate its full glory), navigate through the intuitive menus, discover the sidebars, and simply familiarize yourself with all that A Beautiful Plate has to offer.

Key Enhancements for an Elevated Culinary Journey:

50% Less Ads + Faster Loading Times: A Commitment to Your Experience

• My absolute top priority throughout this entire re-branding process was to significantly reduce the number of advertisements you encounter. While ads, unfortunately, remain a necessary component to help sustain and support the ongoing creation of content for the blog, I made a steadfast commitment to improve your browsing experience. This new site now proudly displays half the number of ads compared to our previous setup. This deliberate reduction will not only result in noticeably faster website loading times, ensuring you spend less time waiting and more time cooking, but it will also provide a far more enjoyable and significantly improved user experience overall. Cheers to a more streamlined and focused culinary exploration!

Revolutionary Recipe Index + Powerful Search Functions: Find Your Perfect Dish Faster

• Another incredibly exciting and impactful feature of the new site is our significantly improved recipe index, easily accessible by clicking on the ‘browse recipes’ link in the main navigation menu. I’ve personally dedicated tens of hours to meticulously re-indexing, re-categorizing, and re-tagging every single recipe in the archives. The goal was to make these categories as logical, comprehensive, and user-friendly as humanly possible. Even I, the creator, often struggled to efficiently find specific recipes on the old site, so this was a crucial overhaul.
• On this dynamic new page, you now have the power to search for recipes with unprecedented ease. Filter by broad category or specific subcategory, search directly by ingredient to utilize what’s in your pantry, or even browse recipes by season to make the most of fresh produce! This makes it simpler than ever to find a recipe that perfectly suits your dietary needs, your current cravings, or whatever ingredients you happen to have on hand.
• The best part of this enhanced system? When you click on any category, you are immediately taken to a beautifully designed page featuring a visual recipe index, allowing you to browse delicious dishes at a glance.

Clean + Functional Navigation Menus: Intuitive Browsing Made Easy

• The entire navigation menu system has received a complete and thoughtful makeover! The main navigation is now strategically dedicated exclusively to recipes and their categories – a feature I absolutely adore for its clarity and efficiency. It’s designed to be exceptionally clean, straightforward, and highly functional. You can effortlessly search for recipes by diet type (think vegetarian, gluten-free, dairy-free, and more) or by season, allowing you to tailor your cooking to your lifestyle and what’s fresh.
• While there are many recipe categories beyond what’s featured in the main menu (such as side dishes, drinks, or sandwiches), we’ve prioritized the most commonly searched categories to be front and center for quick access. The most user-friendly aspect? Simply hover over a main menu page, and a convenient dropdown will appear, allowing you to quickly and precisely narrow down your search. Looking for a dinner recipe? Just hover over the ‘dinners’ menu tab, and you’ll discover almost any type of dinner recipe imaginable, including quick weeknight dinners, healthier dinner options, and many more specific choices.

New Top Menu: Your Gateway to Beyond Recipes

• For those instances when you’re seeking content beyond recipes, you’ll now find it neatly organized in our new top menu. This provides an easy and accessible link to a variety of valuable pages, from my extensively re-categorized old culinary school posts (a journey many of you followed!), to essential ‘about’ and ‘contact’ pages. We’ve also added an exciting new travel page, inviting you to explore my adventures and culinary inspirations from around the world!

Updated Recipe Formatting + ‘Tips for Success’ Feature: Cook Like a Pro

• The presentation of our recipes has been elevated with a beautiful new two-column design, making them easier to read and follow. And for ultimate convenience, the ‘print recipe’ button allows you to effortlessly print any recipe directly from the site using your browser or mobile device, perfect for keeping a physical copy handy in the kitchen.
• But that’s not all – I’ve also introduced an exciting new Tips for Success recipe feature. This dedicated section will provide invaluable insights and guidance, covering everything from specific ingredient recommendations and crucial cooking techniques, to expert styling and presentation tips. Consider it your secret weapon to elevate your dishes and impress your guests. Double cheers to that for a truly comprehensive cooking resource!

Easy to Find Subscribe Options: Stay Connected on Your Terms

• Staying connected with A Beautiful Plate has never been easier or more flexible. You’ll now find a variety of prominent and accessible ways to subscribe to the blog, ensuring you receive updates exactly how you prefer. You can sign up for my newsletter and choose to receive either immediate notifications for new posts or a convenient weekly e-newsletter digest summarizing all the delicious content. Right below these options, you’ll also find the choice to seamlessly add the blog to your existing Bloglovin’ or Feedly subscription lists. We believe in providing options that cater to everyone’s preferred way of following their favorite food blogs!

Curated Recommendations + Smart Related Posts: Deeper Culinary Exploration

• If I’ve utilized a specific kitchen tool that I adore, or a hard-to-find ingredient that could significantly enhance your cooking, and I believe this information would be beneficial to you, I will now be providing easy links and detailed information for these items directly below recipes from here on out. I absolutely love this visual feature, because often times, I’ll discover and order specialty items online and genuinely want to share my findings and recommendations with all of you!

• Remember those automatically generated suggestions for ‘related posts’ at the bottom of my old posts? Let’s be honest, those were often far from ideal. Half the time, the suggested posts weren’t related at all, as they were unfortunately randomly generated. I’m thrilled to announce a new related posts feature that empowers me to hand-select and curate recipes that are actually similar and genuinely relevant to the post you’re currently viewing. You’ll find these thoughtful suggestions prominently displayed at the bottom of each post. Simply click on the image or the recipe name, and that recipe post will open seamlessly in a new tab. It’s that easy to continue your culinary exploration!

New (Straight-Forward) Social Media Handles: Unified and Easy to Remember

• Moving forward, you can now consistently find and connect with me across virtually all social media platforms under the unified handle: @abeautifulplate. (The only current exception is Facebook, where I’ll be continuing to post on my old page until Facebook processes the merger of my pages – hopefully very soon!). This streamlined approach makes it simpler than ever to follow along with all the delicious updates and behind-the-scenes glimpses!

Most importantly, a heartfelt thank you to each and every one of you for being here, for your unwavering support of this site, and for sharing in my immense excitement with this significant evolution. I sincerely hope that you cherish the new look and the new name of A Beautiful Plate as much as I do! Your continued presence and engagement mean the world to me.