foodgawker started out as an homage to TasteSpotting (TS) when it went down. It has received great response and tremendous support from the food blogging community and food lovers in general. Now that the new owners of TS have re-launched the site, we've had a lot of encouragement to keep foodgawker up and running. So, as long you continue to submit great photos for people to gawk at, we'll continue to showcase the best food porn.
The rules for the site are simple...
To learn more about the creator of foodgawker, visit Sunday Nite Dinner (SND). If you have any questions, please use the contact form to get in touch or leave us a comment with your thoughts, ideas, recommendations. Thanks!
P.S. If you want to just gawk at amazing, mouth-watering photos, you can click - drool - repeat at Food Porn Daily! Also check out FP Daily for wonderful photos.
P.P.S. Check out the updates in the header for the latest about the site.
1) THANK YOU SO MUCH!
2) Pictures on the RSS feed, please.
my submission is being flagged as spam!?
Adding pictures in the RSS feed on the to do list. Thanks!
This is great! I was just about to go into withdrawals.
@dancingshoes I found your post and approved it.
Being a long term resident of this mad creation of society called the internet for as long as I have been, I've seen a few trends concerning what happens after a beloved website is closed down. Their fan base gets split between the clones that pop up, and they never really live up to the original.
As a lover of TasteSpotting.Com, I implore you to either be the best, or not at all. Band together with other similar websites, group up your base. Advertise. Get your name out there. Don't be shy, don't be lazy. Push.
Or that is exactly what will happen. The fan base will split, the content will dilute and lose its appeal.
Good luck and take care!
Well done on picking up the ball so quickly (seriously, so quickly) and good luck :)
many thanks for your efforts...........
Wow. Amazing! Thank you!
Aaaarrrghhhhh! Every time I try to register at Food Gawker (for the last 30 minutes), it keeps saying error. Why? Help!
THANK YOU!!!!!
Thanks you for filling a void. I will be here daily, erm, I mean several times daily!
:)
If you need any help, don't hesitate to ask.
Thank you!!!! You've brought us all much joy!
Word is quickly getting out. :) I've seen the site posted and commented about already in many places. Good Luck!
Great work, hopefully this turns into a huge success!
I love that you've started this site. However, I'm having trouble seeing the pics! I don't see that anyone else has mentioned this problem so I am guessing it's some setting I don't have enabled???? I generally don't have any such issues. I am using internet explorer. Any ideas would be appreciated. I want to see the pics!
@suzyqt1968 Can you tell me which version of Internet Explorer you are using? Goto Help --> About Internet Explorer in your browser. Thanks.
Suzy - make sure you have php and javascript enabled on your browser.
Thank you so much for doing this site!! I need my food pic's hit everyday, and it's a great way to discover other blogs.
Thanks so much!!
One more for the suggestion box: ability to search
Thanks everyone for your positive feedback! And we're taking note of all your suggestions.
@onespicymama Search box is down in the footer. I'll put in the header soon... adding to the To Do list.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for filling this much needed food porn obsession we all seem to have! And thank you so VERY much for setting down the rules so quickly. There were a lot of copyrighted photos being taken without permission before and I'm so glad you addressed this. Hopefully, people will heed your warnings this time.
Wow. I was "Foodgawker" on Tastespotting. I guess the name was so lively, you decided to use it for this website. True, I never registered it, and I'm really glad to see a similar site, but gosh, kinda weird seeing my Tastespotting name here!
(meaning I never registered it as a domain -- I was just the registered user of "Foodgawker" on Tastespotting!)
@Foodgawker Now I remember seeing your username. Maybe that's why the site name came to me so quickly... subliminal, thanks! I was surprised that it was available a few days ago. Maybe you can be the OriginalFoodgawker? ;-)
I am so grea&tful for your work.
Now i can come here and Gawk to all the delicious food
:D thank you. we are saved! blessed be food porn!
Thank you so much!
Thanks for doing this!
I forgot to say thank you so much for doing this! I'll echo what May said it's clear your computer skills is what set your site apart from the various sites that popped up to fill the void left by TS. This will be (if it's not already) a monumental task. I hope you get help vis à vis editors. Oh and one more little suggestion - could we have more entries on the front page? That way things don't get bumped off the first page too quickly. Thank you again!
Kudos for getting this up and running so quickly. Thanks for doing this!
Thank you so much for doing this site! You rock!
I'm happy to see a replacement, as Tastespotting had a daily visit from me.
I would like to see the page re-size to the window. The third column is about half off my window right now.
I'm looking forward to see how this page evolves!
@Heather The page should re-size to your window now. One caveat, we may put in a sidebar in the future which will reduce the number of posts per row. The sidebar might contain post categories... just a different way to navigate the site besides pages and search results.
If you need any help at all, please let me know! I am sooo glad to see Tastespotting's boots being filled! I have posted information about this site on my blog!
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU. Tried to go to tastespotting the other night to be inspired to wow the family with dinner and almost stopped breathing when it was closed. How was I to find the best of the best and keep my reputation up???? Thank goodness the spirit has been revived on this site. I know I speak for many who won't post that we all can breathe and cook again!
Thank you for this great undertaking! I am sure that there are many, many TS fans that are breathing a sign of relief.
Good luck and I sincerely wish you the best
As so many others have said, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU! It's wonderful to see that you've undertaken such a huge, love-filled task, and I, for one, have breathed a huge sigh of relief. TS was my addiction; I'm glad you're here to fill the void - and you're doing a great job!
I just hit this on StumbleUpon and went "YES!" Immediately I knew it was because of TasteSpotting's disappearance and now I rejoice!
Thank you!
Thank goodness someone took up the mantle and will continue in the Tastespotting tradition. I was so sad to hear of it's demise. Thanks for keeping food porn alive!!!
I am ever so happy that FOOD GAWKER exists! Thanks ever so much!
All the best!
Cheers,
Rosa
Thank you so much for doing this. Just wonderful to have another place to post our pics
xxx
Good Luck! It's great that you were so quickly able to fill the TS void. I just hope moderating doesn't suck up all your posting time.
Way to go! Thank you so much!!!
Thank you thank you thank you! Just wanted to add my appreciation for being so quick on getting this all together and good luck.
I strongly suggest pictures in the RSS!!!
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you...etc.!
Great Job.. I was having major withdrawals and you guys really stepped up to the plate and did an awesome job :) Kudos!
Wow, thanks so much! I have been missing Tastespotting dearly!!
can anyone explain what happened to Tastespotting? what kind of leagal problems did they run in to?
Thank you - I've been missing Tastespotting already!
oh thank god.
thank you so much for this site! I love it already ... I wish you success and hope for you that it also works. thank you again for doing this.
How long does it take to moderate. I have been sitting there there for a while.
Peabody
Thank you! Now if you could just bring back my Tim Russert :(
@sitdownandeat If we could bring back Tim Russert... we would. Sadly we can only re-create websites.
Thank you thank you thank you thank you!
And diddo on the suggestion to search!
Best of luck!
Thank you!! a million times over.
suggestion: reversed numbered pages. so page 1 has entry #1 and the latest entry is on the highest numbered page.
@patticakes It's already on our list of to do's. Thanks!
The obsession continues! Yay, thank you SO much for doing this. I'm absolutely thrilled.
I needed this!!!! :) Thank you
Thank you for putting this together so quickly! I've submitted a couple of things (yesterday and today) but don't see them posted yet, are they being sent to the spam folder or is there just a big queue?
i was soooooo out of sorts all weekend without tastespotting....thank you for bringing beautiful food and inspiration back into my life! wheeee!!!!!!!!!
@laylita We have a big queue right now. I believe we just approved one of your submissions and it will appear on the site in a couple of hours.
Thanks again everyone for the positive feedback. We're concentrating on moderating submissions right now and then we'll tackle site enhancements very shortly.
I just wanted to say thank you, thank you, thank you for starting this site. I discovered Tastespotting recently and became addicted instantly. I was absolutely stunned when it suddenly shut down, and completely crushed. When I saw a post about this site on Joy the Baker I immediately clicked on the link to check it out, and I can't tell you how happy I was to see what was here. It looks great, and my addiction to drooling over great food pics and finding recipes and blogs is being fulfilled again. So, thank you, thank you, thank you, and good luck. :)
Thanks, you guys are the best! Have linked back to you x
Great JOB at picking up the ball so quickly & for beating us to the punch. We were brainstorming this weekend about doing the same thing. Can't live without our daily dose of food!
Now, how do I get out of your SPAM? My submissions are kicking messages about spam.
@chezus Thanks! We knew we had to move fast, because people missed their food porn!
I see your submissions in the queue... they are not marked spam.
Thank you for supporting my addiction to food blogs.
Good to know - I got a couple error messages bounced back so I was not sure what was going on - I imagine, you are getting major overload from all of us "foodies"!
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You absolutely need 3 features:
1. Images in RSS Feed (but I suppose you are already working on this)
2. A visible visitor counter (to attract even more bloggers, as they see how many people not only submit images, but also watch and click and swoon over yummy stuffs)
3. A rating feature, because people love competition (Tastespotting had a clickable rating-star in the corner of each photo)
I checked so far the already 4 or 5 other Tastespotting clones, but this page is the most close to the original and best working as a (hopefully temporary) replacement. The others do not seem to want to replace it temporarily, they just seem to jump on the bandwagon...
Great work and keep going :)
How about a donations button? If you need to sell ad space, so be it, but I for one would donate to keep this alive and running.
Thank you for filling the big hole that Tastespotting left on the web. I wish you all the best.
I always wanted to be able to mark favorites with Tastespotting and would love if registered Fod Gawker users were able to mark favorite entries into a favorites list they could view under their user name. Also it could be marked on each entry how many users had marked it as a favorite so the blogger who wrote it could feel extra gratitude.
I'm so impressed with how quickly you put together this site. So far it's doing great as the next Tastespotting. Thanks!
Just a thought, is there a 'one picture submitted per post' rule? If the answer is that it's all at your discretion then sweet as, it's just sometimes I manage to have two decent photos in one post ;)
Otherwise, loving what you've done so far :)
Thank you
so, so, soooooooooooooooooooooooooo much. Love this already. suze x
Thanks for all the positive feedback and suggestions. We definitely have plans to enhance the site and we're taking all your suggestions into consideration!
Regarding images in the RSS feed, that's my first priority tomorrow morning (Tuesday). Wish me luck!
@Laura we do have a one picture/post/submission rule, especially if it's pictures of the same dish. Sorry.
I liked the weekly roundup and the random selection. I would hope for a one picture per post. Thanks for getting this up so quickly. The other day I had a tray of peaches, and no Tastespotting to turn to to drool over recipes!
Thanks a lot! You're looking good!
How do I check on my submissions? I went to the page, but there was no option?
Just when I was afraid I had to get my job done instead of drooling all the time on TS in my working hours... you guys come along... THANK YOU SO MUCH!! I'm not ironical, you're doing a great job!!
I have to log out and log in again to find the list of past and pending submissions. Could we get a link to that page somewhere? Perhaps in the top, where Register and Logout are?
Thanks!
Thank you so much for putting up this site so quickly. You have filled the void!
I totally love this site and will put a link in my blog. :)
I'm really confused where my submissions went. I made two submissions last night. Neither are up on foodgawker, and neither of them seem to be listed under my submissions. Sorry if I'm not being patient enough and causing more work! Keep up the fantastic job!
@trufflupagus The registration/profile integration with the site is admittedly cludgy right now. It's on our list of things to improve.
And to everyone else regarding the "Your Submissions" page, we'll have to fix the copy on that page. Only approved submissions will appear at this time. We'll look into providing a true status on this page.
I submitted a post yesterday, but didn't see in the page.
Just saying it that is all. I read your comment saying there is a big que.
Thankyou again.
Sorry for the downtime and slowness. Our hosting provider (Media Temple) is having some network issues.
And to give everyone a sense of the submission volume, we've had 600+ submissions, 450+ moderated and 260 approved so far, which is a 58% acceptance rate. Thanks for all the support and interest!!!
Now I need to get back to adding images into the RSS feed... I'm very close!
You have saved my life!!
Thank you for taking this on. I must admit I was at a bit of a loss when I discovered tastespotting had posted its farewell note. A sad day! It brings all of us food obsessed bloggers great hope and joy to see your new site up so quickly.
I've noticed that some of the submissions are from days, months and even years past. Is this something that you want to encourage? I'll stick to current material unless you give the word to do otherwise.
Thanks again!
@zoebakes We prefer your latest posts, but if you have a great recipe with a beautiful photograph, we'll gladly take it too.
Excellent! Thank you for offering a great site and having customer support. You are the complete package.
Thank you for getting this up and running so fast! Much appreciated!
Thank you for this :)
What Rose said. [G]
I stumbled onto your site when Tastespotting went down.
As disappointing as that was, I'm tickled that you've taken on the endeavor of providing all of us (incurable) foodies with a place to see other bloggers' work.
Thank you for all the effort you've put into this.
I have a question. I am trying to resize my pictures to conform to your 200kb maximum size but they come out very, very, very distorted if I do this. Do you have any tips for resizing without losing the quality of the photograph or any suggestions? I have tons of beautiful pictures from my blog but can't seem to submit them because of the size restrictions. Thanks again for creating this site!
thank you so much for doing this! you have no idea how excited we all are! i am not sure that my submissions are working correctly, as I have submitted several different times and still do not see the photos. maybe my submissions are getting spammed or something? thanks again :)
@cacahuete We have recieve your submissions but unfortunately they were not approved.
All blog owners and submitters, check out my latest comment in the update (see header).
Thank you so much FOOD GAWKER! It would seem that you don't have monkeys on qualudes judging submissions. I like that!
KyotoFoodieのPeko
This is my favourite food blog. Better than ALL the rest by MILES! Thank you so much; keep up the fantastic work.
Lovely that you're doing this...Question: I had a widget on our blog that showed a scroll of pictures from Tastespotting. Any plans to do this? Would love to put this on my blog again!
cheers
La Maison Sacre
First, thank you for taking the time to do this. I LOVED Tastespotting.
Secondly, I happy to help with your endeavor in any way, just email me.
Hopefully, some of my pics will make it up, until then I will enjoy everyone elses! I'm seeing people asking about whether their submissions have "gone to spam", I'm going to assume mine were just not approved and keep trying! My squirel powered camera is a little grainy, I should really upgrade to the beaver model.
Thank you again for this, YOU ROCK!
The Urban Eater
absolutely magnificent! but question: now that tastespotting is coming back, what do you plan to do with this site, and the amazing submissions?
@jasmine We saw the tastespotting note earlier. Until TS officially comes back online, we plan on going strong. And if there's support to keep the site up, we will.
@La Maison Sacre Per your request, we created a widget (see above) that displays our latest posts. Thanks in advance for adding it to your blog!
I adore this site and well done you. So big so quick. Lovely to see.
But please, 1 question.
I have submitted many pics and only had 1 up, the rest, I have found in submissions to say *I don't have permission to use the default form from Wordpress.* What that about please? I think its the same form I used for the coffee cake (pic 134)
Please email me the answer as I am a little bit dumb on the P.C.
Thank you again.
Pink Bytes.
@pink bytes The "don’t have permission to use the default form from..." message and the form on your submission page is confusing. It's a strange little feature in our system and we have removed the redundant form and other messages on the "Your Submissions" page. The only items that should appear now are your approved posts and posts in the moderation queue.
Thanks for visiting the site and submitting your pictures!
Thank you for the quick reply.
Will try submitting again soon. P.B.
Pictures are still not showing up correctly in the feed.
Here is an example of how the URL for the picture is being formatted:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/images/1142/mojito%20jelly3b.jpg
This, is the ridiculously long URL to the actual photo on the site:
http://foodgawker.com/scripts/cropper.php?src=/images/1142/mojito%20jelly3b.jpg&h=250&w=250&zc=1&q=97
It really needs to be a bit simpler than this to work in the feed.
Please, please, please fix this.
@spork We are aware of the issue for the images in the feed, but it's not an issue with the image URL. We quickly added the images to the feed earlier this week and it unfortunately was our plan C option.
The issue you are probably seeing in the feed is weird resizing of the image. We plan on implementing a proper fix for the feed images when we enhance our submission process, which we are currently working on. Thanks for the feedback.
Update: Implemented another fix to the RSS images. Going forward, you should see the same image in the feed as you do on the site. There shouldn't be any odd resizing behavior now. You might see distorted images from older posts in your feed reader, but it's due to their caching of old images.
This is awesome! The images are now working correctly.
Good job!
I have posted a tiny review of your site in my blog:
http://soporificsatire.blogspot.com
Feast for Your Eyes (only!)...
I have planned to post links to one interesting site everyday. In the first of this series, is a site called Food Gawker
The subject is plain and simple: Pictures of food stuff. Not any ordinary pictures but aesthetically photographed, guaranteed .....
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Request - something that we can put on our blogs to promote Food Gawker!!
@mamabear There's a widget at the top, right of this page that you can place on your site. It shows the last 12 posts. Just click on "Get Widget."
Tastespotting is back online - any updates about what will change or not change here???
I would opt for keeping both, but I do not know if this is (legally) possible?
@litsa We plan on staying around and enhancing the site as long as people continue to submit great photos!
You've done a fantastic job of getting this site up and working well. Please stick with it! :)
If you keep posting I will be here. Tastespotting had a tendency to only post the same people all the time .... no variety. So far, we have loved FG.
What is your criteria? I and a few others find it difficult to get pics posted here even when they have been published on TS.
@Rhyleysgranny Our FAQ page addresses our criteria for selecting submissions. Specifically...
What's your criteria for accepting submissions?
My submissions never appear on the site, why?
Although, we have a set criteria for reviewing images, it is still a subjective process for our editors. And since we have different editors than TS, different pictures will be accepted on foodgawker.
We hope that answers your question and we truly appreciate everyone's submissions.
Thanks so much for creating this website while Tastespotting was down!
Even if I do not like seeing my photos not accepted, I absolutely admire your high standards, this keeps the page worth visiting! It would be no use to lower the standards and then see those good photographers disappear to more professional pages...
Nevertheless I would really, really appreciate, if you could add a few hints (as a personal message) why the picture was not accepted (if humanely possible, I do not know if you are able to manage this out of time/manpower limitations). Like "picture looks like cropped correctly, but was actually too small and not accepted by our software" or "nice picture, but the post is not food related or lacking a recipe" or "image is not bright enough" or "photo is too focused on a dull subject" or "picture is artistically interesting, but not acceptable for a food portal" etcetc... You know, some not so perfect photographers would like to learn and improve their skills too, and maybe have no idea what was actually wrong ;o)
I find myself liking this site better than tastespotting! It looks better and with the categories added, made it easier to find something I'm in the mood to gawk at! Thanks and keep the pretty pictures coming!
@Bella Thank you!
@Litsa We hate saying no to submissions, but as you mentioned the high standards is what makes the site. One of our goals is to help the foodgawker community improve their food photography and styling skills. As far as your request, we having something planned that will hopefully address it. Just give us a few weeks to develop it.
In the mean time, we just added this FAQ...
Do you have any tips to improve my food photography and styling skills?
hi! i love your site! i have a random suggestion/question: can you make it so the favorites page shows the pictures instead of just a list?
thanks and keep up the good work!
@learningtocook Absolutely! It's already on our to do list. We hope to have pictures in My Favorites within the next 2 weeks. Thanks for gawking!
thank YOU for being awesome!
Did something happened? I couldn't access this website for 3 or 4 days, but it's okay now!
Bella, I'm glad it's back for you. The only thing we did was move the site to bigger, better servers on Sunday night. So it took a few hours for the new IP address to propagate across all the domain name servers (DNS) across the Internet that resolve web addresses. Sometimes, it takes longer than normal to propagate across all DNSs.
[...] is a shame but part of the modern world we live in and although they seem to have flagged in their T&C’s that no infringements will be tolerated but although I am unable to compare to [...]
thank you for this wonderful endeavor. this is my new fav foodie website. i check it out multiple times a day while deciding what to make for dinner, or planning upcoming meals. your efforts are appreciated!
Hello. I am so excited about the new feature updates! I've submitted two that I didn't get to see on the site...it's so nice that you've added a new feature which will e-mail us if our photos are accepted or not. Thank you.
Please help! I can no longer find the submission form! Thanks.