Resources | The Humble Kitchen

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Hello lovelies!

Welcome to the corner of my blog where I let you in on the resources I use to create The Humble Kitchen. This page will be forever changing as I take more tumbles, get some bruises, and learn some tough lessons. If I can help you avoid them, then I’ll be happy!

Whether you want to create your own blog or are simply curious in cameras and tools I use then you’ve come to the right place. Here is where secrets are spilled and nothing is held back.

Here’s the very first secret: No matter what you choose to write about, make sure you are passionate about it! I can’t stress it enough.Whether you decide to create a food blog, health blog, hiking blog, or a blog entirely dedicated to goldfish (if you have a goldfish blog, PLEASE SHARE IT WITH ME!) you cannot go wrong as long as you’ve got passion and drive behind you.

The second secret? No matter what kind of blog you have in mind, the premise for creating it is the same. Quality content, beautiful photos, and a whole lot of patience will take you a long way.

Hold on to your keyboards ladies and gents’ its about to get techy in here. (Just for a moment, I promise. It’s not as scary as it seems!)

Bluehost: Hosting is a lot like renting an office space for your blog, and you need a large enough ‘office space’ to accomodate all your lovely readers. Too small of a host and your website crashes whenever you get a large an influx of readers (which is never good). Bluehost is amazingly affordable and offers free domain name registration, making it an easy and excellent ‘office’ space.

Netfirms: Is very similar to Bluehost, the only major difference being that with Netfirms you will be able to register a .ca domain. For that reason, Netfirms is the hosting site The Humble Kitchen is on.

Elegant Themes: I use a premium theme provider called Elegant Themes. More specifically, I use the theme aptly named ‘Extra’ to make The Humble Kitchen look boo-tiful! Extra is customizable, letting you have complete control of how your website looks and functions. Plus, it’s got a ‘visual builder’ feature called Divi so you don’t have to be a tech guru to run it. As you tweak and edit the visual builder shows you exactly how a reader would see your blog, no back and forth – no second guessing! I’ve been with Elegant Themes since the beginning and never looked back.

Free Themes For WordPress: This is a great place to start if you’re looking to create your blog without spending a lot of money right away. WordPress has thousands of free themes, but be sure to do some research and check the theme’s rating before you download it onto your blog. Try to pick themes with a four or five star rating.

Google Keyword Planner: Is a free tool for keyword research. This is one of the most important aspects of your blog. Keyword research is, in essence finding out what people are actively searching for. Targetting 1-2 keywords per blog will help improve your chances of visitors finding you.

SEM Rush: Is a massively powerful tool to help push your SEO to the next level. SEO stands for ‘Search Engine Optimization’ which is the process of maximizing the number of visitors you get to your website by ensuring your website ranks high on search engines. With SEM Rush, you can moniter your blog, find out what your competition is ranking for, what words you are ranking for, as well as having access to an above and beyond keyword planner. SEM Rush offers a few free searches a day, but if you’re serious about blogging you’ll want to purchase this valuable tool.

Long Tail Pro: Is a keyword research planner like Google Keywords. Again, targetting 1-2 keywords per blog post will help improve your chances of visitors finding you.

I know this all sounds like mumbo jumbo and can be difficult to understand, so check out my How To Start A Food Blog Step By Step. Remember though, this format can be transferred to any blog no matter the niche (so goldfish blogs hit me up!)

Askimet: Brace yourself, the spam is comming. Askimet is a trusty plugin that moniors comments for spam. This is not something you want to go without. You will not believe some of the comments it’s stopped, everything from porn to over a thousand words about cat love and youtube.

BackUpWordPress: A simple automated back up plugin. There’s nothing scarier than losing all your hard work in a blink of an eye. You don’t want to risk it. I use this plugin as well as saving a copy of each post in GoogleDocs. I nearly lost all my posts early on, luckily I was able to recover everything but needless to say this plugin was installed as soon as I got everything back. Fool me once, but not twice.

Limit Login Attempts: Just an extra measure of security. This limits the number of times someone can enter an incorrect password. The last thing you want is someone gaining access and mucking around on your blog.

Amazon Associate Link Builders: A plugin to link products from Amazon to your blog. As a result, anytime someone clicks on those links and purchases those items you recieve a small comission. Of course, only recommend products that you trust and believe in!

Getting your name out there can be tricky. How can you get people to read your work and notice you without pestering friends and family to share your website?

Besides Pintrest and Instagram, you can submit your recipes onto these websites. If you’re lucky, your recipe could be featured on the front page and as a result -potentially thousands of eager readers flocking to your blog! Some of these websites can be very picky about the images you submit, so don’t despair if you get turned down (I’ve been turned down plenty!). Keep submitting quality images at different angles or exposures and you’ll be accepted in no time!

Now for the fun part! A picture’s worth a thousand words, so say some good ones with some good quality images.

D750 Nikon Camera: This mid range camera captures amazingly sharp, full frame images. For the features you get, the price tag is fantastic for food photography.

105mm Macro Nikkor Lens: This is a super sharp, true macro lens. In my opinion it’s the best all around macro, perfect for getting up close and personal with your photos so you your viewers can practically taste the food!

50mm f/1.4 Sigma Art Lens: The new Sigma Art Series ain’t your daddy’s old Sigma lenses. Since the Art Series, the Sigma rivals and surpasses the Nikon 50mm 1.4 by far (Nikon fans, please don’t hate me!). In other words, this is the sharpest lens that I’ve ever used.

SansDisk 64GB Extreme Pro SD Memory Card: Perhaps the least fun aspect of buying camera equipment, but a necessity. This memory card has a ton of space, which is especially important if you’re shooting photos in RAW mode. If you’ve got the budget for it, it may be worth buying a couple of these.

Adobe Photoshop: Adobe Photoshop is certainly an invaluable tool for flawless images. Both Photoshop and Lightroom are available on the Creative Cloud for $99. If you’re interested, I’d suggest getting the 7 day free trial to give it a test run Essentially, it’s the most powerful software for editing images -hands down *mic drop*

Not too confident in your photography skills? No worries, I’ve got you covered.

Is a photography couple that I’ve used countless times. Their images are scattered all throughout The Humble Kitchen (Let’s be real here, over 85% of the photo’s on here are taken by them).

Elegant Images is a versatile photographer and specializes in anything from weddings, glamour, pets and perhaps my favorite…food! Shane and Natalie go above and beyond to create a good photography experience. Common photoshoots include greeting you with strawberries and champange the moment you walk through the door, letting you ride horses, or taking you high up into the mountains. P.s. They’re also pet friendly, so fido get’s to explore the farm and run like the wind!

Check out everything they have to offer at elegantimages.ca

You know what they say, sink or swim. It was actually Elegant Images who taught me the tricks of the trade, and I’m eternally grateful for it. Now I also specialize in food photography (and only food photography, let’s not get crazy up in here).

The best part? I’m only a message away!