The best Menu Editor yet

December 31, 2010 – 9:00 am

Menus are the heart, the backbone and the essence of a restaurant website. We are one decade into 21st century and it’s shocking that so many restaurant websites still post scanned pictures of pages from their printed menus or link a PDF version of their menus. Don’t they know that scanned pages from their menus are unusable and that PDF menus are plain evil? Apparently not.

Or, maybe they do know, but couldn’t find a better or more convenient way to post their menus. Anything available out there is either hard to use or they have to compromise on what and how they can include in the menu.

That’s why we set out to design and develop the best Menu Editor yet.

Hold on, that’s quite a bold claim. Yes it is, so let me back that claim up.

We have been working with dozens of independent restaurant owners that use Diningverse and we derived the new functionality and ease of use from feedback based on their experience. They told us what they liked and what they hated. What they liked, we made even better and easier to use. What they hated, we either eliminated or reworked from scratch.

The structure of the new menus is closely based on the OpenMenu™ format and there is a very good reason for that. Very soon, Diningverse is going to become one of the initial OpenMenu™ registrars (more about that later), so we have been working closely with our good friend Chris Hanscom from OpenMenu™ to make sure that our new Menu Editor is in line with OpenMenu™ format.

Diningverse will make every menu available in OpenMenu™ format and submit to OpenMenu™ to log the menus and distribute the information to a network of restaurant based websites, mobile applications and web applications. When Diningverse restaurants update their menus, everyone, everywhere, gets the update.

A little taste of what it is all about

You start with one, two or however many menus you want. You can add descriptions, set the time when the menus are available for patrons and order the menus.

Menu Editor - Menus

Then, you add sections to a menu. Craft a nice description for your sections and add section options. You know, when you have a Salads section and you want to let your patrons know what kinds of dressings they can ask for.

Menu Editor - Section

Now comes the best part. You need to add the actual menu items. The sandwiches, omeletes, soups and such. It should be easy and quick to do so… and it is!

Menu Editor - Items

Now you’ve got your menu items added. But wait, there is all kind of details about each and every menu item. There is the description, multiple sizes with different prices, various options and variations and even calories. No problem!

Menu Editor - Item Details

Alright, the menus are setup. Menu items added and tweaked to perfection. So how are the menus going to actually look like on your website?

Menu Editor - Menu on the Website

Everything is nicely positioned and meticulously styled. The website visitors will experience a kind of inner peace and pleasure while exploring your offerings. And isn’t that what you want?

Now that you checked out the screenshots, time to see it in action…

By Diningverse | Posted in Features, Milestones | Leave a Comment

Diningverse at the Curtze Holiday Food Show

November 19, 2010 – 9:03 am

This past Monday we have attended the Curtze Holiday Food Show in Erie, PA. The show took place from 11am to 4pm and was a huge success.

Diningverse booth at the Curtze show

Diningverse booth at the Curtze show

Janet Dennen and Bruce Kern from Curtze made it possible for the Diningverse team to connect with many independent restaurateurs that can really benefit from having their restaurants on Diningverse.

We had many independent restaurant owners stop at our booth and ask questions about Diningverse and how it can help them to revitalize their Internet marketing efforts. There was plenty of genuine interest in Diningverse and our message was very positively received.

Thank you, Janet and Bruce, from Diningverse team. We’re looking forward to the spring Curtze Food Show.

Curtze Holiday Food Show at Bayfront Conference Center

Bayfront Convention Center filled to the gills

By Diningverse | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

Bertrand Artigues – PRA’s Restaurateur of the Year

November 17, 2010 – 8:38 am

Congratulations to Bertrand Artigues for becoming the Pennsylvania Restaurant Association’s Restaurateur of the Year for 2010.

Bertrand is the owner and operator of Bertrand’s French Bistro in Erie, Pennsylvania, a very successful upscale french restaurant. We are happy to have Bertrand as one of our active users and would like to think that in some small way Diningverse has contributed to Bertrand’s success.

Bertrand Artigues - PRA's Restaurateur of the Year

Bertrand Artigues - PRA's Restaurateur of the Year

By Diningverse | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

The love for Diningverse is growing

November 11, 2010 – 10:53 am

Here at Diningverse we have been working very hard to give Independent Restaurant Owners (IROs) what they need to turn their websites into Internet marketing machines. At times we come up with new ideas and functionality ourselves, but majority of time it’s just listening to our IROs and fulfilling their wishes.

And guess what? It really works! We hear from more and more of our customers that they really like how Diningverse is helping to promote their restaurants on the Internet and brings new customers.

 

Electronic sign in front of McGarrey'sOne of our newest customers, McGarrey’s Family Restaurant & Pub has really embraced the mission of Diningverse beyond just promoting his own restaurant. On the left, you can see the electronic sign in front of the restaurant proudly stating that the restaurant menu is now on Diningverse.

The mission of Diningverse is to create an awareness of great local independent restaurants among the general population. The chains and franchises continue doing an amazing work to ‘outmarket’ and ‘outadvertise’ the great local dining gems.

The large chains have a clear advantage of hundreds of franchises pooling their resources to market the chain’s brand and continuously borrow their way into a consumer’s attention. That’s why, even in this down economy, the parking lots around the national chain restaurants are nearly full … all the time.

Slowly but surely, the IROs taking advantage of Diningverse are seeing the collective power Diningverse brings to the Independent Restaurant community. Just like the chain’s marketing departments, Diningverse is pooling the resources of many independent restaurants to create a force that has a true chance to compete with the chains and franchises.

So, we are very grateful for having such bright and dedicated restauranteurs on board of Diningverse and the love they have shown us as of late.

By Diningverse | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (2)

Managing and displaying your opening hours just got much easier

September 19, 2010 – 1:43 pm

It was possible to display your restaurant opening hours on Diningverse restaurant website from the moment Diningverse was born. However, it was nowhere as simple, sophisticated or versatile as right now.

Selecting and publishing your opening hours could not be easier. Just login to your Diningverse restaurant website and in the Restaurant Editor navigate to INFO → Hours. It looks something like this:

Restaurant Opening Hours management screen

…and here is what it looks like on your Diningverse restaurant website.

Restaurant Opening Hours on the Diningverse restaurant website

Setup your Opening Hours in Restaurant Editor

On the Opening Hours editing screen in Restaurant Editor you have the option to specify the opening hours for each day of a week. Check a checkmark next to a day when you’re open and specify the opening and closing time. That’s it. If your restaurant is closed on Sunday, simply uncheck the checkbox next to ‘Sun’.

Restaurant Opening Hours in Restaurant Editor - Close-up

New Feature:

We added the ability to ‘split’ hours for a day so that you can specify your morning hours and evening hours. We heard from many restaurants that they’d like to have the ability to do this since often there is a down-time after the lunch service has ended and restaurants actually close the doors to prepare for the evening crowd.

To split your opening hours for any day, simply click the ‘split hours‘ and the day will be split into 2 intervals. Now just specify the beginning and ending time for each interval.

If you no longer need to have 2 intervals for a day, just click the ‘join hour’ link and your opening hours for that day will be consolidated into one time interval.

The split hour are automatically formatted and displayed on each page of your Diningverse restaurant website.

Restaurant Opening Hours on the Diningverse restaurant website - Close up

Opening Hours formatted on your Diningverse restaurant website

Hope you enjoy this new functionality.

By Diningverse | Posted in Features, How To - for Restaurants | Leave a Comment

Create and Edit pages like a pro

September 14, 2010 – 7:47 pm

One of the most requested features is finally here. Up until now, each Diningverse restaurant website had and About page and Specials page (in addition to D’Scoop, Menus, Photos and Contact). These pages were ‘hard coded’ into the website and included the ability to apply simple text formatting but did not look anything like the final version of the pages. Here is what it used to look like:

Old content editor

It used to be difficult to add pictures and create links. Also, the 2 ‘hard coded’ pages were there whether you needed them or not. If you did not have any specials to post on your website, there was an empty Specials page on your website.

This is all now history!

The new Pages functionality in the Diningverse Restaurant Editor allows you to create and edit any pages you desire:

New pages in the Diningverse restaurant website navigation

New pages in the Diningverse restaurant website navigation

The new pages, in this case About, Specials and Catering, now have their own space in the Diningverse restaurant website sidebar.

It’s now super easy to do the following:

  1. Reorder the pages using drag-and-drop functionality
  2. Add a new page
  3. Rename the page
  4. Change the link for the page
  5. Edit content using a TRUE what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) content editor
  6. Format the content, add pictures, links, tables, etc.
  7. Delete a page if you no longer need it

Here is what it looks like in the Diningverse Restaurant Editor

Pages management in the Diningverse Restaurant Editor

Pages management in the Diningverse Restaurant Editor

Best of all, the actual edito width styles and everything else looks and behaves just like it will once you save the changes and the page is published on your Diningverse restaurant website.

Another great new feature that goes hand-in-hand with the content editor is the Hidden photo album.

Hidden photo album

Hidden photo album

You can hide/lock or show/unlock a photo album. This is very helpful if you have some pictures that you’d like to insert into pages but don’t necessarily want them to be visible on your photos page. The Misc pictures photo album above is hidden/locked so it does not appear on the website but the pictures from the album are included on the Catering page. Of course, pictures in the unlocked photo albums can be also included in the pages.

Adding a picture to a page is a snap. Just click the Browse Albums button next to the URL textbox and select a picture from one of your albums. That’s it. You can see what it looks like below.

Add pictures to your page content

Add pictures to your page content

We will post a short video showing how all this works in action and also will be posting some tips and tricks for adding links, formatting pictures and more.

Hope you like this new addition to Diningverse Restaurant Editor. Try it out!

By Diningverse | Posted in Features, How To - for Restaurants | Tags: , , , , | Leave a Comment

Get D’Scoop delivered

August 31, 2010 – 9:10 am

Through the miracle of RSS (a.k.a. XML feed) Diningverse patrons can now get their favorite local restaurant announcements, events and specials delivered as soon as they become available.

D’Scoop RSS feed is available for each local area. Adding this feed to your news reader gives you up-to-date information from all the Diningverse restaurants in the local area. Just click the RSS Feed link and add to your news reader.

Local area D'Scoop RSS feed

Patrons can also stay on top of their favorite restaurants rather than receiving updates from all restaurants in the entire local area. Just add the D’Scoop RSS feed to your news reader either on the restaurant’s home page:

D'Scoop RSS feed on the restaurant's home page

or directly on the restaurant’s D’Scoop page that has the entire archive of all D’Scoop announcements, events and specials:

D'Scoop RSS feed on the D'Scoop archive page of restaurant website

Let us know how you like this new feature.

By Diningverse | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

New and improved Picture browser

August 19, 2010 – 10:47 am

Each Diningverse restaurant website can post photo albums filled with photos of the restaurant’s exterior, interior, food and anything else they feel like showing their patrons. In the past, we had a fairly good picture browser that allowed the patrons seeing nice and large versions of the restaurant’s pictures.

Now we have a much better and sleeker picture browser in place. Easier to navigate and smoother. It even includes a built-in slide show functionality so you don’t need to keep clicking the next arrow over and over. Take a look at the video below to see how it works.

By Diningverse | Posted in Features | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment

Forget PDF … print Diningverse menus

August 13, 2010 – 8:00 am

If you occasionally read our Diningverse blog, you may have read the ‘rant’ about how PDF online menus are evil. We really feel strongly about this and that’s why we made the Diningverse menus even more printer friendly. Many restaurants like to give their patrons the opportunity to print the menus and keep them available offline. This comes especially handy for restaurants that offer catering services.

Printable menus on Diningverse restaurant websites

Printable menues built directly into Diningverse restaurant websites

Every Diningverse restaurant website has the printable version of the menu automatically built in. There is nothing special restaurant owners/managers managing their restaurant website have to do. Just fill out the text boxes for each menu item (and even upload pictures for illustration), everything will be nicely formatted for print on the website.

The printing can be done directly from any modern browser. Check out the video below to get a better idea of how this works.

Each menu also includes the restaurant name, address and phone number prominently located at the top of the menu. Is there anything else you’d like to see on a menu when you print it out? Let us know.

By Diningverse | Posted in Features | Leave a Comment

New Diningverse Toolbar

August 11, 2010 – 8:00 am

We have listened to your feedback and the result is a significantly improved Diningverse Toolbar.

New Diningverse Toolbar

Now, when you’re on a Diningverse restaurant website, it’s easier than ever to:

  • Recommend the restaurant
  • Add it one or more of your lists
  • Browse D’Scoop, restaurants, recommendation or patrons in the current dining area
  • Go back to where you started in Diningverse

Take a look at the video below to see the new toolbar in action.

Hope you like the new toolbar functionality. As always, send us your feedback on what you like and what you feel is missing.

By Diningverse | Posted in Features, How To - for Patrons | Leave a Comment
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