I’ve compiled a list of some of THE MOST useful resources for food bloggers that have helped me build my blog. If you’re looking to start your own blog you can head to my ‘How to Start a Blog‘ page for a quick walk-through on how to set up your own self-hosted blog using SiteGround.
Disclosure: Some of the following links are affiliate links. This means that should you click on a link and make a purchase, I will receive a commission. Please know that I only recommend these products because I use them myself and find them to be high quality. Let me know if you have any questions!
The Look
The Genesis Framework allows you to quickly and easily build your website to your exact specifications. The guys at StudioPress also offer tonnes of support and tutorials to help you get it set and up and customized. You can also install a theme (there are over 60 to choose from) which will give your blog the exact look and feel you’re looking for. I use the FoodiePro Theme.
Essential Plugins and Tools
Akismet
Spam is the worst, not just for you but for your readers as well. Akismet filters the comments you receive, getting rid of any nasty spam comments and leaves all of the good ones. Super simple, but super essential.
Vaultpress
Vaultpress allows you to back up everything (I mean EVERYTHING) on your website, daily. You can sleep soundly knowing that, should something go wrong, you’ve got a copy safe and sound. It also runs security scans so you can be sure your site is safe.
Yoast
Yoast is one of my favourite plugins that I get the most use out of. It helps you optimize your website and posts, helping them show up in Google search results and making them high quality for your readers.
Social Warfare
This little plugin makes it super easy to share all of your amazing content over the web, making your site easy to use as well as helping build traffic.
Nutrifox allows you to create nutrition labels quickly and easily for all of your amazing recipes. You simply copy and paste the ingredients into the tool, and they do the rest for you. If there is an ingredient they don’t have, you can add it yourself. It’s a great little tool that also helps optimize your recipes for search engines. Also if you sign up for a year’s membership of Food Blogger Pro (check out down below) you get a Nutrifox membership FO FREEEE.
In my opinion Tasty Recipes is one of THE BEST recipe plugins going. It gives you everything you need to input recipes onto your site that are SEO ready. The recipe cards look beautiful AND professional and they’re also ready to print for anyone that wants them.
Pinterest is a fantastic tool for food bloggers and the Tasty Pins plugin allows you to optimize your recipe photos for Pinterest, search engines and screen readers. It also means that if someone else pins a recipe image from your site, that pin will have a optimized description ready to go, instead of pulling alt text.
Community
Food Blogger Pro is absolutely essential for anyone that is serious about food blogging. I don’t think I would have got this far without it. It’s a fantastic community that provides hundreds of videos that will help you set up your food blog. There’s also the forum, filled with hundreds of members, all willing to help you with any query or question you might have. Check it out!
Food Photography
My Camera – The Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF7
This camera is a little bit dated these days (I got mine in 2016) but there is an updated version (right here) that looks good and gets great reviews.
Panasonic LUMIX G 25mm F1.7 Lens 
Love Your Lens
One of the biggest things that has helped me with my photography is getting some lessons. I read tonnes of eBooks and online articles, but that is just not the way I learn best. I had a few one on one lessons with Jane at Love Your Lens and it taught me SO MUCH. Jane is a fantastic teacher that tailors her teaching to what you want to learn. I couldn’t recommend her enough. If you live in the Manchester/Cheshire area get in touch with her! And if you don’t, just checkout her blog for loads of handy tips, tricks and all things photography.
Photoboards
Photoboards create beautiful and realistic photography backgrounds for all sorts of photography projects. There are loads of different styles to choose from each using different colours and textures. It’s a fantastic way to create atmosphere without forking out tonnes of money. I have ‘Splash‘ and ‘Roma‘ both in 60x60cm but I’ve got my eyes on a few more as well!
Social Media
Using social media is essential when building traffic and sharing your content, but it can sometimes feel like it is ALL YOU DO. Tailwind for me has been a Godsend. Pinterest is my biggest traffic referrer by far and I believe that is all down to Tailwind. To start you can use it to schedule posts to Pinterest. They pick the best time for things to post so once you’ve added content to your schedule, they do the rest. You can schedule a weeks worth of content in less that an hour. YES PLEASE. They also have great little groups called Tribes which have been integral in helping me share content and build traffic. Plus they’ve recently set up a similar scheduler for Instagram. Hello two birds with one stone!
So there you go, that’s my list of essential resources for food bloggers. I use every single one of these resources, and I wouldn’t recommend them if I didn’t think they were good quality and valuable! I think they have been instrumental in helping me build my blog and I hope they can be of use to you to. If there’s anything else you think is useful let me know!