It’s hard to believe, but Kalyn’s Kitchen has been hanging around the internet for twenty years now! So today I’m celebrating 20 years of blogging and sharing some thoughts about the journey and what has helped me stick with it!

PIN this post if you want to find it later!

Every April my blog turns another year older, and that’s been happening for 20 years now! I wouldn’t have predicted that when I sat down at the computer and typed out a few recipes (without photos) in April 0f 2005! At the time I was a fourth grade teacher, and truthfully I didn’t imagine at the time that blogging would ever be a job, or that in a few years I would retire from teaching and still keep working as a full-time blogger.

But starting this blog has enriched and improved my life in so many ways! The about page on the site has some info about my blogging journey. But thoughts about the blog lasting for 20 years have been swirling around in my head for at least six months now, so there are a few more things I’d like to say! And if you want to share your own thoughts on any of these topics, I’d love to hear from you in the comments below! (And comments on the website are so appreciated because they become part of the history of my site, so thanks for taking that extra time.)

I couldn’t have done it without my family!

It was my very talented brother Rand who first had the idea of putting my recipes on a blog, so I’ll always be thankful to him for that. Now if you follow Kalyn’s Kitchen on Facebook, on Instagram, on TikTok, or on YouTube you’ve probably seen the reels and short videos narrated by Rand. He’s also the creative guy who designs amazing PINS for Pinterest, and creates beautiful graphics, like the one you see at the top of this page. I’m also thankful for my sisters Sandee, Pam, Laurel, and Val, who support the site on social media, and I have four other siblings (Mark, Janet, Dave, and Vida) who have supported me through the years in so many ways.

It’s been great cooking with Jake and Kara!

A few years after I started the blog I enrolled my nephew Jake to be my cooking assistant, and we tested recipe and took photos together for many years. Then when Jake graduated and got a full-time job I started doing the recipe testing with my niece Kara. Many of the best recipe creations on the site were developed with help from one of these two talented cooks!

I’ll always be grateful for the support I’ve gotten from readers!

When I started Kalyn’s Kitchen, it was the only recipe site that focused on South Beach Diet recipes. And many people from those early days have continued to follow me, through the years when I re-defined my way of eating, made major changes in the site, and changed my life in a few other ways!  The supportive comments and e-mails from readers are one of the main things that has kept me going for twenty years!

I also appreciate the support from friends, neighbors, and fellow bloggers!

I am grateful for the many  friends and blogging friends who have supported me through the years, generously listening to me go on about recipes, technology, and other blogging-related stuff!

So many smart people have helped me with technology!

I’m not young, so it’s not surprising the constantly-evolving technology of the internet has been a challenge. But through the years I’ve had help and support from so many smart people. The current site design was done by Lindsay, the site has been maintained (for nearly the entire 20 years) by Jennette, my current web host Charles has been so helpful, my ad manager Christina has been a great resource, Heather has helped with endless questions about e-mail subscriptions, and fellow blogger Deseree makes the fun videos of my recipes that you see on social media! And my nephew-in-law Nick, my brother Rand, and my nephew Jake have both  helped me with computer maintenance through the years!

I never dreamed that blogging would become an industry!

Twenty years ago I never imagined the current blogging scene, where the most financially successful sites are giant websites, run by bloggers with experts behind the scene. I realized a long time ago that I could never keep up with all the possible technology changes and website features that kept coming along. And now blogging success is a continuously moving target with search engines and social media sites constantly changing their algorithms. But with all the increased complexity and changes, I really want Kalyn’s Kitchen to be a personal website, not a corporate site. And if you appreciate that simpler approach, star ratings on the recipes you try from the site are a good way to show support and help with search engines (and no need to leave a comment with the star rating unless you want to.)

New recipe ideas are getting harder and harder to come up with!

In these days when food blogging is hugely competitive, it’s much harder to come up with a recipe idea that thousands of bloggers haven’t already posted. And then if you do get a unique creative idea, it’s most likely something that won’t ever be found by search engines. I still try to do a few new recipes every month, but my site already has over 1600 recipes, including many early ones which desperately need to be updated. So these days I’m spending a lot of my working hours taking new photos and rewriting old recipes so I can improve the body of work that’s already on the site!

Search engines have made website content less user friendly!

The need to make recipes show up in search engines has changed recipe content in ways that many people probably don’t like. In particular the need for the list of ingredients and basic outline of steps to show up before the actual recipe is frustrating for some people. But the JUMP TO RECIPE link in every recipe of mine (right under the title) will take you directly to the complete recipe if you want to skip the extra information that’s needed for search engines. I hope you’ll try that if you didn’t know about it.

Comments on social media feed the algorithm!

If you follow my blog on Facebook, on Instagram, on TikTok, or on YouTube you probably won’t ever see my latest posts there unless you occasionally like or comment on a recipe. Some of those platforms have a more finely-tuned algorithms than others, but on all of them interacting with a post “signals” the algorithm that you want to see more similar posts.

I’m concerned about the state of humanity! 

These days, internet bad actors are a huge problem for website owners. The constant spam comments and phishing e-mails, or suspicious people wanting to “work with me” are a tiresome part of blogging these days. And in addition, scammers use AI to create  recipes and put them on spam sites. (Facebook is full of that kind of fake recipe content; when you see recipe photos that look a bit too good or don’t look like real food, they’re probably made with AI and no one has ever tested that recipe.) I do miss the early days of blogging when the internet was a kinder and gentler place, and I hope my readers appreciate that everything on this site is created by a real person!

And finally, I’m proud to be a productive senior citizen!

If you’ve been following me a while you might remember when I talked about turning sixty, and then turning seventy! And now I’ve passed the milestone birthday of seventy-five, and people are constantly asking when I’m going to retire from blogging. Honestly I’m still not thinking much about doing that. But I am traveling a lot more the last few years, which means less time to work on the blog. And even when I’m not out seeing the world, some days I just don’t want so much time spent in front of the computer! But I’m repeating my promise that I’ll do whatever I can to keep Kalyn’s Kitchen online as long as possible, barring possible future changes to the web that make it impossible.

Thanks for reading clear to the end!

If you’re still reading this post, thanks for making it clear to the end! And I want to say one more time just how grateful I am to everyone who has supported me in this incredible life-changing journey!

Kalyn’s Kitchen Through the Years:

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