The readers have spoken: The pictures, they will stay.

Wow. Except for when I’ve done giveaways, I’ve never had so many responses to a post! So far, 116 of you have weighed in, and that’s not counting all the people that emailed me. There were one or two people who were ambivalent about the baking photos, but the vast majority of responders felt really strongly that the baking photos were helpful, or even necessary.

So, the baking posts will continue to be peppered with pictures, and I will never second-guess myself on that again. Thanks so much for your feedback (and for the large number of kind and encouraging words!). I’m so glad to have helped and inspired so many of you to try your hand at baking.

Since the comments got so long on that post, I though it might be best to share my thoughts/explanations on the topic here instead of responding on the original thread.

• “It’s your blog-do what you want!” was a relatively common theme through the responses, and while that is true, I also want very much to make my blog helpful to you. If I thought multiple pictures were helpful, but the reality was that you all found it confusing and overwhelming, then I’d want to stop posting so many pictures, you know? I can’t make everyone happy, to be sure, but if the majority of my readers prefer something a certain way, I want to do my best to oblige them. I’m now very clear on what the majority preference is regarding baking pictures, though!

• Several readers suggested that JoJo was on dial-up internet, which would explain the frustration with the pictures. If you read my blog on dial-up, though, you should be able to click an option in your browser that allows you to view a web page in a text-only format. Another option is simply to scroll down to the bottom of the baking post, where the ingredients and instructions are hanging out, sans pictures.

• When I first starting posting baking recipes, I kind of interspersed the recipe in between the pictures. That made it very difficult for you guys to copy and paste the recipe for printing purposes, though, so in all of my newer recipe posts, the actual recipe is at the bottom of the post. Someday I might have time to go back and change all the old baking posts to the new format, but you might not want to hold your breath for that. It usually takes me a while to get around to stuff like that.

• A reader or two suggested that I link to a printable version of my recipes (like the Pioneer Woman does), which is a great idea, except that I don’t currently own a program that allows me to make PDF files. If someone has a free/cheap suggestion for uploading printable files to my blog, though, I’m all ears. For now, the simplest way to print a recipe is to copy and paste the recipe text (at the bottom of the post) to a new file in Word or something similar. That way you can print just the recipe without all the photos.

• The large number of photos made scrolling through the archives very time-consuming. I’ve experienced this myself when I’ve needed to locate an older post. To fix this problem, I changed my settings so that when you do a search, poke through a category, or look through the archives, the old posts just come up as a list of titles. You can see an example by taking a peek at the November 2009 archive.

• Speaking of searching, I think some of you are unaware of this handy tool. If you’re looking for an old post, the search box on the right side of my blog is a great tool. That’s what I use most often when I’m trying to find an archived post.

• Another way to find a post is to use the category list (it’s on the right side of my blog, near the bottom of the sidebar). Though I don’t categorize everything perfectly, most of my posts are filed under a category. So, for example, if you are looking for all the Food Waste Friday posts, you could just selected the Food Waste Friday category. Or if you wanted to read everything I’ve had to say about Christmas, you could click on the Christmas category.

Thanks again to all of you that provided feedback…I really appreciate it! Let me know if you have any more thoughts on the topic or if you have questions about anything contained in this post.