Changes (and more coming) to PlantFiles

Google Chrome. On my desktop PC, I do have Windows XP still might be that.

I went to plant files to check if the cantaloupe I was growing was an heirloom or not. That used to be so easy. Now nothing looked familiar. I clicked all over the place trying to find something familiar. I finally got to the page I needed, which used to come up quickly, but I had tried so many things I had no idea what had actually worked. I was frustrated and overwhelmed. I am not a person that is good with technology and the new format does not work for me. I wish it was like it used to be. It is easier for me to just Google stuff now.

Ditto… more steps to get to where you need to go, and less information along the way (or too much ancillary information)… but I will try it a while of course and see

New list of problems: Now that the plant files page is now so full of adds and distracting photos, it is much more difficult to navigate around it… but some things are totally missing and unacceptable if one is to use this site in any other way than just a distraction with a lot of photographs.

1) no longer can see how to look up or search for plants alphabetically (I mean by scientific or latin name)… only options now are popularity (or 'reviews'), cultivar, common name and availability.

2) 'latin look-up' (which is a really silly name, but I am assuming this was supposed to be way to look up plants by their generic and species name… right?) is nearly useless. So far about 95% of genera I have tried to search with this mode could find nothing in the plant files at all (yet they are indeed there). A search for Aloe produced 6 species of aloe (out of the 550+ there are in the plant files) and a few other random plants with the letters 'aloe' in them. A search for Beaucarnea found nothing. Yet a search for Opuntia produced a long list of plants (still many missing)… seems the more 'popular' genera are in there (though only with some representatives) while less popular genera (like all the ones I care about) have been omitted entirely.

3) tried to look up some plants by the 'list all genera' choice… and got a list of genera in alphabetical order… but there are a LOT of genera in there, so if you are looking for something that may start with the letter 'M' for example, can take some time of just clicking through pages and pages to find it… would be nice to have a way of navigating about this list a little more efficiently (make it so one can jump and skip many pages at a time, not just 3-4).

4) can't seem to look many plants… tried this fairly common Agave… Agave 'Blue Glow' variegated… I tried to search it by calling it Agave Blue Glow, put quotes around it… made it smaller case (agave blue glow)… Agave cultivar Blue Glow… Agave cultivar 'Blue Glow'; Agave "Blue Glow" etc… all gave 'no results'… had to look up the plant by just putting in Agave… and searching painstakingly through all the plants until I stumbled upon it (it's there)- since I was looking for the variegated version of this plant it took a long time… found the unvariegated version fairly easily as it is one of the most popular Agaves… on page one… but the variegated plant was on page 20 unfortunately (took me 20 minutes to find it… would have taken me less than 5 seconds with the old plant files)… I could not even find it by going to 'Agave' section of 'View all genera' and working my way slowly to Agave since that list does not include cultivars. By the way, while piling through all the Agaves, found multiple entries for the same plants on several occasions… too much work to keep pointing out all these errors, though.

Ahhh, I figured out how to find this plant finally. Did not occur to me to leave the 'Agave' part off my search, and just search for 'Blue Glow'… but it worked. Might want to have some comment concerning that on the search page as that is quite a departure from the previous way we used to look up cultivars (at least I have not done it that way in the past).


This message was edited Aug 9, 2015 7:17 AM

I'm HATING it and most people here know I'm a big supporter of PF. I also tried several times to look up a plant, to the point I thought it might have been deleted, I googled the name of plant + davesgarden and there it was. Don't like distracting picture layout, don't like that I can't see all pics at same time.

The PF looks like the many other websites so maybe designers think looking like the rest automatically means it's better, but pls listen. IT IS NOT

Signed,
All in favor of progress but not for mindless change

That is a good point… I can find a plant faster on Davesgarden by googling it OFF Davesgarden first, and having it come on Davesgarden… often near the top of the list (I hate to think over time where our listings will drop to… could eventually end up on pages 2-10 on google, and then davesgarden will become a less-used site… sigh… all that work for nothing).

Ditto to all the above posts.

I know of people that joined DG after finding something on PFs.

I used to go to a type of plant (ie peppers) and just "look" thru the varieties and click on the ones that looked interesting. I can't do that anymore.

I can no longer find plants on DG pf!!! I may drop my membership this year.

i miss seeing the 10 newest plants..i was upset when they took them away from Iris pages and Daylily Pages but now removing them in the old format from plantfiles was like a punch in the gut..also the black area on photos to type text looks ok when something is typed on it, but when it shows up on all pics with nothing typed in it, it looks like a glitch on the bottom of all the photos as it obscures that bottom bit of the photo for no reason at all if no text in it. Also miss the Number Totals of Irises and Plants being visable and automatically calculated and You could click on A-Z or All as well.. miss it too. Very Sad to see a site i love and poured so much time into becoming unenjoyable. Hopefully all these issues can still be addressed in a way that still meets the desire of the owners to want to be appealing to the young tech and phone crowd while respecting beloved features of older users who have dedicated so much and want to continue their enjoyment here. Just my opinion.

I don't think you should see any ads. Let me know if you still do. Yes, there are more photos. That's one of those things that we won't be able to please all people - some wanted more photos, some wanted fewer photos.



Good point - we will get alpha sort back ASAP.



Not a new feature. Nothing about this has changed, actually :-).



Again, this isn't something that has changed - it works exactly as it always has. Does it work well? Not particularly - but it isn't something we've modified or adjusted.



yes, this is an issue we've identified as a problem and we'll get it resolved. See this post: http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=10122415

It is a change. And I know that can be hard...but it was time to update what we had, and we are in the process of continuing to improve it. But it will take some adjusting to get accustomed to the new format. It's kind of like when you rearrange a room in your house - after a while, your eyes adjust to it, and it becomes familiar. But until then, it can be a little disconcerting.

Actually you can. From the home page, you'll see a section titled "Popular Plants." You can pull down the list, locate peppers and select it to see all the varieties: http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/finder/index.php?sname=Peppers

WEll, I guess I discovered those other 'older features' in my desperate efforts to find a way to look up plants alphabetically… what is with the 'latin look-up' then? Does it have a real function, or was it some idea that never took off, but still found its way to the plant files page completely incomplete? It should be deleted.

The 'ads' a I see are 'self-promotional' Davesgarden stuff that I consider 'clutter'… but I guess others want a more photo-rich, confusing appearance.

So unless I am mistaken, one can no longer put in both a species and a genus in the search for a plant box…? just one or the other? Because putting in both (which you would think would be a search advantage and make it more precise) just gets you nothing.

This message was edited Aug 10, 2015 7:03 PM

Please try the general search again - I think you'll find it works more or less like it did previously; in fact, I just posted that we had released a tweaked version of it here: http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=10125090

For simplicity's sake, I'm gong to close this thread and migrate everything to this one:

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1402203/