Changes to the Forums

Thanks, Terry, for responding to my "rambling". :o)

I wasn't aware of the hassle with the Winter Sowing term (I don't even visit GardenWeb), but since it's now used all over the web as well as in books and magazines, they'd have a hard time stopping its use at this point.

I have to agree with you that various subjects have been mixed into assorted forums for a long time. I realized it more so when I started bookmarking some old threads after the forum changes. Though most of the threads were in particular forums, many were not found where I would have expected them to be.

Winter Sowing is only one of many forums that was merged. I agree that many topics occur on different forums, it's always been that way. There are different contexes (sp?). I'm glad I joined before this change happened....I would never have thought to look for Hoyas under Tropicals bc I didn't know they were. The way it is setup now assumes the user already knows about the plants. Other sites aren't like that.

I'm using a mobile device and still can't see any advantages. I feel like there is so much that is lost simply bc others won't know where to look and a lot of info is jammed under one category. Some of these categories aren't logical to me ie Soil and Compost under Organic Gardening??

When I mentioned Hoyas, in my previous post, I didn't know Hoyas were tropicals. So you're right I didn't know anything about them. But I saw the forum on DG I did research and ask questions and decided I would give them a shot. So far so good. DG is a place to learn about plants but the way it is set up now makes it much more difficult. I have many plants that I didnt know anything about until I came to DG. I grow mine as house plants. But that's my whole point, if one doesn't know about a plant it's very hard to find the info now.

I haven't had a good experience with Searching for anything on DG. I get pages of irrelevant stuff, but then again I can't search for something I don't know exists.

Soil and Compost can't be divided up into threads that are everywhere. If I got to choose one forum that could go back to being stand alone that would be it. There is info on there that has nothing to do with Organic Gardeing and some that debunks it all together.

The one concept that seems to be causing confusion between admin and the DG communilty is that if there was no activity ie posting in a forum or thread then it wasn't being used....I, for one, was lurking.

If there is little posting activity in a forum, there isn't much there to "lurk" for. It's like having a neat little library that is far off the beaten path - once you've browsed everything, there isn't much to really hold your attention or keep you coming back. By combining it with a more active repository, those same tidbits of information are now more likely to be seen and responded to by more people.

We can continue to grind on this, but the bottom line was, we had to make some decisions on how to best move forward into a new, more mobile-friendly environment. I do understand that for a few of you, the changes we made were an abrupt surprise, and they have made it (temporarily) a little confusing, but now that we've made the change, we hope that everyone can settle in and enjoy the increased activity in the shared forums.

Has anyone mentioned the "Control F" feature that will quickly highlight within the "cloud," whether you're viewing your own personal cloud, or the global cloud?

Once you're in "the cloud," hit CTRL-F, then type a keyword in the search box. All instances of what you typed in the search box will be highlighted yellow.

Example: I wanted to find an entry about "Hoops".

►CTRL-F
►typed "hoops" in the search box (without the quotation marks...)
►everything in the cloud with "hoops" in the title was highlighted yellow.
►Simply tab to each highlighted item.

Voila!

Oops. Sorry. When I posted that screen shot of the Forum List above to show that Back Porch is on the list, I had no idea I was revealing subscribers-only info.

Gymgirl: Thank you for posting that. I did not know about that. Very helpful.

Terry: I have been thinking for a while now that we need a repository of some kind for HowTo information. I thought we used to have some HowTo files. When I was typing up all those instructions earlier, I looked for the HowTo files but couldn't find them. We need a place where people can go to get instructions on how to setup their preferences and customize their homepage, how to use tags, and how to use the various other DG features. This CTRL-F thing mentioned by GymGirl only furthers my point. There are no doubt other such features that are known to a few but not to others.

HowTo files for the various features would help new members learn to take full advantage of the site's features and would also help to fill in the gaps for those of us who have been around forever. HowTo files would save a LOT of disk space and typing, since we wouldn't have to keep typing the info over and over in various places around DG in our efforts to help each other. We could just point them to the HowTo files.

That's a good idea.

I have often thought that. That is how I stumbled onto tags, which I had not known existed. I was doing a search on how to "quote".
Patti

This has been mentioned before but I would like it put somewhere where the merged forums are. That would stop a lot of repetitive posting both on the forums and in dmails.

I think HowTo information should get its own, well labeled space, so people can easily find it. Artcles, for instance, are nice but are not easily found by beginners when needed. I think Guides & Information would be the perfect place for a category labeled something like "How To Use DG Features". This link when clicked would reveal a list of clearly labeled documents like "How To Use Tags", "How to Customize Your Homepage" and so on.

There is a Site Help forum here: http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/f/plantfiles/all/

Terry, that's not the kind of site help that I was referring to. I will not speak for anyone else. If the link you gave is supposed to satisfy my example. I don't see it. Sorry

Gymgirl ~ Thanks for your Super idea! I've already used it several times today!

This seems like it would be the natural place to look for How-to Info, Help Threads and FAQ's.
Sits right at the top of my home page...or is this also a subscription perk?

Dave's Garden: Guides and Information

We believe in collaborative development. When gardeners from around the world are given the tools to share their experience and information, some pretty special informational features are created. Enjoy!


Read more: http://davesgarden.com/guides/#ixzz3lsC9LzF5

We had FAQs for each section of the site for years....and they were VERY infrequently used. It didn't matter how prominent we made them, or how thoroughly we explained how something worked, or if we linked to them and asked/encouraged people refer to them before contacting the help desk. They were terribly underutilized, so we eventually let them fade away in favor of other links and tabs.

But I do think the Site Help forum could be used for this purpose, if we can compile the most common questions (and answers), as well as the most-useful tips and tricks for navigating the site.

But to be honest, things like keyboard shortcuts (ctrl or cmd + F, for example) quickly slide beyond our purview as a website. Those are pretty universal and I'm not sure we are the right place to look for authoritative advice on how to get the most out of your keyboard, browser, etc. :-).

I guess I am slow..that F control was new to me.

BUT I only used my home page to get started and that has worked well for me.

My IPAD works fine with all the changes. The only thing that is really slow or doesn't work is the Skip to New feature.

For anyone that's interested:

Some of the old FAQs are still available if you access them through Members Tags (under the Communities heading at the top of any page) and look for FAQs. By clicking on some of the different tags - singular vs. plural or with a subject following, I found at least a couple.

Here are those links:

http://davesgarden.com/faq/forums/

http://davesgarden.com/faq/home/


Edited to say: Keep in mind some of the info in the FAQ's might not be up-to-date due to assorted changes, but they're still very informative.

This message was edited Sep 16, 2015 2:42 PM

All the Forums are listed under Communities, also. I've never tried to get there using preferences.

Yes, I will keep checking to see if the forum preferences are working. Last time
I checked boxes not there yet.



The "skip to new" always worked fine but not last week or so...but I can say the last two times I used it (today) ..one time worked fine/quick as usual and one time did not. Not sure if not working or just slow because I only give it few secs and if it doesn't go...I just start scrolling.

In my experience, the skip to new function takes you down the page, but not to the most recent post. Sometimes it works and does take you to the most recent post. When I used it for this thread, in this forum, just now, it worked. Earlier today. It only took me partway down the page.

As I understand it "Skip to New" takes you to the newest post that you haven't read (at least that's how it's always worked for me).

If I go into a thread with a hundred posts but I've never been there, it only takes me as far as the first post, but if I was just reading the very last post in that thread, the next time I go there that's where skip to new takes me.

Not being a techie, I have no clue how it figures that out.
Anyone have an explanation...in layman's terms? :o)

Yes that is how it works. It skips to what is new to you.

Yes, that is how it works. The only time it doesn't worked properly is when I am typing a reply, someone submits a reply while I'm typing, and when I go back to read it, it typically drops me to the bottom of the thread.

The Homesteading forum has disappeared from my watched threads on my homepage and I cannot find it in the forums listing. Where has it gone?

I believe what you're looking for is now in the Rural Gardening forum.

The two links below will take you to a recent Homesteading thread and also the Rural Gardening forum.

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1383803/?hl=

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/f/homesteading/all/

Yes, that is its new home :-). Thanks, nutsaboutnature!

What else is now under rural gardening? Just wondering,,,some kind of index would be really helpful.

About Rural Gardening, I copied this, "Here's a place to explore beekeeping, homesteading, poultry and livestock, and even gardening by the moon, as well as other ideas that make up rural gardening".

As Terry said above, some things may not seem logical and maybe this is some of that? Could the forum name be changed to reflect more of self-sufficiency than being rural? The name alone may cause some not to look in the very forum they need.

Wah!
The Ceramics/Pottery forum is now part of Crafts & Hobbies, and not available for to non-subscribers anymore. :(

Thank you, Terry!

No problem :-)

First, I want to go on record to state that I'm really not resistant to change (provided that change is positive). =)

Work has kept me from perusing DG for a couple of months, and I was surprised when I logged in last week to find everything looking quite different. I spend most of my time here in either the Plant Identification forum, or in Computer Talk. I have no issues with the new layout in the Computer Talk forum, but I absolutely detest them in Plant Identification. I used to be able to scroll through the forum, and because the initial image in each thread was fairly large, I could often tell (before opening a thread), if I might possibly recognize the plant in question, and THEN open the thread. Now, the images are so small, I have to open EACH thread, to actually see what the question is. This is most inefficient and cumbersome! Is there a setting somewhere that I'm missing, that would allow me to tweak how the forum is displayed to me? Or, is this just "the way it's going to be"?

Again, I'm trying very hard not to be negative about the changes, but in the Plant ID forum, these changes are not for the better, sorry.

Where did the brugsmansia forum go ?

I think it's under Tropicals and Tender Perennials.