3/14: Release today + bug reports here

Me too. It's all getting wearisome.

Keith ~ This is going to be very long, so please bear with me.

Believe it or not, DG was a pretty great place until recently. Admin. was very interactive with members and D-mails were usually answered within a day or two. Generally Terry was the one that answered questions on threads and Melody answered D-mails.

BTW, you'll see complaints from a few members (or ex-members) that things went downhill after Dave sold DG, but my personal opininion is most of those people were just looking for something to complain about. I first joined just after DG changed hands and I loved everything about DG. I got the feeling most members agreed with me.

I believe it was sometime around Sept. 2015 that the powers-that-be decided to make changes to make DG compatible with mobile devices. They started by eliminating or consolidating forums. Many of us still have trouble remembering where to find some of our favorite forums since that change.

Next were minor changes until the huge one in December that broke a lot of things that still don't work.

At that time Terry was still a constant presence on the Site Update threads as well as other threads. Since then there have been several more changes and several more major glitches.

Terry's presence has become less and less and I haven't seen anything from Melody in months. So you understand, Terry and Melody have been wonderful up to this point and I can't help but wonder if they're running out of answers and are as frustrated as the rest of us. BTW, Terry and Melody were DG members long before they became Amin.

RE: the photo contest - When I hadn't received my calendar after several months, I started sending D-mails. My husband and I had already bought the calendar to send to my brother and thought we might have to buy one for ourselves.

After several people complained on one of the Site Update threads that they hadn't received their prizes for the "Squash Challenge", Terry apologized and made sure the prizes got sent.

I decided to let her know I had never received my calendar on the same thread. She said that Alison (who was unknown to any of us at that time) was dealing with the calendars and had a medical emergency, but that they would be sent out soon. She even let me know when Alison had received the calendars and was getting them ready to mail.

I eventually got mine and figured everyone else got theirs as well. Now I wonder how many others may not have received their calendars.

My suggestion would be to write a message to Terry on this thread. Put her name on the top of your post so it gets her attention. Combined with all these other posts about the calendar might do something if she's still monitoring this thread.

Sorry for the looong post. It's the only way I could think of to fill you in on a little of the background. And please keep us posted on whether or not you receive your calendar.

Nuts: Thank you very much for that briefing. I was picking up a fair bit of that just from reading a lot of these threads but a lot was going over my head. Sounds like everything got ugly pretty much exactly when I came on board. Think I will take your advice and write a note to Terry on this thread tomorrow morning when the Easter weekend is behind us. By the way I looked up to see your winning photo and with all the deer and snow you would think it could be in my back yard. We are in the middle of deer country too. If you are bored take a look at the album of 13 photos I just posted last week entitled "challenging zone 3"
Thanks again,
Keith

Terry:
It is my hope that with the Easter weekend over you will be checking this thread. If so you will now be aware of what I have been trying to get through to someone for the past 3 months, that I was the grand winner in the 2015 photo contest and still have not received my calendar.
The following is just a very small excerpt from the very long E-mail that I have been repeatedly been sending to Melody since early March with no response:
"The feeling of accomplishment to receive this kind of recognition on an international scale was such a rush that you would think I had just won a $10000 cash prize. Now as we enter March 2016 all that excitement is gone and has been replaced with near anger."
Anger brought on not by being forgotten but from having countless D-mails and E-mails unanswered.
I would very much appreciate a D-mail indicating that this has been acknowledged and will be corrected
Thank you
Keith

This is in regards to "flagging" comments. That is just too easy without the ability to include a comment. I just flagged the most spam-like of an individual, but would have liked to explain why. Do these "flags" get looked at and researched? I could be wrong and would not want someone to get automatically booted from the site, but also I would not want it completely ignored, either.

Site maintainence today between 3 and 4 pm EST

I know that the calendars were delayed but I really thought all of them had been sent out. I've nudged Alison and Melody (they were the main drivers behind getting the calendar created and the copies mailed); as soon as I hear back I'll let them know.

I've been here, but I've been busy with other areas of the site. I have to confess I've gotten bogged down (like most of you) with the Home page not updating properly, so I don't hit it as often as I should. It's coming up on the priority list for major attention from the techs, so hopefully we'll get it resolved soon.

In better news, I took advantage of spring weather and got our garden planted over the weekend. My husband (Mr. Official, as I like to call him), jumped the gun and bought tomato plants already. It's too early and they might get nipped by a late freeze, but he had spring fever. And next month I'll have an opportunity buy more (or replacements) at a neat garden place I love to hit up when we are visiting South Carolina. It's a win/win either way. Now if someone could come help me with the weeding and mulching in my flower beds, I'd definitely try to find a way to repay your kindness! :-).

Terry ~ RE: Your weeding problem. I think this is the perfect solution. And yes...I know...you already know all about this article. :o)

http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/4825

Your weed comment reminded me of this great and funny, article that Melody wrote a couple of years ago, but most of the links to get to it didn't work. I finally found one that worked, but none of the member's comments are showing. I remember several good ones, including my own.


This message was edited Mar 28, 2016 5:10 PM

Terry: thank you for taking notice. I trust you will get things fixed.
Keith

Terry, Chillybean mentioned flagging posts (the post just below ox's post)...as posted, in this thread numerous times, there has been a lot of spam lately. Usually it is taken care of pretty quickly but now it just seems to continue. I have flagged many posts....

Terry? I was searching thru Lonicera, and UP popped a fern picture. I googled a plant on DG, got no picture, but did get info and a huge advertisement - again for a pink lonicera. Is that considered buggy?

I have definitely been popping in less (like a few times a week instead of a few times a day) in the last months, but I just noticed that I don't get a choice of "home" after return to top or switching threads. I have to go sideways to a different page to find "home," which is how I used to navigate.

Carrie, don't you have a light green menu bar at the top of every page?

Mine says what it always has...Dave's Garden (very large and on the left) then Home / Guides & Information / Communities / Garden Showcase / Products & Sources.

I'm sure you already know if you click on "Dave's Garden" it takes you to your Home page, although it is odd you don't see "Home" on all pages. I wonder if it's a browser thing.

Yes, I do, and it says "Home" on most but not all pages. Which is strange because I don't see what the difference is (between the pages it's on and the pages it's not on).

So for you, it still says "home" on all the pages you get taken to after you visit somewhere here?

This page, for instance, says exactly what you said, home and all the other stuff, at the top. Well dang it, I can't get it to do it any more, but all day yesterday and the first part of today, it it wouldn't bring me back to that page. I'll come back when I find out when specifically it does it,

This page doesnt say "home" on it, at least for me. But I just click on the DG logo.

1isaac, it's just that it used to say "home" for me and now doesn't. (And that it won't recreate that now!!!)

I was just pointing out that this page doesn't say home, at least for me.

Well now I can't get it to stop saying home, lol. Clicking on the DG logo would be better for me than what I have been doing, which is going to PF or somewhere different to get to the "home" page.

"Home" is now there for me all the time, even when I am on Dmail page or myinfo or comparable. I think it must have been a transient situation only for me, strange to say.

I just tried it on every page I could think to go to and it always says "Home" for me. If you can't recreate it now, hopefully it was just another weird glitch that won't come back.

Lisac, It's odd that you also have the same thing going on. I wonder if other members are experiencing it.

Don't get me wrong, I've had plenty of glitches, just not that one.

So far, I have the home link as nuts does, but it worries me that some of you do not. Is this going to slowly spread to other users over time? When I used to blog, the site did not change everyone at once, but updated the servers at different times.

I rely on that homepage, not the "forum homepage" to read updated threads.

I am having the same issue very often that the "home" option is not available at the top of a lot of pages but I had read somewhere that you can always click on the Daves Garden logo to return to the home page. Being new I'm not used to anything else so no inconvenience.
However there is something else that happens often to me that I do find very annoying. There are a few threads that I have been watching. My eyesight is not quite what it used to be so at first I thought that was the problem but not the case. I now stretch the screen to make it larger before I select the thread and sometimes it takes me to a thread that is 10 lines away from the one I selected. Sometimes I have to select the thread 3 times before I get into the right one

Oxdrift, could you clarify why you're having to enlarge or "stretch" the screen. I'm trying to understand what you meant and why you're ending up on the wrong thread.

Does it take you to the wrong thread even if you don't enlarge the screen?

Nuts- mine does it occ too. The touch option isnt coordinated with the choice. They moved a few things around for those of us with fat fingers that cannot get the tiny sensitive spots to cue without linking 10x to the wrong place.

Ah-ha...now I get you. You guys are using touch screens. That makes sense. I use a desktop with a mouse which explains why I didn't pick up on it.

Thanks Kitt, for clearing that up!

Just a reminder: Terry said that the Home page was the next area due for a major rework. Perhaps it has already started!

Kitt, love your 'fat fingers' explanation! I think I have a 'fat mouse pointer' problem sometimes.

I usually use an iPad, but that's why I stretch the image so I touch the right spot and it's easier to read.

I'm glad to hear from oxdrift that I am not the only one with a disappearing "home" option, I'm also glad that it has reappeared for me. But at least I feel less cuckoo.

Nuts: sorry about the confusion. Yes I'm an I-pad user.
Kitt: thanks for clearing that up for Nuts

A weird thing happened right after I sent that post yesterday. It was just as if someone from admin. read my post right away and somehow was able to push a helpful screen in my face. As soon as I went back to the Home screen by clicking on the Daves icon since I had no "Home" option I accidentally ended up on a screen I don't remember ever seeing before designed for managing your forums. To make a very looong story short I ended up selecting 9 forums that interest me the most. Now when I go to my home page they are the only ones that pop up. This simplifies things a lot in terms of the problem of selecting the right forum. However I would occasionally like to be able to see the whole list so that I don't miss out on popular discussions. Does anyone know if there is still a way of pulling up the complete list now that I have my own customized list?????

Oxdrift ~ If you click on Preferences (at the very top of the page where it says "Welcome oxdriftgardener" it will take you to an entire list of things you can change. My list is on the left, but on your I-pad it may be different.

One of the items on the list is "Forum Settings". That used take you to a page with a list of forums you could put checkmarks next to so you could choose your favorites. That list has been broken for ages, but there are other ways to add a forum to your favorites. I don't know what page you saw, but if you click on each item on the preference list maybe it's one of those?

Anyway,it's easy to see the whole list of forums. If you're on your home page click on "Communities" (top of page on the light green menu bar). When that page comes up click on "Forums" (the brown menu bar just below). You'll see several lists - "Unread Watched Threads", "Most Recent Threads", Most Active Threads. Those were added as part of the New changes and many of us find them useless.

But...if you scroll down beyond that list you'll see the list of all the Forums. If you click on any one of them you'll see the threads in that forum. Above the list it will give you the option to add that forum to your favorites. That's the way I've always done it. When you're on other pages you don't need to click on Communities first. Just click on Forums.

You'll notice many of the forums don't seem too active right now. Those of us that are loyal DG members (many jumped ship with the changes) are hoping that as things get fixed and more new members arrive, all the forums will become very active again.

BTW, there is a ton of great info in the forums going back years. I constantly explore old threads and have learned so much from them. As you get more comfortable exploring DG, let me know if you'd like some more input about finding things.

Awesome response Nuts. I'll never remember all that so I've tried taking a screen shot of it so I can print it and have it sitting in front of me.
I was so disgruntled by the lack of response from the admin. people in trying to get my calendar that once I did get it I thought I would unsubscribe. But with the support I've gotten from people like you I'm thinking I may stick around.
Thanks
Keith

Stick around, Keith. There's lots here - as Nuts notes - and the knowledge imbedded in the "back issues" is encyclopedic.

Just ask, if you don't find things easily.

Yes Keith, even with all the problems right now there's so much info on DG and still a lot of great people that are very willing to help with any questions you might have.

The 'fat fingers' is what my grandkids tell me, but it isn't just DG does it to me recently- including well fed mice- I suspect DG isn't the only one having upgrade bugs... I kinda watch for the next bug- it reminds me so much of my garden visitors...

We're about four months into this fiasco of an *cough* upgrade. I'm very curious as to what has actually been fixed in that four months. Can any admins answer that simple question?

"Home" is gone again. :(

It still shows "Home" on my computer.

That is so weird, Carrie. Seems like it should be a simple thing. Why does it disappear on some computers, but not others? And why does it happen intermittently?

Something else for the tech team to deal with, but Terry hasn't been around too much lately. I guess I can hardly blame her with so many issues to deal with.

I really wish admin would put a stop to the spam or at least acknowledge it, like they have in the past.

I've noticed that I'm not getting updates on my homepage for threads I've marked as watched. I have to post on the thread for the watch to kick in. I really wish Terry would at least check in. A couple weeks ago she answered one question and puff she was gone.

Still want a "back to home" button where it used to be. Yeah, I CAN remember what we had here 4 months ago...........if'n they think some of us will forget, guess again.