PHP Upgrade on May 2nd

Same here. When viewed as bookmarks, mine seem to still point to the correct entries, at least the ones I checked; but when viewed in cloud form, the only form in which I find them useful, the tags all point to the same group of 16k unrelated items. Argh! PLEASE fix this. And if you can't make changes/updates without screwing things up, please consider just leaving it alone. :-(

Dream, I also prefer the cloud form. I rarely even use my title list (or "bookmarks"). It's much easier for me to find things by subject, rather than title. Besides, the community tags are only available in cloud form.

I think Community Tags is probably an underused feature by most people.

Please, Please, Please fix the tags (pretty please)!

Progress. The Thread Watcher is back up.
No progress. The cloud of tags still doesn't work...

nutsaboutnature,

I totally agree with everything you said about tags vs bookmarks. I used the global or community tags a lot. That's actually how tags are meant to work. As thousands of individuals tag and label things of interest, over time they end up creating a huge and very valuable index of virtually everything on a site.

Dave originally created the tag feature. He later altered it to work as either tags or bookmarks to satisfy the many folks who wanted the latter. I've never understood the appeal of a site specific bookmark function, especially since I already have that option via my browser & the browser version (1) works for all sites and (2) isn't subject to be broken by site 'fixes' and 'updates'.

Sadly, bookmarks do not allow us to take advantage of the plethora of items tagged by others. If they don't restore the tag functionality, I will be deeply saddened at the loss of yet another valuable DG feature and the vast amount of information it contained.

Was pleased to see that Watched is back to normal. Well looks like it anyway. We will see in a bit. But still happy about it.

Here's something interesting I just noticed, though not really of much importance. I never customized my home page because by the time I realized I could, I was totally used to it as it was.

Well, the order of Bloom of the Day, Random Plant, Random Bird, Random Bug and, I think, Random Article have changed positions. I tried to see if I could change them back, but apparently they all form one module and by changing one item it moves above New Subscribers or Happy Birthday (don't remember which), which must be part of another module.

Namely, I can move them individually, but I can't switch the order of those things within their own module.

It's really no biggie. I'll get used to it. It's just kind of odd that it happened.

I have been following this discussion, and have a burning question: How do y'all use the "cloud" of tagged things? I have a few bookmarked threads, I click on my "Tagged" list to find what I want. How does one use this cloud of zillions of words from zillions of people? It seems like a forest (or perhaps swamp) one could get lost in, but you who use it have found something you find very useful. What is it that you do?

The cloud is magical! Mystical! It even disappears periodically (like now...)...

No, all kidding aside, it's a very invaluable tool here. I have references in my personal "cloud" that were tagged as far back as 2006. And, I just perused the "universal" bookmarks and found a recipe that I'm gonna make this weekend with the 8-year-old!

Ok. Tags 101...

Oh shoot... I just remembered, I already TAGGED the page I wrote a "How to use Tags" tutorial on.

Gone, baby, gone....(or, at least inaccessible at this time...)

And, I just went to my cloud to point you to my "How to use Tags" tag, and, well, it's still not pointing....

Well, I went and dug this up. Hopefully it will help you understand "tags."

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1353032/?hl=&page=1

Pistil ~ These instruction will explain how to use tags, but because right now it's not usable (not working at all) you won't be able to try it out. When and if it gets fixed, ask us for more details (or you're welcome to send me a D-mail for a more detailed explanation).

1) Whenever You, Me, Gymgirl, DreamOfSpring or anyone else Bookmarks something we add "Tags" - basically words that are clues or reminders of the subject in the bookmarked item. Also when you bookmark an item you can make it public if you want (so other members have access to it in the community tags). To do that you check the box that says "Allow others to see these tags".

2) For your personal tags you can go to your bookmarks on your "My Info" page and click on "My Bookmarks" (you already know this part), but at the top of the list right below "Pistil Bookmarks" it says "View in Cloud Form".

Clicking on that brings up a large (or huge in my case) list of all the tags you have given your book marks.
That list runs side-to-side (like the printing in a book) as opposed to just one long list from top-to-bottom.

Clicking on any of those tags (when it's working) will take you to a list of items you have saved in that category (threads, posts, articles, etc.). You can then click on those items to bring up the specific item you bookmarked. For example: A tag that says Daffodil will bring up everything you saved about Daffodils. It's much easier than scanning your bookmarks, especially if you've saved a ton of items like I have.

3) Community Tags - These work on the same principal, but now you have access to everything that every member on DG has ever Tagged from the beginning of DG's existence (as long as they clicked the box that allows others to see the tags when they bookmarked the items). That's Quite a lot of knowledge and very easy to access (except for right now it's all messed up). Since this just occurred with the "Upgrade" the other day, hopefully they'll get it fixed).

This is one of my absolute favorite features of DG. The available knowledge is incredible.

To access Community Tags you go to "Communities" on the banner at the top of any page. Then scroll down to "Tagged Pages" and click on it. You will see a GIANT list of tags (again, they run across the page like a book).

You can either just scan them or you can click "ctrl F" on your keyboard which will bring up a text box (on my desktop computer the box is on the bottom left). By typing individual words or a combination of words (or tags) into the box it will highlight everything on that list with those words. You can then click "Next" or "Previous" (right next to the box to scroll from one to the next).

Again, If you try it right now, you're going to come up with the same list of 16,000+ entries since it's not working. Don't discourage yourself by trying it as that list makes no sense. Hopefully they'll fix it soon. In the meantime, you might want to "Bookmark" these instructions for the future.

Edited to fix a typo. :o)

This message was edited May 5, 2016 5:24 PM

Thanks-I just tagged this.

Hi Terry, Melody Alison and Techs,

I just notice that "Advanced Search" for forums has stopped working since the upgrade. The link is still where it has always been, but it doesn't do anything when you click on it. Basically, it's a non-working link.

Hopefully you guys are already working on the tags. Some of us are really missing the cloud feature.

Thanks!

Looks like it means no more blog entries also

Wednesday, December 31, 1970. Paul McCartney filed a lawsuit to dissolve the Beatles.
What other sites have a working diary/journal?

This message was edited May 10, 2016 6:01 AM

Mine glitched for a few days, then smoothed out, I have never trusted working online, so never have. They are probably still debugging the upgrades when you guys are caught with systems temporarily haywire.

Or (more likely) they aren't working on a thing.

More like chasing butterflies, not bugs, chuckl. We KNOW they can cause us misery, perhaps it's planned?

They will cause me misery for two more days then (quoth the raven) "nevermore".

THE TAGS ARE WORKING!!! THE TAGS ARE WORKING!!!!

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!

WOW...A HUGE YAY!!! My favorite DG feature is back!!

Thanks for the update, Gymgirl! I actually spotted your post in the other Site Update thread first and already left a comment there so I won't repeat it... but I gotta tell you I'm SUPER EXCITED!!!

Pistil, you can dig out those instructions and play around with Tags now if you want. :o)

Thanks Terry, Melody, Alison and Techs!!!

THANK YOU, TECH GUYS, et al!

Well, I don't use tags that much. What is most important to me is my Journal. It's too bad that IB's techs don't know how PHP configuration works or it would be a simple problem to fix. C'Mon IB... do you REALLY think that a date of 12/31/1969 is useful at all in anyone's Journal? Or Blogs, so I've heard. I have a Milestones for things like "Purchase Date" & "Planted Date", "Made it through first winter". Does 12/31/1969 even make sense when added to all of those?!? If I make the mistake of editing an existing entry which had a valid date (important for those of us who add an entry when we add a new plant) the date also changes to 12/31/1969. I've sent a DMail on this as well as commenting several times in various DG Updates forums. Not so much as a form-letter response letting me know my bug report was received. Well, IB is only interested in advertising revenue, not the revenue from paid subscribers. As far as I can tell, the only difference between paying for a subscription vs. not paying is forced ads. My ad blocker works well, so why should I pay for a site when my main reason for doing so was to support the great features which no longer work?

Being a paying subscriber allows you access to forums that you would not have access to if you werent. There might be other stuff too but this I'm sure of.

Yes, but the only forums I actually use are the DG Site Updates, and occasionally the bird & plant ID forums. I don't have time to participate more, even though I'd like to. If I have to give up on DG, there's really no other site I've found which meets my needs. I checked out Dave's new site, but it doesn't really impress me... doesn't have nearly the features of DG which are, unfortunately, degrading.

Reading a blurb on another thread on this forum, and after checking... The Closed/Solved feature now works on the Plant, Insect and likely Bird Identification forums. It's been a long time since I asked for a bird ID here and that was when Closed was working. YAY!!! This really is a needed feature.

In trying to find the threads I started in the Bird ID forum, I found another problem. I was surprised, since the drop down menu worked nicely on the My Posts page to narrow down the number of posts to search through. This is the page I was using...
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/threads.php?user=Chillybean

When using the drop down and clicking on Bird Identification, the page reloaded, changing its link, but yet it still showed all the threads I started.

Chillybean,

That feature has been broken for a long time. I wish they would fix it. Without the option to select by forum, it's nearly impossible to find anything in my 'threads started' just due to sheer volume.

That's great about "Closed" working again! I just checked "Advanced Forums" and it's also working again...YAY!
After the PHP upgrade, the link for Advanced Forums completely stopped working.

So my two favorite search DG features, Tags and Advanced Forums, have now been fixed. YAY!!!

Don't fret Chilly & DOS...maybe that's a sign some of the other glitches will be fixed soon as well...my fingers are crossed.

I'm getting the SQL error, cannot connect to database again. That's an "oldie", one of the classics. I got it twice just now while trying to update my DG screen. Might just be due to something they are currently working on but thought I would report it anyhow - just in case the next update attempt locks me out completely for a while.

I saw that the last couple of days, Dream, but clicking the back button and trying again got me where I wanted to go.

I got an error notice this morning while switching from one window to another in the midst of typing a post. I don't remember what it said, but unlike many error notices I see, the text was small (like regular-size typing). I clicked refresh and then used the back button and it was fine.

1 SEPT 2016- I loved the old DG, but havent been around for awhile, because frankly it is too difficult to use or to read or to figure out how to maneuver.

So I went in tonite, and it is even worse, words overlaid over pther words, overall a mess. I'm wondering if others are in the same boat, or if there is something I can do ?
I clicked on newest thread & only see a lot of posts from May. What is the deal ?

Baja I am not sure what is happening with this. Most of the problems from the "upgrade" have been solved. The thing with words on top of words never happened to me, even at the worst of it. I use a computer with a nice big screen. Could this be a tablet issue?
One thing that has not been fixed fully: sometimes a thread will get "stuck" in the thread watcher, even though I have looked at it and there is nothing new. When this was happening a lot, sometimes people would post a little "bump" to get it off there and this seemed to work. Maybe a lot of these have built up in your thread watcher since you have not been here for a while?
Anyway, if you could spend an hour glancing at everything and maybe bumping things, you will find things are mostly back to normal with three exceptions-
1- We lost a lot of good people in the turmoil (we have got some good new ones).
2- It really seems we are kind of on our own here, the admin doesn't seem to spend any time checking for problems or even looking at these update threads! They just don't bother with us at all. However, once I got used to that I discovered we can kind of go along on our own OK.
3- PlantFiles is now kind of annoying. They said they did it to improve the experience for occasional visitors and tablet users. It still works though, but you do have to relearn it. It is still the best internet database I have found.
I hope you will stay, I always really appreciated your posts.