DG Rewrite

I'm going to rewrite Dave's Garden from the ground up. Why? In the life of a good website, it grows in membership. As this membership grows, new people with new tastes come into the picture, and you want to be able to accomodate those new people.

When Dave's Garden first started, there were no forums, no journals, no plants database, no trades-tracking, nothing except for a way to manage your own have-list of seeds. As members came in and requested features, I added them in. In many cases, these features were "shoe-horned" in because they didn't fit in perfectly with everything else that we do.

A result is: the site works great for 90% of the members, but there are many missing features and the site doesn't work 100% perfectly across the board.

The plants database is not integrated with the seedlists.

The seedlists aren't integrated (very well) with the journals.

The journals aren't integrated with the plants database.

The forums are an island to themselves.

The trading-tracker isn't integrated with your journal, seedlist, or plants database.

This doesn't seem like a huge deal right now, because we're used to these features and were present when most of them were created. But as we grow, we should tighten things down and make the site more solid, stable, and integrated.

We also need to have more options, choices, and preferences for the members. Members need to be able to create any number of different kinds of lists (seeds, plants, cuttings, bulbs) and any manner of trades within. They should be able to specify in advance how they want their lists page to appear to visitors, and what data will be presented. They should be able to make their own categories and sections in their lists.

When a journal item is expired, the member should be able to immediately import the data from that item directly into the plants database for everyone's enjoyment.

Setting up trades between members should be as easy as 1-2-3. Go to the member's lists, click checkboxes for everything you want, and it'll immediately import that into the trade-tracker for you.

As you can see, this is a lot of stuff, and basically requires a complete rewrite of DG, and because I'm so committed to DG, I will do this work.

The bad news, though, is that starting spring, it's going to be very difficult to get me to do any programming work on the site, so I'm going to have to do this within the next month. The data that everyone has in their lists, etc, of course, will not be removed. Everyone on DG will remain available, you'll just start having new options and preferences to work with.

In summary, I wholly and truly believe that DG is becoming the world's greatest website for gardeners, and I want to serve those gardeners with the best site I am able to produce. I know we can do this, and the rewards in the long-run will be well worth the work I/we put into this.

Any thoughts on this?

Dave

Hi Dave,
I think you have a wonderful plan for this website. The success for a site, as you mentioned, is flexibility and change. Everything you have proposed can only make this site better than it continues to be. Ease of use will make navigation more positive for new and seasoned members. The great thing is that you have been receptive to the needs of the users here and I thank you for your time and effort in GROWING this place :)
Trish

You're right, Dave. DG is rapidly becoming _the_ place for gardeners to be on the web.

Your proposed rewrite sounds like an incredible amount of work, though. I know you do this as a labor of love. But frankly, I feel guilty every time I visit that you're not getting something back in return. It's like you do the work, and we reap the benefits.

I, for one, would have no problems if you decided to sell ad banners or otherwise had DG generate income. A little something for the many hours you've already put in, and which, obviously, you'll be putting in further.

Dave I have to agree with Brook, you sure are putting an awful lot of time and energy into this site and hope you know how much we all appreciate it!!!! I for one love this place!!!

Wish we could help you in some way...maybe a Tennesee vacation to raise a barn isn't such a bad idea, ;)

Dave really does put a lot of work into DG, but it is a labor of love. It all started because Dave needed a place to track his seed trades, then he needed a place to keep up with plant experiments. Since most of our friends and relatives think we are nuts for gardening, we love having a place of friends to chat with. Trust me, Dave and I both benefit greatly from this site. After all, where else can you journal your garden, look up plants in a database, talk to friends, and make trades all at one site?

We are exploring options for generating revenue on the site. That is a small part of the reason for the rework. At this time, banner ads are not part of the plans. Hopefully, they never will be. We've done banner ads with a previous business, and we think that there are more creative ways to bring in income. Hopefully something that will benefit both our members, as well as covering the cost of running the site. Are you curious yet??? Hmmmmmm.....

We are both so happy that all of you love the site as much as we love it. Tell all your friends- this is THE place to be!

Trish

This sounds like a great idea Dave and Trish is backing you. As I read the forums I am learning so much.

I have found that the site features are very useful and I think the integration of these features will ultimately benefit all of us....greatly.

I was lucky in that my first seed trade was at Dave's Garden (neatly logged and with GrannyLois:) I have had such a positive experience with this whole site and I am excited to see how things evolve after this growing season.

I have a hundred new varieties of seeds to try, landscaping the yard and LOTS of things to learn. Best of all, I also have a place to share my experiences (good or bad) and a place to learn from others' experiences. I am all for the site renovation - I think its worth it.

This is the best place I have found. Your improvements sound wonderful!Thank you for using your expertise to help us all.

Dave,

Thanks so much for your commitment. It is very much appreciated by everyone here!

Thanks,

Mike

[ Removed by member request. - Admin ]

A total rewrite, what an undertaking. I wish there was some way I could help. You've provided such a fantastic place here, it hardly seems possible that you could improve upon it. I wish you all the luck in the world to accomplish such a monumental task before "growing season" starts. If there's anything I can do to help let me know.

Thanks for such a great site!
Sharon

Here's how to help - be patient with me when we put the new stuff up. There may be some new learning to do to use some of the new features that get put in, but I'll try to make it so that it works very much like the old (current) way and you don't have to use the new features if you don't want to.

Another HUGE help to me would be to answer the questions of all the newbies who need help. I try to help everybody, but when I see other people helping them it's a huge relief and I can get to programming, knowing that the newbies are being taken care of.

Best,
dave

Dave,

I will certainly do what I can to help the newbies. We are all newbies at some point in our life. I do have a suggestion. How about a thread in Dave's Garden forum for bug reports? That would save you from getting lots of email. And everyone could keep updated from that thread. It seemed to work well went you did that with the journal beta testing.

Sharon

Sharon,

good thoughts. Any bugs that are on the site right now will be gone with the rewrite, but new ones will be introduced (as usual).

So, I can't fix bugs right now - but I can try to have as few as possible when we relaunch.

What we really need is a "Features" thread, where people can lay out what features they want added during the next month. I'll start that thread right away.

After we relaunch we'll open a Bugs thread.

Dave

Most of the Journal rewrite is complete and already live. You won't notice a lot of the changes on the surface, but it's completely rewritten from the backend of things.

Your data is completely intact. Start playing around and see what you think. The browsing/adding is completely different, and the categories have been radically changed.

The focus of this journal update was to prepare the system to allow me to easily hook in the seedlists (soon to be called the Inventories), plants database, and others with the journal. Eventually they will all share pretty much the same data, system wide, with you controlling which data is shown on which list.

Hard to explain - but it'll be cool i promise.

dave

Dave

Wow Dave - -this place (and you!) never fail to amaze me! This is such an awesome undertaking you're attempting....and I know I speak for many, we are very grateful!

As it was mentioned earlier, the newbies should have a place (or more appropriately), people they can go to, to help eliminate the excess pressure off of you....how about some kind of a "newbie information page" that we might be able to set - -kind of like "Newbie FAQs"? Also, maybe you can get a list of people who would be willing to answer questions for the newbies......I would be happy to do whatever I could to help.

Thanks again for this "labor of love" you've provided us! This is the most wonderful gardening site on the web!

Hey Dave, I see new stuff going here this morning....I hope you get time to play on your new tractor....Bye, Lisa

Hi Lisa,

I'm waiting until it warms up a little bit before going out to do the chores. In the meantime, I've been doing some massive updates to the journals (again).

I am at a stopping point, and am actually about to head outside right after I get caught up on the forums. (It seems like a new post comes in every 2 minutes!!)

Dave

Dave, I think you're very wise to make the changes now while the rewrite is still manageable for you. I'm new at this site but I just have to tell you that I really love it here. Everyone is very friendly and very helpful. My hat is off to you for starting a place "for gardeners by gardeners".

Pete2

HI Dave, What a huge monumental task to rewrite the whole program!!!

I guess you are in the middle of a 'rewrite' as my Journal will not come up? Grinch Glitch?

You also had a great system where if someone answered my forum question, their name appeared in "Blue" and if I clicked on their name to send them an e-mail it then changed to "Green" I thought it was a great system as I could keep track of who I had answered and who I had not answered. Sadly now when I look at my forums some of the names are back in "Blue" when I have evidence they have been answered. Is this one of the 'bugs' you are working out?

If you need any help I have a 'computer genius nerd brother' who lives in Australia and am sure he would be happy to help (Or I want to know why not!), he does nothing but program computers all day long.

You are " THE MAN " , Dave !!! Rock On !!!

Dave, this seems like a huge amount of work for you and many hours, I assume, each day. Now I know you're not in this for the money, but sometimes efforts like this become overwhelming and eventually are given up. I'm not sure what I'm suggesting, but perhaps selling some advertising would help or a small sign up fee (in the form of a voluntary donation). If you don't want to keep any of the proceeds yourself, then you could donate them to a fund for school projects, sort of a foundation. The foundation could also be used for grants to new parks, horticultural centers, test gardens, etc. A requirement could be that we receive an on-line report with pictures. I have worked with kids at a local school, that a garden club helps with money, advice and work. They even give scholarships to kids who go on to work in the field after high school. What do you think?

Dave, thanks for all of your hard work and future plans. Since I am new I am still learning how it works, anyway.
I have not popped into this site one time without being amazed. I have been not my "totally obsessed gardener self" and this is surely going to help. You and everyone here are truly motivating.

Dave, one thing I've noticed as the site grows is that we are getting the natural variation in common names for plants and seeds. And I thought I saw where we can link our common name to the plants database when we post our lists. But would it be better to link to the latin name, and avoid the confusion over common names? Perhaps we could create a file of latin names, properly spelled for those of us who don't bother with spellcheck (and yes, I definitely put myself in that category ;0).....and when we post a new entry we could choose from a drop down list for the latin name.

Now granted, it's a major undertaking to create a file of all the latin names of veggies, flowers, trees and shrubs, but for those of us who would like to help you but don't know what we could do, perhaps we could "get together" via e-mail to create and proof the list for you. Anybody interested in helping, if Dave thinks this is a good idea?