Other members in your area

Nice feature. Now I know how far I drove to that plant swap last spring. Why does it say Dale_A_Gardener lives 7 miles from me and his city location is Tampa, Florida. Does he need to change something in his profile?

Ok this may be a silly question but what if I visit say Illinois and I want to see who all is at that zip? My zip neighbors keep coming up, can I refresh or something.. to plug in a different zip> Thanks

southernOhio: there's an undocumented "backdoor" to that feature that lets you type in any zipcode.

http://davesgarden.com/member_zip.php?zipcode=37771

Look at the URL and replace "37771" with whatever zipcode you want to check.

dave

Thanks for the fast reply I bookmarked that page.. knowing I'd never remember where I put the code.
abigail

Did you have any luck with those Canadian Postal Codes files Dave? Just thought I'd check in on this. Do you need something else, or maybe you need someone to do more searching for a more suitable data source?

Thanks. --Ginny

This would be great! But, as I understand it, the last 3 characters of a Canadian postal code drills down to the side of the street the person lives on (unless they are in a rural area). Therefore, if a Canadian clicked on 'find members in my area' they would only find members who lived on the same side of the street, not the whole city, wouldn't they? I'm sure there wouldn't be any members on my street that I wouldn't know about; I'd rather the search results show the members from the whole town or city....

Maybe the search could incorporate the first 3 characters only. That would narrow the search down to the town or city, I believe, and no farther. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, please.

Sandy

The search doesn't just find people in your zip code, when I search it pulls up people who are close to me but I don't think there's anybody on DG with my same zipcode (or very few) and it still finds plenty of people in zip codes that are geographically close to me. I think the only thing that'll happen if the Canadian codes are that specific is that the distances listed for the people close to you will be more accurate--on my nearest neighbor search the mileage between me and them is off by a fair amount in a number of cases because the zip codes cover fairly broad areas.

Sandy, do you want to come work for me by any chance, lol. You are correct about our postal codes. The first 3 characters represent an FSA (Forward Sortation Area) which denotes a certain area where the mail is going. For instance, L6M would be a fair-sized area in Oakville, Ontario (did this for a customer today at work). The first character represents a province, a territory or one of several geographic locations in Canada. The 2nd and 3rd characters pinpoint the precise location in a city or town. So with that said, the first three characters of our six-character postal codes, are the most important.
Still as Dave said, you'd need the database with the latitudes & longitudes for it to work and that database is not a freebie up here. Any unauthorized use of the database would result in Canada Post breathing down your neck.....not good.

Erynne

Oh, thanks, I think I see now, I guess I missed the point of the latitudes and longitudes.

Sandy