Features

Now's your chance - I want to hear your wish-list of things you want added to Dave's Garden.

I'm currently rewriting the entire site and now is the time to be adding wish-list features. If the feature you want is not currently available on DG, let me know right now and it'll be there within a month!

Dave

What a guy!!!!
I have a suggestion for the journal, from reading your other post you might already have something like it in mind...
I plan on using it as a "garden" journal, not just seed starting....would it be possible to add column/place to know if I have seeds available from a particular plant to trade and have that info (name/amt etc.) auto added/connected to my "have" list? Does that make sense? Just an idea....

[ Removed by member request. - Admin ]

For the rest of the week, I'm devoting full energy to the journal. If anybody has any journal feature requests: speak now or suffer by my own hand later. ;-)

Dave

OK, in the journal I have pulled my list up by status, in this case, "Winter Sowing Method". Once I am done adding an entry to one plant, I would like to end up back at the view showing "Winter Sowing Method" as opposed to "back to the entry" so I can work on the next plant in this status (or, if I was working in Perennial Flowers, I would like the next view to be my updated list of Perennial Flowers.) I am trying to avoid having to select Main, then reselect my category or status to view. Am I making sense?

Rise :)

Dave, I would love to have an area for just journaling. Things like temperature, general things that I want in my garden, things like that. I would also like a todo list. One that I can mark off later or add a date done or somthing like that.
I love the view by categories.

Good suggestions! Thanks. Rise - tomorrow I'll read your post more carefully and post if I have any questions. It reads a little confusing right now, but I am fairly tired...

Tomorrow I'll be back here.

dave

I feel guilty suggesting something that might make more work for you.

The site is WONDERFUL just the way it is but since you asked for ideas . .

I really enjoy the photo forum. Pictures that could be added directly to the other forums as we chat would be great. Of course some forums would benefit more from this than others - like the farm forum, guess where my favorite is. I visit another forum site where we just add a simple html formating code in with our text. Since I don't know a thing about the behind the scenes work, I'll just give you this example: http://www.maggiesgarden.com/discus/

Dave
In think, in these pages, there is a lot of good information on gardening. I would like to see a FAQ page on various topics, which would consist of experienced members answers to questions from "newbie" gardeners like me. This would include information like "how to ferment tomato seed", "how to germinate seeds", "how to make mosaics". Information like this gets bumped to the back eventually, but it's still good information. I know techniques among gardeners are different. Don't pick and choose, just list it all and allow the "newbie" to pick and choose.
Just a thought
Jan

Wow- you are all coming up with great ideas!! I've never even thought of some of them. Keep them flowing!

Please don't feel guilty about asking for new features. Dave's a parent, and knows how to say "no" :) After all, this is just as much your site as it is ours. We want each and every member to feel at home here. Most importantly, we want each member to get _use_ out of the site.

I was the accounting person for an old business that we had. None of the accounting software on the market did exactly what I wanted it to, so I was using part of the software package, and trying to keep track of the rest of the info on paper. It was a mess! Finally, Dave wrote me an accounting package that did exactly what I needed it to do- same thing here! When I ask for something new, it is because the feature is something I am going to use. I don't want all of my stuff in 5-6 different websites, paper, emails, ect.

Sorry to ramble. I guess my point is that Dave is used to this kind of thing from me. :) Now's your chance too! As long as he doesn't start programing in his sleep, we'll be OK!

Trish

while ($dave == "asleep") { do
program_php_code_in_my_sleep();
work_on_dg;
}

:-)

Arrrgggh! Trish, Trish - he's doing it - eeek!!!! Morning sunshine :)

Wow, January was a banner month. As I sit here thinking about how some of those 9000 + people might be enticed to join - how about a "What to do at Dave's Garden" area. Include lots of layperson terms. Make it fun and interesting reading. You know, like those page's showing all the fun things you can do while on vacation? You could include screen shots, etc.

Hey, at least I woke up to think about this!!!

Dave - What about a "Garden Plans" feature. The greatest problem I have is combining plants! Color, texture, height, shaded garden, full sun garden, island beds, foundation planting, woodland garden, etc.

There was a post yesterday where one of the DG'ers posted a picture of the most beautiful garden I have ever seen. Everyone immediately started asking her to identify the plants!

Post pictures and diagrams? There are so many talented gardeners on DG!

DH says that my plants crouch down every morning when I walk out with my shovel, saying "Oh, no, where is she going to move us today!" lol There has to be an easier way.
Thanks for your consideration,
Grits

Dave & Trish,
I love this site, now I can keep track of
everything, with out all the confusion. I
would like to know if there would be a way
to make some of the forms "Printer Friendly".
Like for recipes and directions for projects.

Thank you for this great web site.
Honeybee
Bonnie

Dave

While we are on printing....can we make it possibe to print out our journals...I for one walk around the yard taking notes etc. then have to enter the info...If I had a copy of the journal I could take w/ me then I could jot down my notes right where they are suppose to be and enter in a jiffy...make options like print vegetables etc. so you don't need to print the whole thing if you don't want.
What do ya think?

Gosh, I feel like we're "piling on" here, but since you asked.....But I must preface this with big kudos - this is a wonderful site as-built. I love all the features, and I've recommended this site to every gardener I "meet" online or off. (I posted your site as a favorite on my member's page at Garden Web.....I guess that's okay to do now???? I didn't get sent to Disneyland or anything....)

Here's my suggestion: It would be nice if we had a forum for sources, and could write "reviews" and "rate" the mailorder nurseries we each purchase from - other online forums I've seen have a way for users to rate recipes, books, etc. Or if we could talk the guys at PBM FAQ into hooking up with your site - now that might draw some traffic to Dave's Garden!!! Just a thought.....

HI Dave, 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?

Dave, Hope you are rested. Realise I should not have put the above in this "Features" as you want Journal features.

What I found with the Old Journal I was not able to enter 'date sown' 3 days after I had actually sown the seeds. It did not seem to accept a 'prior date' only a 'future date'. I have about 180 plants in my journal and all have been planted either January 25 or 26 (winter sowing outdoors) but that is not recorded in the Journal, only future dates of sowing - March 1.

Jody - that's been on my todo for a while. I finally got that done this morning.

When you go to your journal home page, pick a status. Then, at the top click on "prepare this page for printing". The next page will be the page to print out.

You'll also find the same option when you are looking at a particular category. How do you like the behavior of this feature? Is it how you'd like it? Do you want to be able to print other pages as well, or is the Statuses and Categories enough?

Dave

Big programming session this morning (why do I program best before 8:00am?)

gardendragon - the sow dates problem has been fixed.

regarding the blue names, that's a feature of your browser, not DG. Your browser remembers who you've clicked on for usually around 2 weeks. After that it expires it and turns it blue again. I'm not doing that. :)

go_vols: regarding the "reviews" and "rate", that's an excellent idea and I had talked to Trish about that several months ago. I want to develop a rating system that can be used for anything we want, and then we can add new categories of review (so we can review seed catalogs, favorite tomatoes, websites, each other, whatever). It's on my TODO but won't get done before this complete re-write is finished probably.

Honeybee: It's done. At the top of each thread, you can now click on "Print this thread" to get a printer-friendly page for that thread.

Okay. I'll post this and read the rest of the posts on this thread and code/respond.

dave

Dave, could it possible, for the person starting a thread, to delete the thread? I realize, that old threads, contain good information. But,at the same time, information, can change or differ, especially, from new members. I am not sure, most people, take the time, to respond to an old post. Just a thought, great suggestions coming! Love this site!
Oh yes, there is one other feature, I would like to suggest ( bet you could guess), how about adding plant trading catagories, just like the seeds!

Print feature is awesome. I can take a piece of paper with me now - no more dirt in the keyboard!! This is perfect for checking remote plant status, to use during planting and just having something to review and work on during basketball practice. I love this feature!!!

dave how about a link on the newsletter to the home page or the forums in general.When I get online first I check my mail and then click on the first thread and then go to forums and check all of them. If I had a general forum link it would save a few steps.

Chris - done. See how you like it in the morning.

Some responses:

Jody Jan31 11:11am. Yes, I'm going to get to this. Rewriting the seedlists and the trading lists are coming soon, and hooking them directly into the journal is going to be top priority.

Karma Jan 31, 11:53 - Is there enough demand for an entire forum for events? How many gardening related events are coming up this year? Is springtime the time for events to occur? I think this might make a good forum, but a post to the general forum first to see what kind of interest there is may be in order.

Posting to several forums with one post - I don't like the idea of "cross-posting" the same post to multiple forums. It's annoying for the people who follow all the forums to see the same post everywhere she/he goes. I don't know a way to allow crossposting without solving this problem. I'd like to hear your ideas.

Photo on membership page is a good idea, and has been requested at least once before. I'll put it in eventually.

Rise Ann Jan 31, 6:56 PM - I definitely need to go through and polish off the redirects when you add entries and items and stuff. That should happen today.

gardener_mick: Jan 31, 9:30 PM - I think the journal is already flexible enough to handle this request. Just add a new category for "Generic Journal Info" or something, and then a new item for temperature monitoring or whatever. Then add "Status Updates" everytime you want an update, or "TODO" items for todo items. I'm going to soon make a TODO-print page that will show you all future TODO items.

mamakane: Feb 1, 4:46 AM - I also would love to have pictures attached to any forum, but the problem is bandwidth. So many of us are connected through dialup that putting pictures on all forums would really slow things down. One of the highlights of DG is a smooth and fast ride through the conversations. I really don't want to slow that down. Now, if we all had nice and snappy cable modems like poppysue does, there wouldn't be a problem. ;-)

Jan: Feb 1, 7:05 AM I like your idea of a member-driven FAQ page (or forum). Here's my thoughts: I feel like most of our forums already fulfil this need. If you have a question about something, you search the forums and generally you'll find a thread about that subject. If not, post your question to the appropriate forum and usually 10 people will answer you with good info. We also have a FAQ system set up (click Help in the menu) which is populated with some elementary info. Now, I actually have in mind something a bit more advanced than what we currently have or what you suggested: an actual harvesting of the excellent information that has already been posted to our forums. An editor (me or someone else or a team of members) comb through the forums and collect all the good data and suggestions that had come up. This is then grouped into "chapters" and make it read like a book with questions/answers formatting. Put this up on a page somewhere and that makes the best gardening FAQ I've ever seen.

Anyway it's a real job there and I don't think I could do it. If enough members wanted to get together and make it happen, however, I'd be happy to program in the vehicle.

Rise Ann: Feb 1, 8:28 AM - I like the idea. It's not really an issue of programming but more just writing. I have several things I need to write, and this is another one to add to the list. Something I really want to write is a "Welcome Letter" to all new members. I'd call it something like the "Dave's Garden Manifesto" and I'd outline stuff like "Why we're here", "What is there to do here", "What kind of people use DG", "How to behave in the forums", etc. It would just kind of make a nice welcome wagon letter for our new members. The problem is getting me to just sit down for a moment and write the daggone thing. :)

Grits: Garden Plans... Ugh. The trouble with this is that Dave's Garden is a website. The trouble with programming websites is that you are fairly limited in terms of the interface to the user. I am stuck using HTML on the client end, so there's no dragging and dropping, and fairly difficult use of pulldowns, menus, etc. I'd love to make a garden plans feature, and I could do it, but at what a cost. What a cost. .. What a cost. I don't think I'm ready to tackle this. Maybe next year.

Phlox_lady: The trouble with allowing the Thread Starter person to delete the thread is this: What if you post a thread with a question. 20 people take a lot of their time to respond to your post, giving excellent information for everyone to benefit from. then you come along and delete the thread? That's not fair for those 20 people who put all that energy into answering the question, and it's not fair for the thousands of members who can learn from the information presented within. I see what you mean about some threads, though, especially in the trading forum... I don't really know what to do about that, but I've had several of my own threads come back to bite me (people send me a SASE for an offer I made back in October and have long since ran out. I even posted on the same thread - NO MORE SEEDS!! and they kept on posting and posting... groan.)

What else... Ah, new plant trading categories. Yes, actually it's going to get a little interesting. The Inventory lists (you now know them as your seedlists) will be changed to use the categories from your journal (and vice versa, I suppose). You'll be able to make whatever categories you want.

Okay, that should do it. Between this post and the others I've made in this thread, I should be all caught up with everyone's request. Keep them coming.

Dave

Dave
Love the printing feature...is wonderful and perfect for note taking.

Do you think it would be possible to print an item with all info included, tasks performed, updates, pics etc.? I'd like to keep a hard copy in a 3 ring binder, especially as things are "finished". And since I mention that...I have not yet used the finished status, does it still show for edit etc. or does it get archived or something? Just wondering...perhaps we could print the finished item and you could archive the info after a certain amt of time or something...would it help w/ space? Just thoughts.
I'll be keeping an item called "Garden 2001", here I will enter general comments and pictures on the garden as a whole, would be nice to print it out say once a season to be able to look back on the next season at which time I'll add an item "Garden 2002".
Jody

Well Dave , you already know from a while back , that I would like a hard core collectors forum ...latin names only of course ;) This would be for experienced gardening people to learn about plant hardiness potential , trading possibilities , rare plant propagation , and new genus discoveries . Novice gardeners could expand their horizons too with this obscure data FROM the hard core collecting plantoholics :) . Whatever you do , just keep being your open minded self :) Rock On , DAVE THE MAN !!! :)

How about an HERB forum, Dave???

Dave, How about when we are listing our seeds we have a choice of houseplant. That way if we want to trade some cuttings there is a category or maybe some actual seeds are available.

Dave, you know living in the volunteer state makes me want to volunteer....if you need writing done, just say the word. I used to write/edit internal company newsletters (online and paper-based) for a living.

Dave, I'd like to second Chooch's idea of a "hard core collectors " forum , where we could discuss all aspects of growing rare plants .. germination, best conditions etc. Sometimes , for example,there is a chance to get a few seeds of a plant which is scarcely in cultivation , perhaps from Japan or Argentina , and it would be great to check out whether anyone else is growing this and their method of germination , growing conditions etc.
Thanks ! Jane .

I would like to third the "hard core collectors" forum for all of the reasons that chooch and jane stated.
Sari

I'd also be interested in the so-called "hardcore collectors" forum.

Thanks,

Mike

Hello Dave,

I agree with chooch about the hard core collectors forum for the same reasons mentioned befor.

Thanks, Carla from the Netherlands.

[ Removed by member request. - Admin ]

Dave, I love the sub-categories on the journal. Is there any possible way that we can link an item to more than one category? Like echinacea- it is an herb and a perennial flower. I also like the idea of being able to look for a plant by color, height, light conditions, etc. I don't know if these are impossibilities or not, but they would be great!

Just had a thought, hunting through the member pages to look for particular things. Is there any way you could give us a place to keep links to, say, a dozen other members' lists we want to check back on frequently, for our own reference only? A sort of Dave's Garden Favourites Folder?

Dave, ... I was thinking maybe a page on the journals to keep general notes. Just a page we could write down whatever we choose. I've been battling fungal gnats the past couple of weeks and I was thinking a spot to put this in the journal might help me deal with them better next year. It wouldn't have to be fancy. Just a page where we could put a dated entry - a Garden Diary type of thing.

poppysue - I'm thinking about the best way to go about this. I also want this feature for myself (this means it's guaranteed to get done :) ) and am trying to figure out the best way to implement it.

Everyone else - I'll get back to ya before the sun rises.

dave

Dave,

After I edit an entry I would like to go back to the journal instead of going to the entry. Could you put that option in too? Thank you for this great web site :) You have made several changes in the short time I have been away.

Pat