Announcing Gardens.com!

It's been 2 weeks to the day that I sat down at my desk and began working on a new website that is entirely created with brand new weekend-type gardeners in mind. I am pleased to announce that today Gardens.com is online!

Gardens.com was the first collaboration between the NameMedia designers and myself. They created the look and feel while I created the backend software.

It is integrated into DG, so your username and password work there. If you go there via this link, you will automatically be logged in:

http://davesgarden.com/togardens.php

There are several new features I created for Gardens.com, and I'll be writing more about them later. Do make sure you check out the articles, though! We have articles from Horseshoe, tcfromky, paulgrow, Bluestone Perennials, Gardener's Supply and more.

Also, the "News" feature is pretty neat.

I'd like to thank pekasky, Marylyn_TX, onewish1, lafko06, grakay, JoanJ, Dea, phicks, gardenwife, McGlory, Brinda, threegardeners, rwmedic, mystic, ginnylynn and melody for beta testing the site last week and giving me feedback. Gardens.com is a much better site as a result of their feedback.

I have much more to say about it, but in the meantime, please have a look!

best,
dave

Dave, I meant to congratulate you (and trish and terry too of course) on your new endevour. I think this is wonderful!!!

I will go look at your new site now.......

Very nice. Hope its membership grows too.

Looks pretty darn nice from first glance. VERY user friendly. Cool features such as the map. Can't wait to browse more later today. By the way...are there a few things to work out in "My Local Garden"? It shows Yamhill Oregon to be 27 miles from me.

Dave, funny thing happend, I was looking at a post with picture of snapdragons, then there is a note that says click here to get back to the post, and when i clicked there, it opened about 40 to 50 new windows on my screen. Just thught i would mention it. I am going back now to further explore.

merigold, sometimes the lat/lon data we have for a garden center has an error and this was the case with the Yamhill, OR entry. That's fixed now.

Pebble: Wow! I haven't seen that before. I will see what caused it.

dave

Dave, I just poked about in the new site. It seems like it will be very friendly for the new gardener. I will enjoy reading some of the articles for sure. I will suggest one small edit to the Book section. I found that the search will do an author search as well as a title search which is very important. It would be useful to change the wording to reflect this to, Title or Author search. This should be done in Bookworm as well. I didn't check to see if the search does a keyword or Pub search. That would be terrific if they could. Best, Patti ( I am a retired bookseller )

Thanks Patti, I have updated both sites!

best,
dave

Thanks for the quick change. It will be much more user friendly and efficient. Patti

Dave, it happen again, just to let you know. this time it was the wildflower thread, and i counted the wndows as i was closing them, they were exactly 20. weird isnt it???? this has never happend to me before.
Also, as i was spending time in that new site, i happend to go home, and it showed my updated threads from this site, so is it interchangeable? i then answered one thread for the regular DG while in that site.....so yes, interchangeable i guess....

Yes, definitely interchangeable.

I don't know why it's opening all those windows, though! That is really really strange, and particularly because you are, so far, the only one reporting it.

I will look further into this, but in the meantime I do recommend you run a virus checker on your computer!

best,
dave

ok Dave, in the meantime I will go use the other computer and see if it does it.

also, by the way, when i log onto DG, i dont have any watched thread notifications, but I do when i go to the other site, does this mean that i have to decide one or the other, where i have all my watched stuff?

Dave, it is only on my laptop that that happens to. so maybe I do have a virus or something, I will look into it.
thanks for alerting me.

pebble, you're welcome for the alert. :) I hope you get that all straightened out. You might also consider switching to Firefox; it's a safer browser according to the DHS.

Regarding thread notifications: they should show up on both sites!

dave

Hi Dave
Nice looking site!!
BUT I just have to stop wearing the red shoes and click my heals together saying
"ther´s no place like home" lol as the location map there moves me from Sweden to Kansas City
Janett

Janett,

I haven't added international support to Gardens.com (US only at the moment) but intl is coming!

dave

it seames it automaticly search by my zipcode and put me in Kansas as there was a "tag" that said "you" on.
I didnt put anything in, just went to the page that said your location.
Janett

WOW! What a FUN website. Kewlio Dave!

Chuckle.....Janett, there's only one solution - you must move to Kansas immediately ;o) (Just kidding!!!!)

I checked out the new site and I like it. bookmarked it

Dave, the site shows the closest garden center to me (Ken's) is here: http://gardens.com/resources/go/view/1848/
The address says NC but the map shows it in VA.

Darius, I had some problems with some of Google's coordinates, and that must have been one of them. I've edited the coordinates, and I think it's correct now. Thanks for the report!

I'm impressed. I will get some southern Arizona markets in this week!

Dave, I went to, What is this plant forum, and when you click on the picture to enlarge it, you can not get back the the thread by hitting the back space key, it makes a separate page and you have to cancel it, before you can go back.
Also the site is cute but it can't compare to your masterpiece, Dave's Garden, in my opinion.
Josephine.

I'm thinking I agree w/you, Josephine. Guess I'm a no frills type of person - not a cute type.

Ann

Your reactions are exactly what Dave anticipated with the roll-out - I think, anyway.

Over the years, DG has evolved into a more advanced site with a lot of intensive and comprehensive features. It will continue to be "home" for the folks that have always hung out here, plus continue to attract the more serious or advanced gardeners (or at least the more intrepid gardeners - generalizations are always prone to exceptions!), while Gardens.com is designed to feel more accessible and welcoming to the newer or more casual gardeners...some of whom will no doubt venture right on over to DG as they become more confident and start looking for more indepth knowledge.

I love it!

I love the Gardens.com site!

A question...How can I add a couple of garden centers/nursuries in my area? For both DG and Gardens?

Sharon

This message was edited Jan 29, 2007 6:23 PM

Janett - If you click your heals together three times and say "I wish I were home" - nothing will really happen, but it made for a good Kansas twister movie a long, long, long time ago.

MySharona,

Probably the easiest way to add them is through Go Gardening here: http://davesgarden.com/go/

They will then show up on both sites - please add them along with reviews for them and any other local nursery or garden destination spots in your area (or that you've visited while on vacation or road trips/gardening forays ;o)

When I went to gardens.com thru the link and was logged in, I found it interesting that my zipcode was used with my username to identify me. Yes, the website provides a service, but I got the feeling that it was all about tracking and demographics and advertisers. I had the sense that my every click was going to be valuable information for an advertiser.

Perhaps my reaction stemmed from reading the privacy policy at photography.com which seems to confirm the purpose:

"...NameMedia collects and maintains certain information (including e-mail addresses, IP addresses, names, geographic information, etc.) on many of its Web sites and via price request and other forms (online and offline). This is done to help us provide our customers with the best customer service and with valuable information regarding relevant products and services from NameMedia and appropriate third parties. ..."

Didn't gardens.com domain used to belong to gardeners supply? I bet they got a pretty penny to give it up. I think I saw a reference that they are an advertiser there. Or maybe they are a partner.

In any case, I sure hope their long range plans are not to replace DG with gardens.com. I see overlap coming and my money is on the profitable site surviving.

Having been thru multiple corporate takeovers in my 20+ year high-tech career, I admit I am cynical and biased in this regard, so please take my negativity with a grain of salt.

Personally, I prefer the look of DG and I think the posts on DG are easier on the eyes than on the new site.

I just got back from there and I too like Dave's better now that I've had a good look.

I've just been visiting Gardens.com and LOVE the articles written by Horseshoe, Annie and the rest. I'm a big fan of reading other gardeners essays. The "My Local Garden" button is wonderful. The site has a nice look and feel about it, although because I'm so attached to DG, I probably won't use it very much.

I have a couple of comments for Dave though. I just noticed a posting I made in the Plant ID forum is cross-posted on Gardens.com under "Whats that plant" and I was surprised. I may have missed the post but wasn't aware that our DG postings will be available for viewing on Gardens.com. Can you tell me whether any other of the DG forums will be viewable on Gardens.com? One other thing; will we (paid subscribers) be able to opt out of having our posts available on Gardens.com? If the intention is to open more DG forums to Gardens.com then I think we should be able to have that option. I think this question was asked earlier but has not yet been answered, although I appreciate that you've been extremely busy.

Lastly, congratulations on your success. It's great to see all that the hard work by you, Trish, Terry and the rest of your team has been rewarded.

It looks like all the beginner forums plus the ID forum are available now on both sites--I don't think I've seen any discussion of which other ones might be there in the future but I'd be surprised if Dave made anything publicly available over there that is a "subscribers only" forum here, so your posts aren't any more publicly available than they already were if they were posted in a forum over here that was open to non-subscribers (I think there is a registration process over there too before you can see anything, we just get logged in automatically with our DG ID's so we didn't have to go through it). I don't think you'd be able to opt out of your posts showing up on gardens.com because I think it's really just one forum that happens to shows up in two places, so if you don't want your posts to show up there then you'll have to avoid posting in those forums.

So if we don't want to have our posts showing up we should avoid all of these forums? Patti

Beginner Flowers
Beginner Gardening Questions
Beginner Houseplants
Beginner Landscaping
Beginner Vegetables
Bug Identification
BugFiles Pictures
Community Gardening
Cottage Gardening
Garden Tours
Gardening for Wildlife
Identification
Invasive Plants
Terrarium Gardening
Winter Sowing
Aroids
Cannas
Caudiciforms
Clematis
Ferns, Fungi & Mosses
Gingers
Gladiolas
Heucheras and Friends
Palms and Cycads
Poppies
Tropical Fruit
Violas and Violettas
Carolina Gardening
Central Midwest Gardening
Georgia Gardening
Mid-Atlantic Gardening
Mid-South Gardening
Northeast Gardening
Ohio River Valley Gardening
Pacific Northwest Gardening
Rocky Mountain Gardening
Southwest Gardening
Australian Gardening
BugFiles How-to's
Classified Ads
Dave's Garden FAQ
DG Journals and Diaries
PlantFiles How-to's
Voting Booth

Right now, only the Beginner forums and the ID forum are on both sites, only Dave can comment on what other ones might someday be available. All I was saying is that I don't think he would take any of the "subscriber only" forums and make them visible over there to people who don't have a subscription. But a number of the forums above probably don't fit with what gardens.com is about, so I highly doubt that he would make all of them available there just because they're open to nonsubscribers. I think the idea over there is to keep things simple for beginner gardeners, then as they become more advanced and want to learn more, they can come over here. If there start to be a thousand forums over there, I think that'll make it confusing and not fit with the vision of being easy.

I could be wrong, but my guess is ecrane is correct.

Gardens.com has a very short list of forums and will stay that way by design. The beginner forums plus the ID forum are all that show up there now, and probably for the forseeable future.

The other free forums on DG are still free (and only on DG), the subscribers-only forums will remain subscribers only, and only on DG, too ;o)

Dave, I'll try your new site. Never realized I could communicate directly. You don't know how much I as a beginning gardener have appreciated your site and recommended it to others. I particularly like the Garden Watchdog area. I wasn't a gardener until I bought my home in eastern North Carolina 5 years ago. My yard was flat and empty and then when I saw I could raise a few flowers without killing them I got addicted. Of course I like the DG threads because it's good to hear from experienced gardeners on what I'm doing wrong. Thank you so much for DG - Keep up the good work.