Announcing the relaunch of Gardens.com!

Last month I asked for some direction from the members on Gardens.com:

http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/711456/

Since then I have done almost nothing but work on getting Gardens.com rebuilt, and today I am pleased to say that this work is finished and launched for your enjoyment!

Gardens.com is our first example of a true collaboration between the NameMedia designers and myself, and I can't express how great it is to work with these professionals. Mark, Erik, and Scott are tremendous artists and designers, and much of the success and speed of this relaunch are attributed directly to them.

Erik's username is estern and Scott's is sabrams, if you want to dmail them and say hello.

Starting today, Gardens.com has exactly 3 features:

1) Forums. As before, Gardens.com features the beginner forums, as well as the Plant Identification forums. These forums are available on both DG and Gardens.com. The forums area has been entirely re-written from scratch and I think it's a beautiful work of art.

2) Articles. The excellent articles that are contributed by our members are available for your enjoyment and discussion. The layout of the articles has been vastly improved and I think you will enjoy them.

3) Go Gardening. Gardens.com is built around Go Gardening, as reflected by the fact that it's the first thing you see when you go to the homepage.

I have enhanced Go Gardening with additional features to celebrate this launch. When you first access Gardens.com, the server will try to guess where you are coming from. About 95% of the time, it will correctly guess your location. For the rest of you, just enter your location in the upper-right hand corner (or better yet, login with your username and then it'll know where you are).

In addition, the entire layout of Go Gardening has been dramatically improved.

Some things to take note of:

1) Go Gardening now resides solely on Gardens.com, and links on DG will be updated soon to reflect this.

2) Internationalization is not complete yet, so our good friends outside of the U.S. won't be able to take full advantage of the Gardens.com homepage until I get that worked in. You can still use Go Gardening the way you have, and the Advanced Search still allows you to enter any location you like (it's not based solely on zipcodes.)

I will be reworking Gardens.com to make it truly international very soon, and many of these internationalized features will be available at DG, too.

Please check out our work, and if you see anything that bothers you or if you discover any bugs, please let me know!

Click below to be automatically logged in at Gardens.com:

http://davesgarden.com/togardens.php

Dave

Wow, I'm in Canada and it guessed correctly where I am, I learned a couple new garden centres I never knew about.

So far so good.

Incredible! I didn't even know it would work yet for non-US residents. Well, please remember that you might find glitches if you're outside the US. These glitches will be fixed in short order.

dave

It looks great Dave! I'm going to have to look at it some more tonight when I have more time, but on first glance it looks awesome!

I like it! Actually, my first impression was that it seemed to be tailored just for me. :) It has my local weather, my local Go Gardening spots... :)

Okay, I realize that everyone's will be tailored for them also, but it made me feel special for a few minutes. Thanks!

:-)

Dave....it is nice....but how do you add things ....like...walking trails in my area....we have the Arizona Trail and Joe's Canyon Trail (part of Coronado National Memorial and Coronado National Forest).

We also have a small nursery near me. Jo

Click on the "Go Gardening" tab at the top, then click on "Add a new entry" on the resulting page.

Dave

Hmmmm....I guess I should have read more!! You so smart! LOL Jo

There isn't a link to get back to Dave's Garden once I go to Gardens.com?

I just went to Go Gardening and was looking at the list of garden centres in my area. How is the mileage calculated? Is it supposedly from my location? Some inaccuracies there and also one mislocation. How to fix?

fancyvan, the Google maps don't always give the precise coordinates.

Please use the "Contact Us" link to report any that are in the wrong location - and as much detail as you can provide (including the correct coordinates) is very much appreciated ;o)

How cool! I like it, I love it, can I have some more of it?
Thanks Dave, it's so fine and I must tell all my gardening friends about DG, and Gardens.com

Also note that in Canada the service isn't 100% reliable yet, but it will be.

AYankeeCat, how could I have missed that! I'll add this in posthaste.

dave

Thanks. I get lost easily!

AYankeeCat, there is a link to Dave's Garden at the bottom left corner of every page.

dave

I know the Go Gardening feature was gonna go to Gardens.com, but where did our link to the Articles go? Did it leave as well?

I took it down since it was redundant.... It doesn't seem to make sense to have the Articles tab on DG when the articles live at Gardens.com. It also makes more room up top. :)

dave

I love the weather report!!!!

hmmm.....and here I was going to ask ya if there was a way we could be notified when a new article was added, like a favourite forum type thing :))

Fits me like a glove :) Thanks everyone !!

Dea

It looks great, but I'm trying to figure out why it says there is an Armstrong Garden Center in Fallbrook, CA - no such animal according to Armstrong. ??

I bet you're having fun, Dave, working with people who know as much or more about these things. It appears you make a good team!

Will this eventually replace the davesgarden page?

Dave, I have an e-mail address that needs to be added into a nursery on Go Gardening. How do I do it? Or do you need to?

Oh what a hoot! I changed the zip code at Go Gardening and above it says I live in Soddy Daisy TN......lol....why'd it do that?

Look! Houston's weather failed its test. LOL!

I'll tell it to study harder next time... ;-)

I just get a blank spot in the weather area :((

I am absolutely blown away!!!!! I love it, and it makes me feel so special. Thank you.....it just gets better and better!
Pati

kaperc--any entries that are in the database are there because someone put them there, someone obviously thought there was an Armstrong location there, maybe they accidentally got the name of the nursery wrong or the address wrong. You could try using the contact us link to report the error

Terryr, looks like you live in your old house now too!! LOL

ecrane3, I thought that might be the case. At least my weather report passed its test! lol

It looks great and got my location and weather correct!! Can't beat that!!

ecrane3, I thought that might be the case. My weather report passed its test, though! lol

I did a little sleuthing and discovered it is really an Armstrong Growers wholesale site. Afraid I was missing something!

I really like it! It's easy and attractive and informative.

I would like to see one thing more though. On the map in Go Gardening, where all those little red markers are, is there a way to know which is which? I'd love to see the name of the Nursery highlighted when you hover the cursor over the mark.

Click on any of them and they *should* display the name of the location it represents

Yeah, let me loose on a new website... Already managed to add a new garden center (Amelia Garden Center) with its coordinates locating it in NEPAL on the Google map. You go figure... At least the address display is right.

Terry, thanks. I had not clicked on them because I thought it might take me to it and I didn't want to go there, just see what it was. But you are right of course. It tells me what it is without taking me there. I was surprised when I clicked on one of them and it said "You". Ha! That just struck me as cute.

Maria, it's all fixed now: http://gardens.com/go/view/6283/

Plus a few others in the area: http://gardens.com/go/advanced.php?type=&zip_distance=25&zip=32034&search_text=&sorter=company_name

Please add a review for those you've visited ;o)

Congrats to all of you,I love to new Go gardening......
Pheadra

But what about because I changed the zipcode to find a nursery to try and edit and it has now changed where my location is? And how do I edit an entry?