New formatting to forums coming soon!

In a few days, we will be rolling out some improvements to the forums. Here are some screen shots to help you envision what the new format will look like. All the features we know and love are still there, but many of them have been moved around a little to make the site function a little better and generally improve/update things.

The first - and biggest - change you will see is when you click on Communities tab and click on Discussion forums: http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/

Instead of seeing this (first screen shot), you will see the forums arranged by your unread watched threads, most recent threads, and most active threads (middle screen shot). From any of those sections you will have a link to see more unread, recent or active threads.

If you want to see the summarized list of all forums, scroll down and you will find links to all of them (third screen shot).

The red/orange dot to the left of a forum means it has had activity since the last time you accessed it. A green leaf to the right of the forum link indicates it is for paid subscribers.

When you click on a thread, you will see some more changes. I've posted a screenshot of the current forum page and a new forum page side-by-side below.

For starters, you can now sort all the threads in a forum by newest-oldest (default) or oldest-newest, or by number of replies, or by the most recent reply date/time.

The other details, such as who started the thread, or who was the most recent poster are found under the thread title/link. We no longer have a column for whether or not it has an image. If it does have an image, the thumbnail will display next to the forum post. Instead of having a column for "new" (or not), the thread link will change colors once you access it. It will revert back when someone else posts to it.

And when you post a reply to a thread, you'll find some changes as well. The first screen shot shows the current format, with links at the top to Watch/Unwatch, Add to Bookmarks, Mark as Unread, Print, Post Reply, Skip to New.

Out to the left-hand side, you can click on the Post# link to quote a post, copy a link to a specific post, and "edit" next to your own posts.

In the new format, those links are now found within each post. (See the second screenshot below.) In addition, there is a flag icon. You can use this to flag posts that otherwise violate our Terms of Use, such as spammy posts.

Finally, when you are previewing your reply (or starting a new thread), the format is a little different, but not as noticeable as the others I've outlined here.

On the left is a screenshot of the current reply box.

On the right is a screenshot with a quote. The middle screenshot shows the preview; if you wish to make changes, the text box below allows you to modify the text and add photos. You can then post your reply or preview it again.

...and the new forums format is live! Let us know what you think, and/or if you have any problems navigating now that we've converted them.

Don't like this at all. Just not user friendly. I like seeing the names of the poster on the side. I don't see the time the post was made, or the date. Don't know what you all were thinking. Definitely not an improvement in my eyes.

momcat, the name of the poster appears on top of the post. We are working on the time/date stamp.

Terry, I was totally unaware that this was happening. I will say that making the notification threads pop up automatically would have been a very nice thing. I'm not so sure I like this at all. One of the things I just don't understand is there are no dates. The only actual date I have seen is after an edit. The older posts have June'06 which to me means June 2006 but I guess it means June 6 but there is no year.

Does every single post have to be previewed?

Elsie, we did all we could to announce this in advance, and give people some idea of what it would look like.

We are looking at the date issue to get it fixed.

And yes, for now your posts go automatically to preview, and then you can hit "reply" as soon as you see it.

I noticed an old thread i was watching [dated back in 08] is now in the "deleted" forum... yet if i search for it, I can not find a "deleted" forum.

and can i ask why there are tons of banner Ads now?

That's a bug...I'll let them know.

Have to say... I am missing the time stamp on each post.

sometimes I like to scroll back to a particular date.... and just seeing 3d or 2w doesn't help much when i'm looking for something.

any way to get the time stamp back?

They are working on the time stamp. One of the first things we asked for.

I don't like this either..... yeah, seeing "1m" shows that the last post was 1 minute ago, but it's just plain ugly......

Melody, I hope someone is looking into the pages on a thread. when I go to a thread I am watching I have no idea what page to go to. I don't know how many threads get that large to be a problem but this is not friendly in the least.

My guess is to go to the last page, unless it's been a very active thread.

I think if you give it time, the more subtle format will grow on you - it did on me. It is very different from what we've gotten very (VERY) accustomed to seeing.

I don't like this at all, very hard to read, the colors are not distinct enough. I like more structure for viewing threads.

Maybe I shouldn't be posting these issues here. if not - where?

This is exactly the place to report any problems you encounter with the new format :-).

It is a definite change from the old format. Please give yourself some time to adjust to it. I think you'll find it is actually less stressful on your eyes once you get accustomed to where the navigation links are, and the layout.

I strongly dislike the new look.
I liked the yes/no showing when there was a new post in a thread I had viewed.
I liked seeing who was the OP, and who was the last to post.
In "my thread watcher" I can no long delete a batch of threads at once.
It seems there is less functionality, and less information available, and the arrangement of the info is less clear - being arranged in a less linear way.
I would like to see an option to up-vote a post, like I see and use in most other forums...

Again, please give it some time - we think the look will grow on you.


Instead of having the yes/no (which confused a LOT of people, judging from our help desk), the threads change color when they are read/unread since the last post.


You still have that. Within each forum, you will see a summary of all the newest threads, and beneath the thread title, you'll see the name of the thread starter and the name of the most recent poster.

We will see what we can do to restore that - I agree it's a useful feature.


In which part, exactly? When you click on the main forums page, you now have at-a-glance the ability to see the newest unwatched threads on your thread watcher, the newest threads in all forums, and the newest posts. This is designed to be helpful to all of us who want to see the latest on our own threads, as well as be able to see what's going on elsewhere on the site - just in case there's something of interest in any other forum.


We may put in a thumbs-up link, and possibly the ability to actually up-vote the most helpful reviews for a company in the Watchdog, or the most helpful comments a Plant/Bug/Birdfiles listing.

Well this certainly threw me off balance. I came in and saw 3 threads had updates.
One was in Fla Gardening Bonnie's round up which has had a lot of conversation since the round up. When I clicked on skip to new, It took me to the conversation that was still in the planning stages.
The second one was in propagation that I started. It was good.

The third one, I can't even remember now since I was off track.

Unfortunately, as you get older, change is a little more difficult to accept. Guess I am there.
Dave's has always been a comfort zone for me. I have noticed a lot of advertising and pretty much ignored it. Now these changes are another thing to adjust.

Recently I have done searching in the plant files, without success. I found I had more success googling my inquiry which brought me back to Dave's giving me what I was searching for in the first place. Maybe it's just me.

Molly, refresh your browser, your ads should be gone.

Some of the changes in DH have been different...this one is TOTALLY STUPID! Please put it back the way it used to be

This is absolutely HIDEOUS................When I click on "First unread" it takes me to the bottom of the first page, regardless of how many pages. I really liked the fact that ALL the posts were on the same "page" on a thread, not like over at ATP where you have Godonlyknows how many "pages".

For those of us that never frequent the DG site updates and changes, this was really an unwelcome surprise. I hate it.

I respect that everyone has a right to their opinion, but these changes are not stupid. We can't and won't be going back to the way the forums looked before. Again, I'm asking you and others to give the new format a fair shot and some time to become familiar. I think you'll find the changes include some enhancements you will like once you do.

I can appreciate that you liked having all the posts on one thread. On a mobile device (tablet or phone) having hundreds of posts in a single thread is extremely unwieldy. It's also been a problem for users on slower connections, because super-long threads take longer to load.



I hope you'll reconsider. Give your eyes time to adjust to the new format. And I'd definitely encourage every member to put this forum on their "favorite forum" list since it is where we try to keep you updated on changes.

I will try to get used to this, but first impression is it is too white. But more importantly some of the text is too light to see clearly, such as the links directly below the header area like these on this page: "COMMUNITIES: FORUMS: DG Site Updates: New formatting to forums coming soon!"

The dates on the list of the forum threads seem confusing. I am guessing most are month/day, but then I think some are month/year. Could these be replaced with the three numbered dates?

I did post on the Bird Watchers forum and it went smoothly even with uploading images. I am fine with Preview. Seeing something in a slightly different format helps me catch things I would have missed otherwise. But I still have to make use of an edit button. :)

I don't have much of a problem with the way this all looks - although I see no improvement. I just came to DG and there are no new posts in this forum - except there are.

To get to the place I want to be on a thread I have to click on skip to new, then scroll up to find the pages and then just guess what page I might be on now. Then click on that page and click on skip to new then scroll up until I find something that seems new to me. Then again I might be on the wrong page. When I click on skip to new I expect to get there in one click.

Then if I post something I have to preview it and then post it. Maybe on some specific posts they need to be previewed but not all of them.

I haven't found one part of this to be an improvement.

What is on the bottom of the pages as updates are far from updates. Some pages have tons of updates that make the page way too long.

If this actually worked better it might be easier to deal with the change. As one of the subscribers who didn't make it over here to find out about the changes until today - yes I am rather upset.

The skip-to-new feature is not working properly and the techs are working on it. I do apologize for that because it's inconvenient and confusing.

Ditto for the older threads that have been inadvertently bubbled up as new. One way or another, those will stop appearing as new.

Many of us older (age wise) members have vision that can not handle this. It is way to hard to read. Just reading this thread has made my eyes hurt!!!!! And my vision is not the worse of our group.

I'm sorry Melody, I don't like this change either. What was wrong with the old way???
I can not follow this. My old brain doesn't like change.

What a disaster. Why do the people running this site keep ruining features that worked perfectly well? First it was the reformatting of the Plant Files pages, which made them really slow and unreliable to load, took away the really useful thumbnails, and replaced them with images that weren't even optimized to load for scrolling.

The new formatting of the forums is also not an improvement. Information has been lost, formatting of quotes has been screwed up, images are out of proportion compared to text, the last poster is listed wrong. There was no need for this and there is no improvement from it. Similarly the page to select among the forums is equally unhelpful and does not offer any improvements over what we had before.

It's like the people who have these bad ideas for so-called improvements are trying to kill off activity on the forums. It certainly is working for me as I will not be renewing my membership. There is no accountability for failed leadership here and no investment in learning what members actually find useful or practical.

Over the course of five years, and a hundred dollars into the coffer, DG is now worse than it was when I joined. The things that matter to me are all worse. The new features are useless. Forums are drying up and being deleted. All the really helpful people are going away. There is a net decrease in what Dave's Garden has to provide with each passing day.

I wouldn't be so vocal if I hadn't been a member for so long, and didn't see so much potential in what the site could offer.

This message was edited Dec 9, 2015 6:48 PM

I realize your question is rhetorical, but the techs (and Melody and I) are not trying to ruin (or succeeding) in ruining the site. Change is hard. We get that - we knew it would not please everyone. I did what I could to give advance warning - two weeks ago we posted screen shots of the current page layouts and the planned layouts.

Admittedly, we do have some bugs to work out. They are minor, but definitely annoying and confusing at the moment. The techs are KEENLY aware of these issues, and we've advocated vigorously on behalf of our community to impress upon them the need to make the corrections ASAP. Please bear with us. You may not love the changes even after we get finished, but the end goal is to make this site more updated (because we can't stay stuck in 2001 forever) and easier to use as more of us move to mobile devices.

Is it necessary to destroy a perfectly functional desktop system in order to set up something for mobile devices? Can't we just keep the thumbnails for people who access the PF pages on a PC? Do the people who make these changes even realize that they're slowing down the whole load time because they don't know how to engineer images to load quickly? Do they have any idea how long it takes to load the scroll bar for plants with a hundred pictures? There's a serious degree of skill and elegance missing from the design and coding perspective.

This is not progress and the more the site continues along this path, the more I realize it's time to go. Nobody is interested in the user experience. As I said, mine has gotten consistently worse. It's not an update, it's a downgrade. The Plant Files changes and the Forums changes are both downgrades. I am not alone in voicing this opinion and also not alone in being ignored by the people who make the decisions. Is it not obvious to you why people are going away?

This message was edited Dec 9, 2015 7:18 PM

I can agree with most of the previous posts. THIS JUST PLAIN STINKS.

Acccckkkk! Heart attack! There are some places FB shouldn't take over. Dunno how the putr versions look, the mobile version is wierd. Hope you get it smoothed up soon, whine, is this version simpler for you guys in admin to keep cleaned up from trolls and bugs - by any chance? Shake head, cringe, I miss the the other, I really, really do. Sigh. And I dont want to preview every post...

With all sincerity, I hope you change your mind. I hope you'll give it a chance to grow on you, and for the techs to get the bugs and kinks worked out.

To answer your question, it isn't as simple as modifying the thumbnails for mobile device users. There are many other factors that influence design and navigation for smaller devices.

We cannot remain status quo forever, and every change I have ever witnessed on this site and others has always been met with resistance. Your opinions matter and you are entitled to them. But I can say with absolute certainty as both a user and admin that these changes are not downgrades. I hope you'll at least give us some credit for responding to your input, even if our response doesn't result in a reversal of the recent round of changes.