Journal "wish list" requests here, please

Now that they have done the Garden Showcase it would only stand to reason that they would make updates to the Journal as they are totally connected. I have to take the information off my journal entries to ID photo's being posted however the way the Journal is set up this process is a complete PITA. There is far too much cutting and pasting to do to get the entry listed correctly. Plus there is no viable way to do a secondary sort after searching my journal so it takes ages to get all the information to post with the photo. I would have posted many more photo's but it takes too long to correctly label them and they are kind of useless without Genus, species and cultivar labels. But not holding my breath. Patti

Good thing not to hold your breath after looking at the beginning date of this thread. lol

Unfortunately, I have cruised through other members journals and find very few folks keep them. Apparently we are a narrow group of journaleers and not high priority. Sorry ~ Kristi

I am afraid you are right, but If the journal was made more relevant with some tweaking it would be unparallelled as a tool for any gardener. I am sure that more people would use it especially if it could be tied into the Garden Showcase.

Just moving the list into the correct order that is used by the whole garden world would be a huge improvement. Genus, species, Cultivar.... then common name. Not too difficult. Then to add a blank space after the status so the user could designate the space for their own needs. I would love to have the source listed, but others might want propagation notes, or bloom color or size. I don't know why we need the heading called entries, so a personalized blank space could use that position IMHO. But all this is wishful thinking. Patti

Don't know where to go. Where are my journal pics

They are now only available as far as I can figure, if you search your own journal.
Here is how I do it.

Click on Home and on right side you will see:

I'm confused - but maybe that's not so unusual. Can't you just go directly to your journal to see your journal pics? I just tried it, and that worked for me. Or did I misinterpret the question?

I am hoping you have found something I can no longer do or have a new bug. But as I see it, now as before you can click on view for each item in your journal and see a picture of that one selected item. But before we could see all pictures next to rid column and then for more information about what had been entered in comment field about a specific entry you would then selected view. However, before we could scroll through our entire journal or through any specific category in the journal and see all the entered pictures next to rid column. I now have to do a sort any recognized catsgory such as by location or Genus or date to lump a group together so I can see the photos so I can ID a plant. This is especially helpful with any collection of plants like my narcissus collection or primula etc so the new way to see photo's works, mostly, just different. However one giant loss is that I can no longer look at all the plants that I buy from a specific source as I once could as that catagory isn't recognized even though that is my sub catagory for all entries in my journal. Hope we get this fixed, but thinking it is a dead request like everything on this thread. Patti

Patti,

In an effort to try to discern if I'm just not understanding (vs actually seeing the screen differently for some reason or having maybe found a different way to 'get there'), I decided to take a screen shot to illustrate what I was trying to say yesterday. Low and behold, when I went back to the page, the same one I had viewed yesterday, to get a screen shot, the pictures were gone - but they were there yesterday.

After some head scratching to try to make sense of all this, I discovered something very interesting. What I found may be helpful to the developers in troubleshooting the issue. It may also provide a way for us to get to those missing pictures. Explanation below.

The 2 images below are screenshots from my journal. Both were taken a few minutes ago and both show the same entry "Play To Win" circled in red. The two pages do not show identical entries because of a sorting glitch in the system (explanation in a minute), but we can still use them to compare the "Play To Win" entry.

As you will immediately notice, the 1st image (below) has the iris thumbnails (or pictures), including the one for Play To Win. This is what I was seeing yesterday when I wrote the post questioning you guys about the problem. The 2nd image, however, has no thumbnails not even the one for Play To Win - even though both images were taken today just a minute or so apart! The 2nd image appears to illustrate what you have been seeing and describing.

The differences between these 2 images is a function of how I arrived at the screen, believe it or not. For Image 2 I clicked on "My Journal" to reach this page. For Image 1, I got there by choosing "my info" and the selecting "Read DreamOfSpring's Garden Journal." Now I do realize the latter method is not the correct way to view one's journal, but it's what I apparently did yesterday when in a hurry and momentarily confused by the changes to the menus. I just couldn't find the "My Journal" link right away at the time.

It would appear I actually have uncovered another glitch in the system. You may be able to use this glitch to view those thumbnails in the mean time, until they get it fixed. Depending on what you want to do on the page, you may need to use both screens, one to view the pics and the other to access some of the stuff that is chopped off on the other screen. Not perfect but a possible work around.

Oh, and the reason I ended up with the 2 pages sorted differently is if you take the Image 2 route (using "My Journal") the system sorts them by name automatically. If you take the Image 1 route (using the "my info" screen) the entries are not sorted (same behavior as Journal always had). I took Image 1 (not sorted) 1st. When I got to the screen to take Image 2, it was sorted automatically. I could not 'unsort' the screen for Image 2, and I was too lazy to go back to redo Image 1. (I mention this both to explain this mystery and to point out yet another behavioral difference between the 2 screens).

I find that very helpful! Thank you for taking the time to explain! I had spent so much time changing the way I had my Daylilies listed in the categories just so the pictures would show a certain way. I find it helpful when moving plants out of season, to be able to see what they look like. I would click the column I wished to categorize by to help me figure out what plants will work where. Not sure if that makes sense to others. I'd probably have to screen shot to explain it properly, but one column I used to list the bloom season. With Daylilies I have them as Early, Mid, Mid late Etc. I used this with other plants as well, such as Narcissus. It is very helpful when you are trying to accomplish successive bloom and have a gap. The pictures help to decide if I am missing any colors for that bloom period or if I have way less that bloom at a certain time, etc. I also changed on column to say White Daylily or Pink Daylily etc. So that way I could sort by that column to see all the plants that were in the same color family all at once.
I am not sure if it would even work anymore now. I will have to try it out the way you have explained.

My journal is private so it does not allow me to view it from My Info, unless I am looking in the wrong place.

Hi Meredith,

The work-around method I gave above that allowed me to access my journal and see the thumbnail shots of my flowers will only work if your journal is public. This is true because accessing one's journal via one's info page is analogous to viewing it as another person (not the journal owner); consequently, you will not be able to access your journal this way as long as it is private.

Depending on how important it is to you to be able to see your thumbnails, you might want to consider making your journal public temporarily, just until the journal problem is fixed. I have no idea how long that will be, however.

To get an idea what you would be able to see if you were to change your journal to public temporarily, you can try out this access method using another person's journal. Just click on that person's user name to go to their access page. For instance, you could click on my name and follow the links to view my journal this way. If you do try mine, be aware that I have multiple journals, so when you get to the 1st page of my journal, you will need to choose "Default Journal" from the list of journal options to go to the one that has pictures. Also, note that my journal doesn't have pictures for all plants. Just scan down the pages to see the ones that do. Roses, irises, camellias, and daylilies may be some of the better options for finding pics.

As to your other question about sorting, I checked and you can still sort your journal by the various columns regardless of whether you access your journal as yourself (choose "My Journal") or as someone else (from the "my info" page). Hope this helps.

Wow, Dream of Spring. Thanks so much for your explanation of the missing pics and a possible workaround. I thought it was just me! I do hope they get that fixed. Being able to assign pics to my journal is a main reason I am a DG member. I too am having difficulty navigating the new menus. I can never FIND my journals /blogs. It used to be so easy.

I have been away with no cell or computer while up at family cottage. Now on cell phone on ferry heading home. Can't wait to see your back door attack to see photo's in journal. Too hard to read on cell phone, but a big thank you for all your work. I will read it all tonight. Patti

cedar18,

I hope the workaround helps, and thanks for letting me know it is useful. With respect to the menus, I think they removed what they saw as redundant access points or menus. I believe I saw that in an admin post somewhere. Before there were multiple ways to get to things like the journal, via different menus. Apparently they pared it down to just one. As a result, many of the menus we had grown accustomed to are no longer available. I think once we get used to the new menus, we will probably find them just as easy to use and find.

Hi Patti,

I hope the workaround will help. It isn't perfect, but it's probably better than nothing. Like I said, I stumbled upon it by accident while trying to understand why I could see journal pics and you could not. The answer, of course, was that I was doing it 'incorrectly'.

Pictures are back and the Journal order is now correct. Genus, Species, Cultivar. Miracle made by Terry. So Happy. Patti

I wish I could get a link to easily share my journal with my friends, or get an easily clickable link so I can post it to Facebook or Twitter.

jnn - go to your journal, click "view" on a specific item, scroll down almost to the bottom. Click "External View", then click "Back to jnn's Journal homepage." If you have more than one journal, click on the one you want to share. Now you can copy/paste the url into an email or Facebook or anywhere you like. Here's mine:

http://davesgarden.com/community/journals/sj/SallieKr/6263/

My journal is "Public"... I'm not sure if that matters. I guess it should!

Also, to save having to repeat all the steps, I create a journal entry and save the url in the "Initial Comments" field.

Actually, I should have tried it but didn't think of it until this morning. Your journal is here:
http://davesgarden.com/community/journals/sj/jnn/0/

It looks like you organize yours like I do. I have Birds and Butterflies categories, need to add animals.


This message was edited Aug 25, 2014 5:30 PM

This message was edited Aug 26, 2014 9:48 AM

Is this thread still active? I just found it today. If so, here is my wish list.

First, I should say that I actually use my journal as a plant database, not as a typical "journal". I haven't had time to really work with it yet, but from what I've seen the "My Blog" feature looks like it could be used as a normal journal. I started reading this thread and found some ideas I hadn't thought of, so I copied/pasted into this message along with my own.

#1: I've started adding entries for birds and butterflies into my journal in separate categories from the plants. It would be extremely helpful if there were links in BirdFiles and BugFiles to add the items to my journal, the same as in PlantFiles. It would save me a lot of copy/paste to the "Genus" & "Species" and then having to copy/paste the url for the specific BirdFiles or Bugfiles page into the "Initial Comments".

#2: Export DG journal data as a .csv file

#3: Start Date could be on "Initial Comments" line, like the entries ie:
Jun 21, 2014: Initial Comments

#4: Currently you can click on the column headings in the View Category listing, but I'd like for it to sort both Ascending to Descending AND Descending to Ascending. Just click a second time to toggle would work.

#5: It would be great to be able to add a photo to an entry after the entery has been created while in the Edit Entry mode. Also to be able to delete a photo from an entry without having to delete the whole entry.

#6: I would like to be able to access plants by location, so I could choose a garden area and see all the plants in it.

#7: Have "Location" set up the same as status: Statuses (Add/Edit statuses) and milestones: Milestones (Add/Edit milestones). Also, then be able to access by location, same as "Access by Status:"

#8: Ability to access by milestones, same as "Access by Status:". I have "Bloom start date" as a milestone, for example. If I could access items by that milestone, and sort the results, I could see which plants might look good planted together.

#9: I would like to be able to add pictures to milestones. Now I have to enter a milestone, and then add an entry for a picture to show first bloom, etc.

#10: Allow To Do Items to be created that aren’t tied to a specific Journal Item. The reason is that sometimes my To Do item has more to do with general garden maintenance and not a specific plant in my Journal. For example: Time for Spring fertilizer.

#11: Sometimes a "Select All" with the ability to uncheck the few I don't want in the group would be helpful, as would the use of Shift-Select to Select a bunch of items at once.

#13: A drawing program that allows one to draw the basic shape of one's garden bed and "place" plants where you think they should go so that you could get an idea of what your garden will look like. Preferrably this would all be to scale to get a more accurate picture. I think melody mentioned this in a DMail 2 years ago. Any progress?

#14: The ability to have a master journal with all the categories set up, and the ability to clone it to a "year" journal ie: option to copy a journal to a new one, rather than move all items.

#15: Allow a sort by headers after a journal search.

My number one wish for my journal is that I could find it again. I haven't been active on this site for a few years and I don't know how to access my journal now. It used to be available to everyone; is it a feature available only to subscribing members now? If so, when I subscribe will it appear in my menu at the top of the screen?

TIA.

Shannon