Oh, I AGREE! It's just one of the many things I don't understand. This is the only forum I know of with this format. The "better" way has been around at least 10 yrs. Why haven't they switched???

The only way I find anything is by searching Google/Yahoo and I find GW search results that way.

It's nice to hear I'm not the only one who has a problem...lol...always thought it was my lack of computer skills that was the problem.

You can specifically search gardenweb results in google by typing in your search term followed by site:gardenweb.com. So if you wanted to search for pottery barn sofas you'd type "pottery barn sofa site:gardenweb.com" and it would returns all gardenweb results containing the term "pottery barn sofa"

That is correct, but you also get many other results interspersed in between the gardenweb pages. I have tried this today, again, looking for various threads.

What really baffles me is why the site owners would not want to make it as user friendly as possible.... lazy? Technology challenged? More likely they are simply complacent. Oh, well.....

I completely agree.
In fact, i think the search (dys)function would have kept me from using any other site. But somehow, I can't stay away from gardenweb.

I also hate it that you can't delete your own messages. You have to beg.

I am SO glad you posted this. I thought it was just me. I'm very computer literate, but have no idea how GW search function works and I've been here for years. No matter what I put into 'search' the results have nothing to do with my search words. I also go to google to search this forum. It's ridiculous.

Ridiculous is an understatement!

Ditto all of the above about the search dys-function.

I believe the sort feature here collects all the threads with the search word and then lists them in order by the number of responses in each thread. So a thread with 75 responses will come up on the top and a thread with 2 responses will be listed later, regardless of how many times the search word is in the thread.

It is definitely based on some sort of antique search criteria and method that hasn't been used in 20 years.

I've been on this website since 2001(?) and there has never been an update to the format. Crazy. I often use Google to search but am often surprised when I input an unusual user name and very personal information comes up in the search. People shouldn't use their unique user name on their kitchen website and their potentially embarassing health condition website!

It's mind boggling how this site is the same as it was when Spike was at the helm. You would have thought with the sale to iVillage that it would have been brought into the 21st Century.

A group on the gardening side broke away in 2000 and formed their own gardening site. It has all the standard formatting options along with editing, deleting, and adding images. You can open a member's profile and see all their posts in chronological order. They do rely on member contributions and have no advertising.

What I always do now is use google. I type in what I want to search followed by gardenweb. So if I want to search marble countertops, in the Google search box I'd type:

marble countertops gardenweb

The first thing that comes up is usually an ad for Lowe's or something...

The next thing is a paragraph looking thing that looks smushier than the results below it. It's ALL GW results and right below it in smaller writing it says "more results from gardenweb.com>>" CLICK THAT. The next pages are NOTHING BUT GW RESULTS. If you bookmark that page and save it to your favorites, you can search from that page from now on. The "site.ths.gardenweb.com" can stay in the searchbox and you would just change out what's in the rest of the google search box for your search. It's really super easy. It sounds like more steps than it is.

Once I figured that out, it became the only way I searched GW. I found out that threads get purged from the site after a while but stay archived in google. There's still no chronological order. But it's much more helpful than trying to do a search here.

Cuz they know we're hooked.

The technology here is antiquated. I can't understand why they don't update/upgrade. It's crazy.

The feature I miss the most, is the ability to get notifications when you subscribe to a thread.

Does anyone think it would do any good if we all signed a petition stating that if they don't upgrade, we are going to open a new forum?

natal...... hmmm...... what forum did they form? :)

Always has. Apparently always will.

Natal -I was part of a splinter group that ran away from here in 2001. There was one in 2000 too?

Lolauren, it's pretty much all gardening. No decorating. ;)

Roses, the copyright on the site says 2000. I didn't find it until 2007.

Yeah, I am more interested in gardening than decorating... that's why I was curious. :) I have probably already been to the site without realizing it originated here....

Thanks!

Though it's antiquated there's still a load of activity here. I doubt they'll go to the trouble/cost of updating until they have to. Meaning we all start to leave.
I rarely visit or post anymore because they don't have email notices to let you know when there are comments. Even though they still have the box to check when you start a thread to get notices when someone replies (or at least they did last time I looked)I never get the notices.

I think houzz might just take over all things house related.... It's time for them to launch a forum!

Indeed!