From what I read somewhere, you have to follow that person to be able to message and talk. Like facebook sort of.

That's what I read too but I haven't tried it. I tried the email thing but it wants you to put in an actual email addy. I see no message button either. It is set up like people can get PMs (personal messages) within the forum but I don't know how you do it because there is no button.

I'll try it with you and see what happens. BRB.

Hmmmmm.... I went to your page but nothing to click on to message or email you

And the email button on top here makes you put actual email addresses....wow

Thanks for trying everyone. I sent a message to Houzz support, so hopefully they will help. I saw on my profile that bluegirl_gw followed me, I assume in order to send me a message, so I followed her back, but it didn't make a difference. I still don't have any messages or see a message button for anyone else. I'll let you know when I hear from Houzz support or perhaps Tamara will post something here?

So as per the above, when someone from the forum makes a general post such as "send me an email if you want a cutting, etc." that isn't possible, because they would have to follow a specific member first? I'm not even sure if it is working in that way, because I most definitely checked "allow users to message me" and my one follower can't message me. Not sure if it is a user error or Houzzer error.

ok jasmine.. I just followed you.. now follow me and we shall see if we can message each other.

It worked beesneeds! I just sent you a message. Thank you for testing it out.

This is what I received from Houzz:

Houzz Support (Houzz)

Feb 10, 14:55

Hi there,

As a spam protection measure, you may only message users who follow you on Houzz. If you click on the profile of a person who is following you, you will see a message button on the right hand side of their profile.

Your best bet may be to post in the thread you are interested in that you are interested and ask the original poster to follow you so you can private message them.

Hope that helps!

Houzz Support

I'm sorry, but all this 'follow me and I'll follow you' business seems excessively complicated. In all the years of GW emails open to anyone who was a GW member, I never got spammed. I just don't see this as an improvement at all.

I couldn't agree more, AnneCecilia.

yes exactly, right on target AnneCecilia.

my email blocks spam well, and i never got any messages at old garden web that made me uncomfortable or anything bad.

this is the one thing i dislike most about the change.

that and the WHITE!!!!

beyond whatever personal preference i might have, it does not facilitate the types of interactions we have...where it is usual to just interact with a stranger briefly, quickly trade some seeds, and then maybe never talk with them again.

sure we had friends and some people we repeat traded with, but some good exchanges happened between strangers, without any sense of obligating oneself to more interaction than that. maybe that sounds cold or something, but in the context it worked out well...and i think that even once this settles down...there will be a lot less trading unless that is made possible by being able to email people "cold"...and have a place for that kind of interaction.

whim all means we need to be able to email people without following them, otherwise there will be a whole lot less trading.

I think for non-Facebook users, the messaging feature is very difficult. It's not intuitive to someone like me.

I got a lot of responses & queries in another thread (offering cuttings) & found my ability to respond was limited--even when I discarded a bunch of messages (which I needed to save). I kept getting error notices indicating my 'storage' was full. By using the board to message, I don't have folks' e-mail addys to respond directly to questions, & I can't retain the body of their messages indefinitely, which contain necessary info like shipping addresses, cuttings requests, etc..

On the former board, I could easily respond to gw members from my own private e-mail account & if they had selected to allow it, their e-mail addresses were available to me to respond to privately to follow up with more info.

So, perhaps I'm just being dense with an unfamiliar format, but it's been aggravating & difficult to use.

I don't llke having to "follow" everyone in order to be able to send them a PM or for them to PM me about something. And do I really want everyones posts showing up on my profile page? I'm so not happy here!.

You can always exchange personal emails once you have followed someone. It's not as direct as before but it's safer.

I do NOT like the follow feature. I don't do facebook, and there's a reason why (several, actually, but I won't go into them). I like to be able to private message another member without anyone else knowing it; it's simply no one else's business. To have to follow a member--and them follow me--in order to do so just feels intrusive and like I'm publicly screaming "hey I'm messaging this person!" I have the "follow" feature turned off and "message" feature turned on...I'm not sure I'm willing to change "follow" to on, even if it means I can't private message.

If a Houzz staff member sees this, please give us the ability to private message each other without using the Follow feature.

Hi All, wanted to make sure you all knew that we've made a change to how messaging works and you can now allow messages from anyone (not just people you follow) by changing the setting in your profile. Here's the FAQ with more info!

Thank you, Emily. This is terrific. The changes on Houzz are appeciated. Thanks for listening. :) BTW, I didn't know there was a fact page that lists all the changes in Houzz. I will check back!

Thanks, Emily. In my opinion, this is a tremendous improvement.

Thank you so much Emily! I can't tell you how grateful I am that Houzz actually cares about us and keeps improving these forums. This change is one of the most important, in my opinion, and I really am so very grateful.