I agee. This is just a way for them to get advertising banners for their actual business.

may if emailed from proper link they would respond

Try it and see what happens.

I believe this is the link which will get you to tyhe web designer:

https://support.houzz.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

PC

The link I gave above for the Houzz suggestion box was the one that appears all over the site, so probably garf used that one (which is understandable). The direct suggestion box apparently is:

gardenweb (at) houzz.com

I just noticed USDA gardening zone information is now displaying with our posts if it is input into our profile at the settings button on the edit profile menu:

https://www.houzz.com/settingsAdvanced

I just learned the story of the "change in ownership". Business or not, the short version is that Houzz was a white knight and agreed to not only save GW from going offline, but to build it up.

Tamara, if you are the moderator, you're the classiest one on the planet.

PC

Yes, thank you Tamara. You have a difficult job right now, but hopefully people will realize that there are several thousand people here all clamoring at once and it's going to take a little bit for things to settle out.

Can you provide a link to the story about the "change in ownership" and why Houzz is the white knight?

Not saying they aren't, just wondering.

As someone who works in web marketing, this buyout screams that Houzz assumes that most gardenweb readers are in a demographic which makes them interested in the Kitchen/Bath/Bedding navigation bar on the top of the page. And their web people know nothing about gardening.

Clob, here's what I discerned from reading many of the forum administrators and web engineers postings, and I posted this yesterday or the day before:

"from what I can tell, NBC was (or already had) shut down iVillage, for reasons unbeknownst to us. Had NBC not found someone willing to adopt us, this website would no longer exist.

I think that is a major misconception in all of this, and it's something that should have been made clear BEFORE the big switch. Had the switch NOT happened, gardenweb would have been shut down completely. Instead of a "conform your email" message we would have gotten an "ERROR: URL invalid" message. I think a lot of people would be a bit more accommodating and understanding had this been made apparent.

As it was, any information about the switch was limited and gave the sense that someone had simply offered enough money to buy gardenweb, and the powers at be said yes. Now that I (sort of) understand that this isn't the case, I feel a twinge of remorse at all my pissing and moaning. At least someone was kind enough to bring us in out of the rain, even if we don't like their decor and furnishings. Goes back to the old "beggars can't be choosers" thing.

There's going to be a lot of hiccups, and bumps in the road, maybe even one to one and a half mountains that need to be surmounted, but if the past few days are any indication, the team who acquired us is dedicated to the task, at least for the time being."

Yes, there is money involved, this is capitalism, after all. But, there was money involved when the site got bought out by iVillage many years ago. There was money and marketing in mind in EVERY website, someone's got to pay the bills, I am VERY happy they don't pass it on to us and make this a "pay to use" website.

Zach, thanks for the post.

So you're basically saying that Houzz decided out of the goodness of their hearts that they would buy gardenweb or it would've been shut down? I think that's what you're implying in the third paragraph but it seems to change later.

I'm really not trying to be an ass.

No, I don't think, and I don't mean to imply that it was solely out of the goodness of their heart, though, I do believe there was something they saw here besides just money, even if that was the great equalizer. And really, if they didn't see the value (monetary or otherwise) of acquiring GW, and had chosen to pass when NBC was looking for buyers, instead of "gardenweb as we know it doesn't exist" it would be simply "gardenweb doesn't exist."

To be fair though, the people who are "in charge" of us now ARE people, and I'm sure many, such as Tamara, Emily, and the others who seem to be more or less running the show, DO see something in this community other than dollar signs.

No worries, you are being far less of an ass than many people I talk to on a day to day basis ;)

Thanks, Zach. I'm sure Tamara, Emily, and other are just doing their jobs. By the way, can you get rid of the obvious Houzz posters in the forums?

---------------------
"Sell on Houzz" is an option shown at the very bottom of each page. Hopefully some gardening businesses and gardening folks will sign up to sell goodies on Houzz.

I'm disappointed that there are no gardening items of any kind listed anywhere on the Houzz site. No books, garden equipment, tools, yard decorations, flower pots, statues, and etc.

I'm not sure how Houzz expects dig-in-the-dirt-garden-loving-folks to merge in to their site.

Does Houzz want us GW folks here or were we just dumped on them by the creator(s) of GardenWeb to keep GW forums from completely going off line and disappearing forever?

I am very thankful the past GW posts full of knowledge and advice are still search accessible.

Maybe Houzz is attempting to keep our beloved gardening forums alive and online instead of just being "the bad one" causing all of the irritating changes on our gardening forums.

I visited other gardening forums online but I didn't want to learn their (new to me) formats either. If I have to learn a new format I might as well continue here and learn with the best gardening folks - GW members who made GW such a wonderful informative place to visit and learn.

-----------

There's no way this is a real person.

Also, I'm now seeing a popup login screen which says "Where did the
Garden Web Forums go?" and "Click on Advice to see all to the latest
discussions!" Neither of those links work.

FYI, kudos to the person who thought about including the "dig-in-the-dirt-garden-loving-folks" line.

Clob and Zach,

The above version is not exactly as I interpreted it, but it sounds like Zach knows more than I do about it so if I say something that confilcts take his version. These are all rumors and gossips.

I would prefer to wait to get the official version, because rumors and assumptions are where most people get angry. My current understanding was more basic:

That NBC, the owner of iVillage of which Gardenweb is a relatively small portion, simply woke up and decided to cut its losses, probably due to a change in business strategy. They then dropped GW/iVillage flat on its face, but some very dedicated GW people couldn't bear to see the incredible archives and membership dropped flat. Somebody alled Houzz, which is owned by a guy and his wife, who used to be eBay's management but got out of there into this home decorating idea to share ideas, and supposedly has over. Although they created Houzz, they are not involved in dictating anything and that is up to Houzz members. Meanwhile GW people have worked under a great deal of stress, and I wonder if with pay, to make a transition. No one really could be sure what would happen and basically the entire database was rushed on to the Houzz servers as best as they could in very short notice. As for not telling users, that's a judgement call. I think no one wanted to make a promise they weren;'t sure they could keep. Now Houzz caught the whole thing in its safety net and built this whole incredible new system to accomodate GW's getting dumped on their servers qas a result of the NBC corporate decision to abandon us. Now they are working the back room tirelessly and under fire to iron out the problems from the transition and are making improvements every day, even though none of this transition was planned to be like this. Screw NBC. Houzz is really cool and GW was transplanted and suffered a small shock, something I think gardeners understand. Don't forget that "joining the Houzz family message" that some people got (I didn't!!!), what, 10 days ago weeks ago. It was apparently so close to then when the deal was inked and we were saved from the browser error "URL doesn't exist" crap.

Like Zach says, people being critical and opportunistic have no clue what good will is involved from some dedicated people in the back room of GW. And the website is free and no more annoying ads, and hand's off moderation, and the capability to really kick ass making this an incredible site. It is apparently here to stay now.

That's my answer to the "white knight" question, but it is all water cooler gossip. There are some people working in GW that are feeling really down now after going through this and having gossip instead of support which I'm sure they didn't expect, but they are real cyber warriors as far as I can judge. Houzz btw, is the 200th or so most visited US website, same with Canada, and is even popular in Russia. They have from 15-30 million visits monthly.

Cheers!

PC

Apologies if the gossip seems wrong (I've yet to heard an inaccurate thing).

Glad to hear you're popular in Russia.

Sorry Tamara for jumping on your case, but not knowing anything, there are only so many assumptions you can make. I will wait a while and see what sorts itself out and what doesn't.

clob, the only gossip I am referring to is my interpretation of what happened, because you asked. Whatever other people are saying is their own business and I want to clarify that. As for the interesting detail of US, Canada, and Russia, I found that on Alexa. It was strange enough that I posted it ... how can it be the 1,000th most popular website in Russia? LOL Evidentally it is.

PC

some say that the new owners are here to sell.... Then they also criticized the previous owners for being a bill board. The fact is that, whoever is the owner, needs to pay its bills and plus make some profit. Their goal is to bring larger crowd.
Keep in mind that this site has been a "GARDENing " site (Garden Web) and most members are "GARDENERS". So the new owners should try to keep the base by making the "gardeners" happy. They can also become potential customers down the road

Seysonn