I’m posting this to create a link to refer people to, if they are trying to view an archived Gardenweb thread that has lost text/photos during the conversion to houzz. Tamara has posted the data is not lost, but the threads will have to be manually repaired. There's no known time frame for the restoration of these threads, as they're working on fixing other issues.

Many (not all) of the threads now missing content are still available for viewing in Google’s cache. They won’t be there forever, but for now we can use this method to look at many older threads. If you haven’t done this before, it’s not hard.

It’s best to know the exact title of the thread. If you’re not sure, you can try Googling with the user name, and add “gardenweb” or “that home site”, along with some pertinent details (modern walnut kitchen, etc.) Or, search in houzz using that same info, until you find the new version of the thread.

Once you have the exact thread title, Google it.

There are usually one or two results in the mix. One will be the more recent, shorter houzz URL, which will only take you back to the damaged thread.

The other, longer URL will look like “msg123456789.html” at the end. This is the one you want. (Stop here to do a happy dance.)

Click on the small downward arrow at the end of the listing, to make the boxed word “cached” appear. (This can be fussy; I sneak my cursor up from below, to just touch the arrow point, as I click.) When you see the boxed word “cached”, click on it.

When the page loads, you’ll see a lot of odd-looking stuff on the top. Just scroll waaay down to the complete thread. Usually it will have all photos and text intact, unless the OP removed their own photos sometime before the conversion to Houzz.

If there is only one URL that leads you back to the new Houzz thread, it probably means the archived GW older version is no longer available in Google’s cache. (Insert sad face here.)

Previously, I tried to help folks by posting links to cached threads (a bit easier for everyone.) But the folks in our Computer Forum told me that posting a link to the cached thread might cause Google to index it sooner. When they do, they may remove the older GW version of the thread from Google results. So for now, it’s probably best just to view these threads by looking them up ourselves, to keep the content visible in Google as long as we can.

If anyone needs help, feel free to message me, and I’ll be happy to help you hunt.

And if anyone reading this understands more about how Google’s cache works, and can share info about how long the old info is likely to be visible there, please chime in. Much of this is above my pay grade!