There are times a "glitch" in the system wouldn't give Houzz/GW any warning it was about to occur. According to Tamara on another thread, it was fixed as soon as identified and sorted out.

Yes, I did. I thought it was because I had not yet confirmed my account.

Yes....at first I thought it was my computer, then I thought maybe they were doing maintenance, then I thought maybe Houzz had decided to pull the plug on GW and that's when I totally freaked out at the thought of losing my "imaginary friends." Went to bed trying to think of ways to reconnect with everyone if they had pulled the plug, but being a computer illiterate I knew I wouldn't be the one to figure it out. Breathed a big sigh of relief this morning when I got on and saw everything was right with the world!

Yes, I was very confused as to what was happening and hoped it would sort itself out by morning. Very strange indeed!

I noticed last night when all my links, bookmark and email links, directed me to Houzz home page. Luckily by the time I saw it, it wasn't long lived.

Me too!
Was entering a post, and then it was gone! Weird....
Faron

Yes. My bookmark took me to home page and the forum was nowhere to be found. All threads were coming up as errors. I really thought they canned the forum. I was feeling bad for people that were in the middle of crisis decorating/decision making - kitchens. If Houzz was working on something there was nothing posted in their update section.

Good idea DC01!
I'd be kinda lost if I didn't this group of friends!
I MEAN that too. :-)

Faron

Daisy, that's what I was thinking last night, too. And what Faron said.. It occurred to me I would have no way to contact anyone.

I didn't see that but had similar emotions when I went to reconnect in GW and was directed to Houzz. I can't say how thrilled I was to see some familiar names as well as the roll call thread. Still a lot of names missing for me though. So I think Daisy does have a good point, maybe a second option should be devised.

I believe someone on the kitchens forum collected a lot of emails right after the change over to houzz and I think maybe a facebook page was mentioned as a possibility or maybe one was even set up.

There are still a lot missing. At least it seems that way to me. But I have not been on much. Maybe there were a lot of name changes?

I think an email tree or fb page could be a good idea.. but I suspect many prefer the anonymity we have on the forum. While I am not so concerned about the anonymity in one-on-one discussions (i've emailed with a number of GWers over the years), I wouldn't publish my email here in the open. My email box is overwhelming as it is..so I'd not likely carry on with any sort of chain email discussions. I am not sure about FB. I'd have to think about that.

I freaked out, too, thinking houzz had eliminated us and couldn't understand why they wouldn't let us know first. I had the same feeling of loss even though I don't post that much. I love the way people so freely share their experience and wisdom both on the decorating side as well as the conversation side. I would really miss the forums/people.

There are other host sites available but it takes some legwork to investigate them, set up a trial group and see how it actually works for the type of posting that we do. I went through this a few years ago with another group and set up test sites at 4 other locations. Our group actually made the move 2 times - the first site was very short lived, the second lasted a while but the attrition rate was intense because the site was complex to use. Another member had set up a facebook test site but that was originally rejected by the group because it operates so differently from our original host (which was MSN) but we ended up there after a while almost by default. It''s not perfect, but it's working for us - some of had been facebook friends before. There are still people from the original group on MSN who are 'finding' us on facebook and it's been many years since MSN shut down.

I would really hope a facebook page is not the answer because it's way to invasive and one site I will never sign up for.

For emailing with friends in GW, I just created a new email account using my GW name. That was the only thing I used that account for so it was easy to keep up.

I was part of the recent email list gathered on Kitchens. We quickly found that the list was unwieldy, and moved to free message board. It was only active for a week or so during the transition.

Lukki, you are not alone. I cannot have facebook because of DH's job. I'm glad because I don't want to use it, and that gives me a gracious out whenever I'm invited!

Lukki and Riosamba, I also will not have a FB account for many reasons, including my job.

My dog has a Facebook account. Just sayin . . .

Another place we could all land is hometalkentertainment.com

I'm not active there and I'm not even signed up, but it is probably the closest thing to here that we would find.

Glad to see I'm not alone when it comes to Facebook. Graywings, its not just about the name so an employer won't invade your privacy, my reasons also have to do with tracking and all that encompasses. Google is invasive enough but no site compares to Facebook.

There is a diy forum for decor too, diychatroom.com

I heard a radio blip a couple of weeks ago that 50+ % of the WORLD is on FB....I told DH I needed to have a T-shirt made for myself that said," ONE of the OTHER 50%!!" Or, proud to be one of the OTHER half of the WORLD!

My employer is always pushing tech on us and at a staff meeting last year, we were told that if we didn't have an online presence we were basically dinosaurs and making them look bad. I'd always been really proud of my lack of an online profile but almost got pushed into establishing one. I didn't and am very glad. I just googled my name and Yay! I still don't exist (according to the cyber world).

DLM, how did you all make contact after your other group was shut down? Did you know it was coming and exchange particulars? Set it up prior to the actual shutdown?

Do you think they'd notify us if they were doing away with GW? Is there somewhere on houzz we could meet to discuss setting up an alternate?

If there was somewhere on houzz that we could agree to meet, that would be great. Kind of like how we agreed in our family that we would meet on the neighbours front steps in the event of a fire. I don't know houzz at all. Does anyone know if there is such a place we could meet?

I think we're all jumping the gun here and skittish because of the change we just went through - we knew it was coming but they pulled the rug without giving us a date. Seems they were doing some maintenance the other night and nothing more but I think setting up a meeting place on the Houzz forums is a great idea in the unlikely event that our GW side disappears one day - I think we're safe to assume the Houzz side would remain. Whoever sees it first can go over to the What Are You Working On forum and send up a a signal flag - GW MEMBERS HERE or something!!!

daisychain - our group did have a long advance warning with a specific date when all MSN groups would be shut down. Our group managers had the ability to email en masse and we did that multiple times to hopefully catch everyone. That gave us time to research other options, but as I said, after 2 other host changes we are on facebook now. I'm sure there are some members who lost us along the way with the changes and others who won't join us because it's now on fb, but that's life - there is an ebb and flow to these groups that would happen anyway.

Thanks DLM. I've bookmarked your suggestion (I should be able to access my bookmarks even if GW goes awol, right?)

I, for one, am very skittish. I think it was the changeover and the loss of ikeafans at the same time. Things that you just take for granted suddenly disappearing. When I couldn't access GW the other night, I tried to google threads that I knew had existed and I couldn't even find those. It was scary to think all that info might just be gone. As I'm trying to redo our house, I am counting on being able to access my finished kitchen and bathroom threads so that I can remember what and where I bought.

I've gone thru phases of being more and less active here, but knowing that I could return always gave me comfort.

daisychain if the only place you have those pictures of your finished rooms is on GW do save them to your hard drive or a USB drive. If you want the content of the thread comments, too, you can c/p all that to save as well. If the GW side of Houzz disappears you will not be able to access this thread or my comment - like what happened the other night.

I would imagine that we could get in touch via our profiles here. Maybe that's a good idea to follow those on Houzz that you don't want to lose touch with. They have PMs I believe.

DLM, are you referring to our old, much loved GI? I miss GI, but have made many great friends here over the past years. I'm adapting to Houzz because I have to, but it still feels too large, cumbersome and impersonal. As for FB, I have been on it for a number of years, as its an easy way to keep in touch with my very large family, none of whom live here in New Mexico. But, I keep mine very private, with just family and a few close friends. I miss GW a lot!

I do believe it was GI that DLM was speaking of Lynn as I followed it along each move.

I e-mailed Houzz and complained about this loss of GW, and how I disliked what they did...they e-mailed me back with an apology and blamed it on Garden Gnomes. LOL. I am soooooo glad it is back!