I was frustrated by this yesterday, as it initially blocked the page and forced me to click a sign in, but then it recognized me and at least I was able to access old posts. But you are right, it is very frustrating that searching in each of the distinct GW forums appears no longer possible. Bleah.

Still works for me!! I typed in "hair" in the Search bar and got a dropdown menu with Home Decorating Conversations being my first choice of forums.

Just avoid the magnifying glass....typing over that takes you all kinds of places!! Start typing where it says 'search'.

Gardengal, I tried typing Hair, and the third time saw "in conversations". All TWELVE other times it came up "in advice" no matter where I put the cursor in the bar. This doesn't make sense.

Works like it always has for me.

I'm signed in and all I am getting are options for advice, photos or shop. I tried a few times and played around with my cursor as well.

If I have a post open, like this one, this first search option is this conversations forum. Then advice, photos, and shop. If I'm at the main page for the conversations forum the search for just this forum doesn't show up. Odd.

I just get a window telling me to "get started" on Houzz. I can't use the search function unless I go forward.

It's working for me as it is for rosesstink--I get the old search from within a thread, but can only search Advice, Photos, etc from the main page of any forum. Ick.

Yeah, I had some weird sign-in options earlier this week but seems to be OK now.

I see what you're talking about, but it's easy to work around. Type in your search word(s) and follow with Home Decorating Conversations.

That may work for this forum, CindyMac, but adding, say "Cooking" gets one nowhere, alas. I have to go to Google and with their new algorithms that's not a breeze, either.

It's not working for me either! UGH :( As if the search feature here wasn't already bad enough, it just got worse. I do find that I have better luck doing a google search for things than using the search feature provided here.

I find the search feature to be pretty worthless unless I really do not understand it. ( I used to understand it and utilize it back in the day). Very frustrating. And I do believe the wonkyness is why we have replies to posts that have been dormant for years. Really wish they would fix it............then again for the $ I pay I guess I can't complain.

It seems to be working pretty reliably for me if I search while having a post open. I don't remember ever doing that before.

i agree, search engine is awful. i was looking for a thread about making homemade vanilla. if u are in Home Decorating all you get is HD, advice etc.... and there are no thread with that title.

used to be if u searched "homemade vanilla" u would get multiple threads with that topic.

i got "vanilla paint colors" etc... worthless to me.

i guess i will have to bookmark everything. :(

http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/1976911/vanilla-extract-is-complete-now-what

The only way to find anything right now is to do a google search. I put in "homemade vanilla extract garden web" and this was one of the results.

ETA: I am printing out anything I really want to keep. I had a lot of stuff saved on HGTV rate-my-space and they dumped the whole thing. I couldn't get the pictures I had saved.

If Houzz dumps GW, it will all be gone. We have already lost most of the pictures that were on a photo site that used to be free and now they want you to pay.

The photo issue was due to THAT site - had nothing at all to do with Houzz or GW. And I seriously doubt any major changes are going to be happening to the GW side of things or that it's going to be "dumped"......all the garden forums are still very active and functioning as normal.

The 'search' function on Houzz still works for me.......but you do need to be in the forum where the original thread was posted. I can't remember if that is any different than it always has been, tho. If you can't remember what forum, then I agree doing a Google search is probably faster and more efficient.

As an aside, the conversational forums really do not have a topic they focus on, compared to the gardening forums or most of the home forums so it does make it more difficult to locate old threads if you are not absolutely certain which forum they were posted to originally. For example, if I was hunting for an old thread about hydrangeas, I'd look in the Hydrangea forum first. But I would not necessarily have though to look in the Harvest forum for a thread on vanilla..........just saying :-))

Well, I had remembered some posts by Pal I wanted to look up, they were design around threads and at least one was about ranches or small older homes. I found one of the ones, posted in 2012, and the photos were all unavailable, making all that reference material worth relatively little, to me anyway. Gee, 5 years ago was like yesterday at my age. I'm really disappointed.