Ingrid, thank you for thinking of me and Lisa. My hip operation was scheduled for September 4th, but unfortuneately another oncological issue came up that must take absolute priority,so it will have to be put off. Really,it would be about time that I caught a break, people.

I wanted to see how this thread went before I added a comment. I truly believe that whatever forum you choose is a part of your own gardening experience, so I am not pushing anyone to move over to NGA.

After reading the comments above about the content on the RF not including posts that interest or engage you, it came to me that whoever is posting on that forum is creating the content of the forum. If you are only going over to look the forum over, you are missing the opportunity to change the dynamics of the forum. You need to participate by creating threads that DO interest and engage you. Without your creating new content, nothing will change. You have the power to make that change. Just start your own threads.

You even have the tools to create a pseudo second forum. All you need to do is customize your home page so that you have a "Watched Threads" section. You can mark the threads that interest you as "Watch" and those threads, along with any you have posted to, will show up on your home page as soon as you open the site. Poof ... you have your second forum. You don't even have to open the RF. All the threads that interest you are right there.

The chat thread often includes some pretty good information. Some
months its just good people sharing their gardening experience. Other
months, you can find some really interesting stuff in those threads.

I am more than willing to help anyone learn what features or tools you can use to make the site fit your own personal needs.

Of course, that's up to you. It's your decision as to whether or not you want to make the RF more interesting and engaging. Just looking at what's there can't make that happen.

You can stay with this forum, which, I, too, think is broken, or experiment with creating new content on the other site.

I'm so sorry Bart, for whatever issue it was that came up. I think you could use a break too. Prayers you get through it quickly!

Thank you, Alana. I need them.

I’m sorry too, bart. I know this must be a hard time for you. I think of you often. I’m at a standstill with my hip situation, as well. My issue is that my Dr. had some sort of falling out with the group he’d recently joined, and the new one I saw there was a complete waste of my time. It was obvious he didn’t want to take me on as a patient with all my combined medical problems. I’m waiting for his promised referrals, which STILL haven’t come.

Kippy, I also want to say that I’m sorry for your loss. It sounds like you were really there for her, and I hope that brings you comfort in the midst of missing her.

I’m going to try to start a post with a picture in the original post. I need to plant out my ‘Jeri Jennings’ rose, and have a few questions. Let’s hope it works, because I am getting fed up with Houzz, and yes problems have been intermittent for me lately. Jin btw, can suddenly no longer post at all, right after she WAS able to for the first time in a long time. It’s so strange! Lisa

I still don't understand houzz going backward in functioning. Did they make some bad relative hires? What happened?

Lisa -- it seems crazy to me that some of us can't post a photo in our initial post. (And come can't post photos at all.) And it's ridiculous that someone on an IPad can post, but my desktop computer can't.

Re. 'Jeri Jennings' -- Yes. I definitely think it wants to be in the ground. I have three of it -- and my oldest one has been in the ground for several years. That plant has had a good spring, but the newer ones are more laggardly. It looks to me like, longer-establish = better performance.

It is crazy that I still can’t post a picture in my original post. I hadn’t tried in a while, and about a week ago none of my pictures would post period. A day later, without my doing anything about it, I could post pictures in my comments again. I’ve not been able to post a picture in my original post since this whole mess began. Lisa

Jeri, I added photos and details in my comment. I hope you’ll have time to take a look. Thanks, Lisa

Hi everyone - if you are having problems posting topics, comments, or photos, please first make sure your browser and operating system are up to date. Most of the time, that is where the problem lies. If they are up to date and you are still having issues, shoot us a message through help.houzz.com under profile help and we can help troubleshoot with our team and make sure any bugs are dealt with.

Thank you Emily. We appreciate your concern and willingness to assist us.

Thanks Emily.

The thing is, Emily -- my regularly-updated system works like a charm EVERYWHERE but Houzz. Here, it's one failure after another.
Just how fussy IS your system?

Emily, how hard would it be to contact Jerijen by phone if they allow you to do so and talk to them personally about their frustration. Surely that could not hurt. Just my opinion.

Emily, I finally can type but very frustrated and upset with Houzz. First , I could type but could not post. Then I cannot log on. Everyday, I had log in issues and apparently Houzz was denying my password. Wrote in tickets then I tried today as log in. There some days I could and some days I can't but I definitely cannot post. To make things when I signed in. Houzz asked to pick out if 2 emails. I know that I create one new one with this phone. I husband Jeff, shares one email with me because we both have everything combine like bank accounts and what not. The other is his personal one. So out if those two emails I pick the one thinking maybe he accidentally set it under his personal email since it is one by Gmail and the other is Yahoo but same name. Somehow, his name appears as I type on Lisa threads about Jeri Jennings.

I see a new format is done again. A total new look again. That is good but each time I get issues in log in or can't type at all or cannot post.

How did you get hold of our private emails. It was Google who email and we have to cancel everything going through G.Co/securitycheckup . Watching everything and I have to explain what happened but I am so curious like how did Houzz got that information.

My mouth basically drop when I saw my husband name up but I cannot delete or edit nothing. After cancelling all. I went back to log in on Houzz. This time it gave me a right email and I log in .

Can you pls fix my deleted pls. I am grateful but what is going on with updates. It is not on our side but definitely on your side. Our systems are all update automatically yet we all go through this mess. It is very annoying.

Sorry, my husband email is erase here. That is what Google send him.

What is going on ???

Jin

Log in again as soon as I leave this thread to read another thread or go to chrome and come back to this app and I am on back to square 1. Takes me so long than I have to sign in each time and then it won't save my password and I have relog in and best part it won't accept my password each time and time again saying it is invalid. I saved it in Chrome but Houzz won't accept.

Yea! My deleted and edit buttons are available now :)

Jin

I find it hard to like this post jin. I'm never going to put an app on mine I guess. I think that's what happened to Cori Ann when her info was broadcast.

Well, Houzz said due to my compatibility . I remembered about Cori Ann but I did not realize it was Houzz App. I tried to signed on chrome tomorrow and see what happens. I am getting tired of getting the short end of the stick. Part of my email appears on my threads after it happens to CoriAnn and Shiela than it was me. I am so confused and puzzle today. Everything got transferred to my husband's name.

For all I know in 4 days I got kick out and takes so long to get back in. I am so enjoying reading so many posts . I just wrote on Ingrid's thread and somehow my format of Houzz change to older version of last week and I realized i could not thumbs up so I back to forum and enter Ingrids again and this time the format went back to newer version. I think there is a glitch somewhere. Not on my side for sure.

But , I never explained properly Bec I was so over heated earlier. I am sorry if I sound so rude.

Emily, my email was first register as Yahoo and I don't understand how Gmail came up by your side. 2 Gmail's only but both not registered under Houzz. That was what I meant. Never signed up under his name at all. Jeff vanstee is my husband on Lisa's thread on Jeri Jennings rose questions.

Jin

FYI, I sent the following email to Houzz yesterday, at help@houzz.com

Broken Permanently or Coming Back?

elizabeth edwards

17:50 (23 hours ago)

to help

Hi there, Houzz People,

Just wondered if you could tell me, so I can pass it on to others, whether GardenWeb is permanently broken or are the multiple issues so many people are having using the site in the process of being fixed?

If the latter, can you give a date or some indication of how long it is expected to take before the GardenWeb forums are functioning normally again?

Unfortunately, after several months of chaos, many people have already moved on or are currently looking for alternative places for online discussion of our shared interests, since things started going wrong here - I'm sure you will be aware of the issues, so I won't try and list them here.

Sadly, over recent months we have lost a number of valued long-term members who for decades were one of the chief attractions of these forums, being leading experts in their fields. Some had apparently been selected early, before the changes came in for everyone, to 'experiment' on by Houzz, without informing or consulting them about what was happening. The site became unusable for them.

Now it seems many people are having similar difficulties, resulting in many lost hours with frequent, frustrating losses of carefully compiled comments and photos. The user experience has become decidedly unfriendly.

I realise the Houzz parent company is a purely for-profit business operation, and no longer a place run by gardening enthusiasts for enthusiasts, so I'm not sure we're very important to you. The slowness to fix these problems seems to indicate not.

Elizabeth Edwards

I got too tired to finish it off properly, which is why it ends rather abruptly.

No reply as yet; will keep you all updated!

Yes, it is for profits only. One of the links that we look at implied that all our contacts be excess by the app. They can do anything which can be another annoying spam however they could if they want not saying they are. That is what was bothering us last night. And who knows what else.

Yes, I do miss John and Virginia a lot. I have John contacts unfortunately I don't have Virginia.

Jin

Our community is the treasure here. I feel so bad about the incompetence damaging it. I still don't understand what the goal was in changing a forum that was working. I perhaps naively really think houzz is not doing this on purpose but on my end the worst was starting 5/31/18 and June was horrible. I don't use an app and houzz is working for me now. Why it is going downhill again is beyond me.

Is it that they want you to connect using an APP? Is that the problem? Geeze Louise ... what are they thinking?
It's NOT HAPPENING. Just not happening.

I guess I thought people were having trouble when they used an app. I don't use an app and houzz is working for me now. June was horrible, but it improved after that.

There shouldn't be a problem no matter in what way we're accessing the forum. After all people were using the same modes before the crash and that was working, so it can't be the users who are the problem. It seems to be a sad fact that changes were made without any regard for us because we are not seen as potential sources of income. It always, always comes down to money, and that is so very sad.

Dear comtesse, thank you so much for writing that wonderful letter. Your time and energy are precious commodities and I can only hope that they have not been squandered. I feel that we who are still left are in a small lifeboat on a very choppy sea, hoping against hope that there is still a safe harbor somewhere. The Houzz conglomerate no doubt views our going under as just so much collateral damage, easily discarded and even more easily forgotten.

What a wonderfully well stated letter. Thank you for doing that. I just wish they'd sort out the typing on the phone... It's ridiculous. Also, that was a nice letter from the woman at Garden. Org. I don't think it's an all-or-nothing proposition. As I've said before, I just found this site visually restful, but if I can't type or if some posts don't even have a comment section it's pretty useless no matter how good it looks.

Comtesse (Elizabeth Edwards), you have stated our case so well, and so succinctly. Thank you for your efforts. I hope they merit a reply from Houzz, as they should.

Ingrid, you feel exactly as I do, and your reasoning is the same as mine: it's about money. Houzz is like an NYC landlord with tenants in rent controlled apartments. The landlord can't charge higher rent, so he makes life so miserable in his apartments, his tenants give up and leave. Then the landlord can charge higher rents. Houzz wants the space on its website occupied with forum members who need interior decorators and junk art to put on their walls.

Sheila, I had no problems posting text or photos on Houzz until last week. Now I can't post photos. Your turn will come again, I'm sorry to say.

Diane

It often hurts when something has been provided free of charge, then sold by "subscription". We aren't being required to pay to subscribe, yet, but like most of our banks, unless we represent MONEY to them, they don't give a damn about us staying or going. There is always going to be another "sucker" to take our places. We are monetized by the advertising and our purchases through Houzz, as well as our participation in providing them free content through our posts and "idea and project books". I wonder how much more attention issues experienced by a poster who has a large history of purchasing goods and services through Houzz receives than for most of ours here? GW existed because it was someone's baby. Houzz bought it because they saw a way to make money on it, and us. If we don't buy from their advertising, we're like bank customers who play the game and don't generate large incomes for them through fees and interest. "WE" don't count because "WE" don't make them money.

I still don't understand why houzz wants to embarrass themselves like this. I don't even think it's intentional. I'm afraid it is IT incompetence. No, Diane, I'm not expecting to be spared. I wasn't in June. I'm just saying it would be cheaper to keep us than exhibit all this incompetence.

Thank you for all the kind thoughts. No one can really prepare you for the reality of dementia and caring for some one with it and each person seems to be a bit different. For mom, the person she was passed long before her body. I have lost a lot of faith in the medical world as well. When you need help, there should not be a 4 month wait for a waste of a medical degree doctor and another 4 month wait for a second opinion. Hospital social workers should be trying to help and not just clear beds... the list goes on. Did you know a good facility can charge $25k a month? Alzheimers is big business.

A thought on houzz, do you think it could be the browsers everyone uses? I know I have had to deal with one browser after another dropping my old computers operating system. Maybe houzz is similar?

I am, and have always been, using Chrome. I pin the tab with it signed in, so when I close the browser and reopen it, all the forums and sites I usually read open automatically. I've not experienced any issues in opening any forums here. I can see photos. I can post photos. I can get to the second pages. Browser cache is what has made the most sense to me, but Houzz has been making some changes, obviously, and some of those might be causing the issues. Perhaps I am insulated from them because I keep signed in to the site with the forum open?

Bart, what's going on? I'm sorry you're having what sound like severe problems.

Kippy, my condolences. We were lucky with my father, who died in 2010: he had a degree of dementia in the last couple years of his life, but was able to live at home until his death, dying in his own bed at age 89. He needed 24-hour care the last year or so, but had enough savings to pay the dear kind women who looked after him. Not everybody is so fortunate; probably most aren't.

I have just written a long post with lots of photos. When I had finished it and hit Submit it just put up the three moving dots that it does whilst loading Two hours later, it was still doing it, so I tried to refresh the page. Of course I lost the whole post!

Daisy

Just found this response in my inbox:

RE: Broken Permanently or Coming Back?

Inboxx

support@houzz.com support@houzz.com via t7ecsb0qkih6tu.e-i0gmmac.na38.bnc.salesforce.com

05:44 (10 hours ago)

to me

Hi there,

Thank you for reaching out to Houzz Support!

Please further explain the issue you are experiencing or provide screenshots so we can further assist you.

All the best,

The Houzz Team
Houzz | The New Way to Design Your Home

Baffling answer - are they honestly not aware of what I'm talking about? How could they not know? Not sure from this if they even read what I wrote - how can I send a screenshot illustrating months of chaos for multiple users, and the resulting dissolution/death of an online community? There seem to have been so many different problems for so many people; all since the supposed 'improvements' were brought in, not forgetting those earlier experiments, eg on Paul Barden/trospero, who was thus lost to our community as a result of Houzz's ham-fisted handling of whatever it is they're trying to do.

Perhaps I'll just direct them to read this and similar previous threads.. If anyone can remember/find and post links here to some of those previous threads on the subject I could collate them all and send them a list of threads for them to peruse.

(I haven't had any trouble personally, except in the first few days or weeks (have forgotten now) but I've only been commenting, not trying to post original comments or photos; I haven't really had the energy to try.)

Comtesse, my immediate response is not printable.

Likewise, Trish. That is such an insulting, stupid answer, makes you want to punch a hole in the wall somewhere.

TO: Houzz, EMILY, Anybody..

"The Houzz Team

Houzz | The New Way to Design Your Home"

Your 'New Way to Design a Forum' is absolutely positively not a good advertisement for your 'New Way to Design Your Home' slogan.

I feel like I should be writing in all caps - I'm certainly yelling in my mind as I write this!

I do not try to put a photo in the original post now, Daisy. I put the photos in the next comments box per Ingrid's suggestion. This incompetence on houzz's part is painful.

Just a quick testing......using my phone.

Summers, how beautiful!

Thanks Shelia. It's Dream Land.

Summer, love the name totally. And the rose is a Dream Land beauty.

I have no idea what is going on but geezs, am I only one having such problems. I finally managed to log in after changing so many password which I can't remember by now. I manage to get by loop holes. Found a number and today I got spam emails from Houzz..hahaha..my first one today.

Jin

I'm getting Dreamland this fall! Wow! That's a beautiful picture I can't wait. You'll have to tell me all about it. How old is it?

Thanks guys. I bought it last year in the spring.

I am wondering if the app is the problem. I don’t use the app, never had an issue with loading the photos so far.

Working here. No app. Never had app.

I haven't had problems at all, except at the very start of this stupid change,but then I'm off here in Italy,don't post photos,just use the family PC, no apps, etc: i.e., a troglodyte, lol. But It is embaressing as heck to read the responses that Houzz has given; ALL of these many people having problems, yet they want to "blame" the mal-functions on stuff that you people do,rather than correct their own mistakes. I'm gonna try to post on the garden org forum as well as this,because Roseangelynn makes a good point and I don't want to lose touch (and don't understand enough about how Fbook works to "do" much on that). But I really do not like the visual format of that forum. I find it downright hard to even look at, with all those little images, emojiis, etc.

Bart .. I am known as RoseBlush1 on NGA. You can turn the emojis off just by going to your preferences. You are not the only one who doesn't like them.

There are a lot of features you can turn on or off in your preferences.

You can customize you home page, so that you are not stuck with the generic home page. For those of you who have not taken that step, please click the little bell at the top of the page to see if you have any messages.

If you have any questions, there are many places you can ask them and get good responses, but if you are uncomfortable, just click on my user name and send me a t-mail. I will make the time to support your transition.

Please understand, I am still not pushing anyone to make a change. It has to be something you want to experiment with by your own choice.

Transitions are always awkward. No site is perfect. Oh, well. I think we can cope.

Please start posting about things that do interest you. This will change the content on the RF. It's still up to you to make that happen.

You all have my support and the support of others on the site. It's still your choice.

I turned off all "emojis" and cutesy stuff per preferences on the NGA forum and they are still there. The clutter is under people's names in the right upper corner. It won't go away.

Shella .. send a t-mail to Zuzu. She can help with that

I had gone through preferences and said I did not want these. Why didn't that do it?