Try checking the URL and if it's 'houzz', replace it with 'gardenweb' and refresh the page...

The irrelevant "best answer" has been around for a long time, at least a year, probably longer. Just ignore it and move on to the next answer.

There is a serious change here. I've become a series of letters and numbers. On my laptop, the cooking forum has gone and I get appliances and kitchens!

Islay.

someone's knocking at

your new back door

That link, bragu, takes you to a kitchen design forum. Not the cooking forum.

His link brings me back here to the cooking forum. Quirky, These issues have been going on for many months with many threads complaining about it yet not one acknowledgement or “we’re working on it” response so I assume they’re not.

I think John Liu mentioned building an alternative to the cooking forum if this one disappears. I think Houzz bought these forums and haven’t been investing and upgrading. It makes sense to me - I am not likely to buy a kitchen online. A mix of personal taste, age and economics. I think Houzz doesn’t quite know what to do with the forums that don’t lead to sales.

Last year I attempted to sign out and sign back in to access the message board. That took me several weeks to straighten out including a nice back and forth with Houzz (who helpfully told me there is no cooking forum). By straighten out just means I have a link to this forum that I leave open not that the issue is resolved.

Bragu, I tried your back door but the site wouldn't let me either sign in or post in the comments section.

I have to start out my GardenWeb 'day' by first going to the CA Gardening forum - where I am signed-in, after that I can go to any forum. But, if I just go to any other forum as a starter I can't sign-in or make comments or even ask a question; Houzz won't let me.

I guess I'm lucky I can at least use CA Gardening as a door.

Kate

Dave's link works for me, but then it resets to Houzz. The trick is, when you're in the index, tap the “cooking” under “Your Topics” on the left. That doesn't fix the header, but it gives you the cooking index.

FWIW, there's a long thread on Kitchen Table about this. It's funny, not everyone is having these issues. I'm not - other than randomly winding up on either houzz.com or gardenweb.com (which I prefer).

Makes me wonder how different people access the site - along with which browsers/servers/providers/OSs and devices are involved.

I go to a board that I've frequented, such as vegetable gardening. I click in there, then go to the side menu where all of the old boards I'm used to are hiding!

I just have a different problem every time I try to use the site.

It makes me wonder how they could possibly actually sell anything if they can't even make it easy for people to get here!

Annie

Good question, Annie.

I couldn't get here before and several people tried to help me in several ways. Yesterday I was driving in the car with DH just to see something different than our four walls. I tried to get on the cooking forum all's I did was do a cooking forum Garden Web search. I then was right back to Garden Web cooking forum for the first time in a week. DH's device had no problem finding the cooking forum whereas my device doesn't give me a link when I search with Google. It's so weird!

Here's the link I emailed to myself and then copied to my homepage once I found it worked on my device. Craziness abounds!

https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/cooking

Curious what device you're using yeonnasky?

My mobile device (phone) is Android, with Google's Chrome browser. I also have an iPod, but haven't used it for a long time.

Is there a Houzz app?

P.S. Just checked the site on my iPod and it was as some have described at first but I managed to get things back to normal by switching 'houzz' to 'gardenweb' in the URL and reloading.

Android with Google Chrome. Maybe that has something to do with my woes. But I have no idea..

Perhaps there is an app but I don't have it. There must be something that blocks my searches though. Especially through h o u z zzz.

DH's is Apple and I didn't bother choosing which search engine to use as his comes up with bing Google Etc I didn't note what his default search engine was. I will check tonight if I can figure out how to recognize a default engine. :-).

Did the link work for you?

On my desktop iMac with Chrome and everything works fine.

Still wondering if it's an update thing...?

Well no sign of twoyur...

I’ve had various difficulties with this site. One change that seemed to help me is to use Firefox rather than chrome

Sometimes I am John Liu and other times I am HU-#########. It is quite disorienting.

I tried to actually start a new thread a couple days ago, but couldn’t. When it was time to select a topic, “cooking” didn’t appear on the list.

Glad to see you, John!

And I am curious - did you try typing the forum name into the search box when you were choosing where to post your topic?

Um, no (hang head in shame).

Still can’t figure it out. When I try to choose “Cooking” as the topic for my post, it doesn’t appear on the list nor if I search for it.

What am I missing?

I find that Cooking is automatic unless I go on at length, at which point it disappears. I usually can find it by continuing to scroll, but who knows with all these changes.

Post from gardenweb not Houzz and request desktop not mobile version and cooking will be prepopulated.

Yes, I was going to suggest you try changing 'houzz' to 'gardenweb' .com and reloading the page.

When I change to gardenweb.com they push me back to Houzz.

Hi trying again to help. On the cooking page itself when you go in there through Garden Web there is a follow button. It is not in the topics part but in the cooking part. If you wish to follow cooking you just press the Follow button. It will then say Cooking with Following beside it. It will then appear on your my topics list. Of course if you are posting something from inside the cooking forum it won't show up because it is automatically going to the forum you are already in. You choose the other forms you wish to post to. Not sure if that even answered your question but it might answer someone else's.