One of my regular haunts since discovering the world of garden blogs has been Garden Voices at GardenWeb.com. It's been a site that I could check every day or so for a quick round-up of recent posts from garden blogs around the world. It has also been a site that has brought readers to my blog.
Lately, however, Garden Voices has become a source of frustration. Days, or sometimes a week, will go by without the site being updated. I've also found a little bug lurking in the site that occasionally causes an old version of the page to load unless I hit the Refresh button, which will then load the current day's page. Very odd.
But my frustration grew even greater today when I checked the site (which hadn't been updated since Feb. 5) to find that about two-thirds of the now-updated page showcased posts from WorldWine News, a blog that appears to be about wine, or more specifically, marketing wine. Now, please understand, I love wine. I drink wine. Some of my best friends are wines. But I can't imagine why a wine blog has ended up on a site that is supposed to be about gardening blogs.
Whatever the source of Garden Voices' problems are--technical or otherwise--I hope they can work them out soon. In the meanwhile, I'm spending more time on two newer sites: Blotanical.com and The Mulch. Blotanical is the brainchild of Stuart Robinson of Australia, and it is quite an ambitious little playground. Although the site is still a little buggy, it offers a number of different and fun ways to explore the garden blogosphere and I look forward to watching this site develop. The Mulch is another site that offers fun ways for gardeners to interact and communicate. I've already won a contest on this site, for which I received a box full of organic fertilizers. Garden talk and free stuff! That's hard to beat.
I'm going to head over to The Mulch now based on your recommendation! Thanks for the tip!
ReplyDeleteCindy at Rosehaven Cottage
Sorry for all the chaos. The transition since NBC bought iVillage (which owns GardenWeb) has been rough. The past month or so, there have been mega, mega technical difficulties. I wasn't able to get anyone to work on them until now. I've spent hours since the weekend trying to clean up the mess on the page and in the newsreader. Garden Voices is my second job so I can't spend as much time on it as I would like. I have a bad habit of sleeping!! Hopefully, they will be able to keep the site up and current and I will continue to work on deleting the bad entries (no idea where they came from)and publishing new garden-related entries.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your patience. I hope that you will continue to visit Garden Voices.
I could not have said it better myself! I have been so frustrated with the Garden Voices site!! I agree
ReplyDeletethat I too have made many new gardening friends through their postings!I am just now reading oldroses explanation! Gliches...arg!!!
I will take a peek at the other sites that you mention. Come by mine :)NG
Sorry, don't mean to keep flogging a dead horse but anyone who has questions about Garden Voices is welcome (and encouraged!) to contact me directly (oldrosesblog@yahoo.com). I answer all of my email. As Nature Girl can attest to.
ReplyDeleteI had a moment where I was taken aback when the wine feed started coming through, but was pretty sure it had to be some kind of technical glitch -- Old Roses is no slouch in the garden blog-supporting arena!
ReplyDeleteI'm enjoying Blotanical, too -- need to check out The Mulch, but haven't made it over there yet. But I'm always going to be a fan of Garden Voices!
OK, that's good info. I'd been wondering what new sort of hell they might be putting you through, Caren.
ReplyDeleteI know that what you do for all of us must sometimes seem like a thankless job, especially when they make it so difficult for you technologically. We are certainly in your debt and grateful for what you do. Just want to make sure you hear that, cuz it's true. Hope it gets back closer to what it was and is less taxing for you soon . . .
Thanks, oldroses, for your comments. I hope the powers that be hear this discussion and realize that providing you with prompt and competent tech support is necessary for Garden Voices to remain the valuable site it always has been. I think your site is very highly thought of among garden bloggers and readers. I hope NBC will think highly of it, too.
ReplyDeleteIronically I saw this as the first post on "Garden Voices" so some kinks must be coming out. I have tried blotonical and have been impressed with the features, the blog map is awesome. I will be sure to check out "The Mulch" so now I will have less time to actually garden :)
ReplyDeleteI was glad to see this post because I've also been wondering what's going on. Hope they can work it out soon. I just signed up for blotanical recently, and am learning my way around too. It holds a lot of possibilities.
ReplyDeleteSince the 'site disabled' has been popping up, I've gone over to Power Guides for my daily fix. It updates new garden blog posts immediately. How cool is that? Instant gratification! They post and 10 seconds later, I'm reading. lol.
ReplyDeleteI'm impressed enough that I even put a widget on my blog. This thing with Garden Voices is making me nuts!
Poor Caren...She must be pulling her hair out! If I'm just a visitor to the site, I can imagine how frustrated she must be to have to deal with all this. I hope they fix it soon.
Tina, I'm glad you said that about the "site disabled" message. I was getting that too and I thought it might be a problem on my end.
ReplyDeleteThanks also for the Power Guides link! This looks like a really interesting site!
Looks like Garden Voices is back up again! Although not updated :(
ReplyDelete