Welcome to the new Garden Pond Forum!

[Becky]

We have upgraded the forum today to a whole new software, and we hope you like it!

We are still in the process of adding the gallery, but this should be finished today. We will also be adding new smiley packages.

In other forum changes we are very happy to introduce a new member to the moderator team - @addy1 ! Welcome aboard and thanks for agreeing to help out.

You will notice that in the new forum software you can tag members in posts - just put @ before their username and their avatar will pop up.

GPF has a great community, but in the past year there have been ups and downs. We've had complaints about political posts taking over the Off Topic section, and so going forward we would prefer it if political posts are avoided. There doesn't seem to be any need for it here, and fewer divisive posts can only be a good thing.

We always love to hear feedback, so if you have any suggestions for improvements or questions about how things work then please let me know. In the future we are hoping to introduce a pond showcase section - regular members know that we also have an aquarium site, and the new showcase section has gone down really well over there. Here's a link if you want to take a look: Living Reefs Showcase

We hope you continue to enjoy the new forums!

 

[Ian]

I'm working hard to get the gallery up and running ASAP, but I've been working for hours trying to get it to import the old data correctly. It worked on the test upgrade, so I'm going to have a break and then try it a different way (been working on it for 6 hours now!).

 

[sissy]

kinda confusing going to really take some getting used too .At the bottom similar threads are really old and you really need to look at the dates or lots of really old posts are going to be popping back up .I see posts from 2009

 

[sissy]

have to ask in sidebar it says members and guests and then robots .Who or what does that mean .Hoping at least they keep there claws out of the water if they have ponds ,it could be a shocking experience

 

[addy1]

it will work out in the end, until then we will enjoy and learn

 

[Ian]

have to ask in sidebar it says members and guests and then robots .Who or what does that mean .Hoping at least they keep there claws out of the water if they have ponds ,it could be a shocking experience

Haha, robots is just a term for "spiders" and "crawlers" - they are search engines indexing the site so that it can be found in Google, etc...

There are quite a few new things on the site that will take a few weeks to get used to, but we can tweak and improve things too.

 

[crsublette]

kinda confusing going to really take some getting used too .At the bottom similar threads are really old and you really need to look at the dates or lots of really old posts are going to be popping back up .I see posts from 2009

Yeah, I think it is a "trending" type of feature. If you find one particular thread interesting, then the forum software does the best it can to find other threads that are "similar" and this may include threads from 4 years ago. I think this is fine since there are many thread from "back in the day" that can be quite interesting to read.

It is not much different than Amazon.com where you are looking at a particular product and then, at the bottom, Amazon.com will show you what other products you might be interested in buying due to the current product you are browsing.

I think it is a fun feature. Brings up helpful threads that otherwise might have never have been found.

 

[crsublette]

Fun times !!

I'm liking the way everything looks.

Good job everyone!

 

[sissy]

The only thing is that may confuse new posters a bit since sometimes I do not look at a date either .I had to look twice at some of them .I guess though in a way it may help them figure out what there problem is with there pond .I know seeing it a lot of those posters I have not seen on here in a long time or they were even before I started here .Seems like a lot of the posters seem to not come back .I did hear from one poster that said he spent to much on pond stuff and fish kept dieing and he just gave up and took the pond out .He bought the fancy filters expensive pump and uv and failed .I was sad to hear he did not want to at least try 1 more time .

 

[MitchM]

Thumbs up from me!
Change is good!

 

[koiguy1969]

hasnt been around long enough to critique... but seems ok. what happened to the introductions forums? get rid of it?

 

[Becky]

hasnt been around long enough to critique... but seems ok. what happened to the introductions forums? get rid of it?

Hmmm that's weird, it was there a minute ago... thanks for the heads up, we're looking in to it!

 

[koiguy1969]

i thought i saw it a little bit ago...

 

[Becky]

It's back, and Ian is sighing with relief!!

 

[Ian]

The gallery is now up and running too . I'm working on adding some other bits and bobs back too.

The Member Map is now on this page, although the bad news is that this is the only bit of information I couldn't easily transfer - however it only takes seconds to add your location, if you wish. You can access it from the "members" tab at the top.