mbulla's Blog at GardenTenders.com

And the Winners are...

mbulla — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 11:15:55 GMT

Today is the Day we were waiting for. Our successful GardenTenders Summer Awards are over, so let me officially announce the winners. This time it was very close. The difference between first and second place in the Sunny Sunflower category is only 1 point. On the second and third place there was a tie, so the second place is given to the member with more 1st place votes (see official rules).

The Retreat

1st Place – Two of our backyard retreats by Jroot (58 points)

2nd Place – My Pond by Mario1360 (51 points)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Sunny Sunflower

1st Place – SUN FLOWER CONTEST 2009 ENTRY by Napaman (42 points)

2nd Place – M2Grzegorczyk Sunflowers :) by M2Grzegorczyk (41 points)

For complete results click here.

Congratulations, everyone! I’m going to PM the prize winners shortly.

GardenTenders Awards - Summer 2009 #4: Cast Your Votes

mbulla — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 20:13:39 GMT

Entry period is over and voting began. You can choose your 5 favorite entries from 9 sunflowers and 5 Retreats. All members who posted at least one project can vote, so go ahead and choose the best entries.

Voting ends on August 7, at 3 PM Central Time. Winners will be announced the following day.

GardenTenders Awards - Summer 2009 #3: Only 2 days left to enter...

mbulla — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:24:43 GMT

This is just a friendly reminder that the entry deadline is July 31, 2009 at 3 PM CDT so there are just 2 days left to submit your entry.

There are 8 Sunny Sunflowers and 2 Nice looking Retreats posted already. I think that everyone of you has special garden retreat area so don’t hesitate to show it to other members.

Good luck!

GardenTenders Awards - Summer 2009 #2: One day to go...

mbulla — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:13:48 GMT

I’ve just wanted to remind you that our GT Gardening Awards Summer 2009 entry period will open tomorrow and will close on July 31st.

Feel free to compete in these categories:

The Sunny Sunflower: Who doesn’t get inspired by a smiling sunflower? This Award will go to the Sunflower voted as the most “beautiful”. Select your favourite type of sunflower, gather your seeds, find that perfect sunflower location and get ready to pamper your Awards entry!
The Retreat: One of the greatest benefits of a personal garden area is that feeling of inner peace that it brings. For some, that feeling of fulfilment happens while gazing at a particular flower; for others it occurs while meditating in a specific setting; and for others – well, it can be anything. Share with us your special garden retreat area and in your description share your design inspiration and how the retreat area affects you emotionally.

Read more on the GT Summer Awards 2009 page.

I’m looking forward to see your entries.

Did you know that... #3: Apparel Store

mbulla — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 12:49:11 GMT

Some of you don’t know that we have our own apparel store. You can buy T-shirts, sweatshirts with our GT logo on the front. By buying anything from our apparel store you will help us financially to cover the growing hosting fees, to buy banners and spread the word about our website and to make our unqiue Awards and Challenges even better.

You can find apparel store banner on every page above the pulse

And now you can save some money. Printfection.com offers 3 coupon codes you can use at checkout between Sunday, June 14 to June 21:

COVERYOURNAKEDNESS – SAVE $5 on orders over $25
COVERYOURFRIENDS – SAVE $10 on orders over $50
COVERTHEWHOLEFAMILY – SAVE $20 on orders over $100

Did you know that... #2: GT Gardening Journal

mbulla — Thu, 28 May 2009 12:39:48 GMT

Our GardenTenders Journal has been designed to allow you to record your gardening information in a format that makes sense to you. The provided charts and numerous blank pages are waiting for you to design and document your garden creations. Inside, you can find gardening calendar, garden layout page, fertilizer page and many more.

You can read more here

Did you know that... #1: GardenTenders Toolbar

mbulla — Thu, 14 May 2009 17:15:37 GMT

I thought it would be great to refresh your memory with some features/options of GardenTenders which are not used often and some of you even don’t know they exist. I will start with our GardenTenders Toolbar.

GT Toolbar alerts you about new content posted on GardenTenders and provides you with the handy shortcut links to your favorite site. It even features Feel the Pulse button and local weather forecasts.

What does the GardenTenders toolbar let you do?

Search the Web and GardenTenders site from anywhere on the Web.
Find out What’s new on GardenTednders before it’s old! New projects, blogs and topics are delivered right to you.
Check the pulse at any time, from any place – with just one click.
Get an easy access to the favorite pages on the GardenTenders just by clicking on handy Shortcuts button.
Organize your To Do list – get those projects done in a more timely fashion.
Get notified when you receive new e-mails to your POP3, Yahoo!, Gmail, or Hotmail accounts.
Coordinate your garden time with the up-to-date local weather forecasts.

GardenTenderize your browser here
Works great in Firefox and Internet Explorer.

GardenTenders Awards - Summer 2009 #1: Announcement

mbulla — Tue, 05 May 2009 12:49:10 GMT

Summertime is coming fast and won’t it be nice to put our feet up and watch the fruits of our labours? Join us for this year’s Summer Awards by.. well I’ll let you read the categories and get inspired!

Feel free to compete in these categories:

The Sunny Sunflower

Who doesn’t get inspired by a smiling sunflower? This Award will go to the Sunflower voted as the most “beautiful”. Select your favourite type of sunflower, gather your seeds, find that perfect sunflower location and get ready to pamper your Awards entry!

The Retreat

One of the greatest benefits of a personal garden area is that feeling of inner peace that it brings. For some, that feeling of fulfilment happens while gazing at a particular flower; for others it occurs while meditating in a specific setting; and for others – well, it can be anything. Share with us your special garden retreat area and in your description share your design inspiration and how the retreat area affects you emotionally.

Don’t forget that you can enter the awards by posting your projects on 01 July – 31 July, 2009.

More information such as prizes, voting etc. coming soon …

Project Pictures Upgraded

mbulla — Mon, 04 May 2009 08:59:52 GMT

Did you want to add more pictures when posting a project and you couldn’t? Then you will enjoy a brand new update of our project pages. When entering a project page you will immediately see a larger version of the main picture. And the best thing is that this larger picture is not cropped anymore. Also, there is a list of all project pictures in a thumbnail format. The number of pictures per project was increased to six. Just click on any of the thumbnails to view enlarged version of that picture:

Zoom Pictures button opens a slideshow view of the high-resolution project pictures.

Enjoy!

Watchlist Is Here! As Well As Related Pulse Upgrade

mbulla — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 09:17:14 GMT

Many of you know the new watchlist feature from our sister websites LumberJocks.com, HomeRefurbers.com and many of you like it there. So I decided to add it here on GT as well.

In summary, I’ve added the Watchlist feature that allows you to be notified – on the Pulse page or also by the emails – about new comments posted… not only on your own posts but on any posts that you add to your personal Watchlist.

So how this works you ask. I tried to keep things as simple and streamlined as possible. Following points describe the process:

When you add new post (project, blog entry, forum topic, garden) it is automatically added to your Watchlist.
When you’re posting new comment you can choose if you want to add the respective post to your Watchlist or not.

You can see green Watch and red Unwatch toggle button on each post (in the top right corner) to easily start/stop watching the respective post.

Email notification settings have been simplified. You can turn on/off email notifications for all watched posts at once.
Watchlist is integrated directly into pulse page. All those challenging dropdowns and checkboxes are replaced with just a few predefined Pulse views:
- new posts & my watchlist (shows all posts that you never checked and new comments on your watched posts)
- new posts (shows all posts that you never checked)
- my watchlist (shows new comments on your watched posts)
- all activity (shows new comments on all posts)
- profiles (shows never checked Refurber profiles as well as new comments on them – for those who like welcoming new members).

New posts & my watchlist is selected by default and I consider this to be the most natural way to use your personalized Pulse – you read the post that you never checked and then you either add it to your watchlist or not. When you start watching the post it will be automatically brought to the top if there are any new comments. Finally you can select time period on the right and see only posts active in the last 24 hours, 7 days or 30 days.

There are two buttons – ALL ITEMS | UNREAD ITEMS: ALL ITEMS option shows unread items as well as all of the items that you’ve read – the gray lines – and is a default one. You can keep using it as your default view or when you need to go back to that post you checked few hours ago and want to locate it quickly. On the other hand UNREAD ITEMS automatically hides all the gray line items.

There is a new My Watchlist link in the My GardenTendes dropdown.

Note that all of you previous posts were automatically added to your Watchlist during this upgrade.

Well this is going to take some time to get used to – especially for those using the Pulse frequently. But I believe that the whole process is going to be much smoother now. Plus you can get notified in all those discussions you participate in – not only authored by you.

Any feedback is appreciated.

Note: I’ve copied this blog entry from LJ and adjusted it a little. Thanks Martin.