Shop Products
Houzz Logo Print
oldryder

what happens to old posts?

went looking for a post from last year and couldn't find it. does anyone know if GardenWeb deletes old posts after a certain time?

Comments (6)

  • schicksal
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Not to my knowledge - I've pulled up stuff from 2006 in searches. Google searching (subject) site:ths.gardenweb.com is pretty effective if you aren't already doing it that way.

  • debrak2008
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    How are you looking? Use google not the internal search engine.

  • PRO
    Granite City Services
    Original Author
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Thx for the google search tip. It came right up. I don't know why the gardenweb search function didn't find it.

  • debrak2008
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Don't waste your time with the GW internal search.

  • angela12345
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Back in the day, there were only 10 pages of 30 active threads at a time (not the 67 pages we have now). So only 300 threads could be running at any one time. Once a thread rolled off the end, which took about 7-10 days, it almost immediately was gone (within a couple minutes).

    Once the thread was gone there was no way to pull it back up unless Google had a cached copy, which would only last for a couple weeks, or unless you could find it the next time the Wayback Machine updated, which was only every 6-12 months. They crawled Gardenweb more often than that, but only periodically posted the updates to their website.

    AND up until mid-2003, kitchens and baths was together on one forum, so had to share the 300 threads we were allowed.. It seems like it was around Christmas 2005 when we got the extra pages, but still once threads dropped off the end they were gone. You would get an 'oops, cant find that thread' error message. I don't remember exactly when it was that Gardenweb started archiving the threads even after they had rolled off the last page. Now, as long as you have the URL, or can find a link to the thread, you can still open the old thread. Yay !

    The one good thing about back then ... thread space was precious and was treated as such by frequenters of GW. People searched before posting. If there was already a topic started on widgets, by golly you added your comment or question to that thread, even if your question was about bronze widgets and the thread was originally started about white widgets. So the search function worked much better. When you searched for widgets, only one or two threads would come up in the results. Not the massively overwhelming number of results we get now, sometimes hundreds of results, each having only 3-10 responses. You kept all of your questions all in one thread, not a new thread every time you moved a door in your layout so that eventually you have 10 layout threads running, haha. There was not nearly as much frivolous or off-topic postings ... the conversations side & the gallery side of the forum were used as they were intended. Now they are basically deserted because newbies (some of whom are pretty much oldies by now) think every thread goes in the main forum, even if it's about the brownies they made in their kitchen this weekend ("I baked them in the kitchen, so doesn't that thread go in the kitchen forum?! "). And I don't even know when it became so common for reveal threads to be posted in the main forum ?? You used to be able to go to the gallery and all the pages were filled with everyone's reveal threads. It's too bad, because I no longer see most of the reveals this way. They get lost in the shuffle of all the other threads.

    Ok, rant over. Old posts ? Yeh, what they said ... Google search. Include the following term in your search ... site:Gardenweb.com

    Here is a link to the Wayback Machine. Click on a year, then click on a date that has a circle on it. Pretty cool !!!!!

    Here is a link that might be useful: http://web.archive.org/web/20010501000000*/http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/kitchbath

  • debrak2008
    10 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Actually just "gardenweb" is enough.