I am pleased to announce that I have completely revamped the Recommendations feature, and it is now re-created as the ATP Book of Gardening Recommendation, or "The Book" for short. Trish doesn't love the name but she said she also doesn't hate it. I told her when she gives me a better name for it, we'll change the name.

Anyway, this new feature is a complete "from the ground-up" rewrite of the Recommendations feature. It acts very much like the old recommendations feature, just much better, and way more powerful. Additionally, with this new platform, we will be able to add improvements to it very quickly as we want them.

Here are some new features that are now available in The Book:

1) You're no longer restricted to just recommending ecommerce companies. You can now enter other kinds of organizations, like display/public gardens, local garden centers, garden clubs and associations.)

2) You can now edit companies!! Just like in the Plants Database, if you see an error, scroll to the bottom of the company's page, and click on "Edit this company's details" and you'll have the full range of all the checkboxes and text fields. Make your changes and submit the proposal, and a moderator (currently that's just me) will approve it and the changes will then take effect.

3) We have custom data fields for the companies, just like we do with the plant database. So, if you enter an ecommerce company (or edit an existing one) you'll find extra stuff like "What do they specialize in" and you can check off daylilies or roses or what have you. In the near future, once enough companies get edited to incorporate their extra details, I will write extra searching tools that will help you narrow your search to just rose sellers, etc.

At the moment, I don't have any custom data fields setup for public gardens, garden centers, or clubs and associations. Sometime in the future when we figure out what info we want to include, I will make it happen. Also, if we ever want to add additional categories of companies (Books, Magazines, Websites, etc) we will be able to do that.

I feel like this first step is an important milestone for ATP. We will be able to better serve the gardening industry with this feature, and I have several upcoming enhancements planned that will allow the companies to better interact directly with ATP via this feature.

So have fun and please feel free to go edit your favorite companies to check off what they specialize in!

Any questions or ideas, just ask!

Name suggestion, as an alternative to the well-known book of recommendations called 'The Little Black Book'...(it used to be a 'guy-thing')

how about 'The Little Green Book'?

Great start to what will undoubtedly be an evolving feature. Might I suggest the following additions to the product list: All-purpose nursery, Perennial flowers, Annual flowers, Natives, Hardscaping materials, Garden art. In the case of an all-purpose company, should we check everything we know they carry? I assume for search purposes that may be helpful. It will be fun to watch this feature grow.

greene: I like your green book idea.

Bonehead: Thanks! I've added all those to the checkboxes for Main Products. You can check off all that apply.

@Dave Wow ... you never cease to amaze us! Always so quick with improvements and additions to the site and what a wonderful re-working of the Recommendations section!

@greene I like the idea of The ATP Little Green Book of Recommendations!

Off to browse ...

I like greene's idea of the little green book only I would think the big green book would be more appropriate.

I love it, and checked a few boxes.

Here are some check boxes you might add if they're widely desired:

Alpine Flower Seeds
Heirloom Vegetable Seeds
OP Vegetable Seeds
Heirloom Flower Seeds
OP Flower Seeds
Specialize in certain regions, like PNW, Southern, Northeast, cold weather / short season
possibly "oriented towards market growers and farmers"
possibly "bulk orders only" and "bulk sizes also available"

Some possible additional features:
1. Ability to search for the company name, or jump to the first letter..
The "search" dialog box currently searches all ATP.

2 A filter to display only companies that have XYZ or ABC or DEF checked as "specialize in".
A frill would be to then list them in order of how many of the desirable boxes they had checked.


This might be too cryptic, and a reference to "The Yellow Pages" might not make sense to the Google Generation, but I;m going to think of this as "The Green Pages".

OMG, TGP at ATP !!!

Thank you Dave!!!




How about "All Things Recommended" or something like that...?

Can't wait to take a look!

I never added many things to the Recommendations before, because I found it rather hard to navigate. So glad you were open to updating it!

RickCorey said:
This might be too cryptic, and a reference to "The Yellow Pages" might not make sense to the Google Generation, but I;m going to think of this as "The Green Pages".

I like Green Pages too. But I am just excited for the wonderful upgrade.

Could it be a contest to Name with prize of acorns?

I love 'the Green Pages', or 'The Big Green Book'

If we vote, I will choose 'The Big Green Book' as my first choice and 'All Things Recommended' as a close second choice.
I am sure that @dave will make the best decision.

Green pages resonates for me - being of the generation where yellow pages was the norm.

@Bonehead, that's even better! Let your fingers do the walking through The Green Pages.

Trish liked the Green Pages so we'll go with that. Thanks Rick!!

RickCorey and his Green Pages.
@Trish for approving.
@dave inventing/improving ATP to keep us on our toes.

(Sorry, I'm a little punchy at the moment, no coffee yet...and for my daughter who had a spare key for my house as I just spent an hour weeding while I was locked out of my own home by mistake.)

Nice going. This will be fun and useful. I looked for The Book and found The Green Pages. What happened to the little butterfly next to it?

The butterfly is a new feature. It generally lands on the name of the feature you're currently using. So if you're inside the green pages the butterfly will be there.

Always full of whimsy!!