Hi Dave & Trish,

I was wondering if it would be possible to have a page/forum/database dedicated to sharing coupon codes that are for garden-related companies. I've posted them and found them posted in various forums but not everyone visits the same forums so some people are losing out on a good deal. It's especially bad when that person is me! It would be wonderful to have a central location to both post and easily find them.

I thought it would be a good way to not only help the current members save money, but such a page has the potential to direct new traffic to the site which could result in new members. It could possibly be a good networking tool with the garden-related companies, too. In particular, if a company provided an ATP specific coupon code, then purchases that were made with that code would show that business was coming from this site. For (fictitious) example, "Use code: 'ATP10' to get 10% off your fig plant purchase at Fred's Fabulous Fig Farm."

Now for a few examples of real coupon codes I'd like to share:

Johnny's Selected Seeds:
FREE Standard Shipping* on orders over $30.
Code: 14-2246
Offer Expires February 15, 2014.

Park Seed:
20% off all Seeds (plus free shipping on orders above $69)
Code: SOWSAVINGS
Offer Expires 2/08/2014

Territorial Seed:
Get 10% off
Code: NTWJA1
Offer Expires 02/27/2014.
-or-
Get 10% off
Code: NTWFB1
Offer Expires February 7th, 2014.

Thanks for your consideration!

This might find a good home in the Classifieds forum maybe, @dave?

I certainly like the idea and would be willing to eventually program a feature where we can post our codes but for now, yes, please do start a thread in the classifieds forum! Call it something like "Current coupon codes" or something like that and post away! If it gets a lot of activity and a lot of people find use in it, I will definitely make a feature for it to go under Goodies.

The classifieds forum would also be a good spot for a permanent thread announcing current sales at online nurseries. Our members are good about posting notices of sales in the separate forums, but there could also be announcements of sales of interest to us in the forums we rarely or never frequent. It would be nice to hear about all of them in the same place.

Start the thread, zuzu!

Will do!

Thanks Dave!

The thread is posted here:
The thread "Current Coupon Codes for Garden-Related Companies" in Garden Deals forum

@zuzu - I was thinking the same thing when making the thread in the Classified forum and noted there that I would consider posting sales there too. I don't want to mess with faux "sales" that take like 5 cents-off, but I'd definitely post good sales. The Santa Rosa Gardens 50% off summer sale would be a good example. I'll ask Dave to add "& Sales" to my thread title.

P.S. Thanks for the thumbs and acorns!

There's already a separate thread for sales, Danita.

Zuzu, well there wasn't when I started typing that post!

I do that all the time, Danita!

My humble ( ) opinion is that a coupon code page would be better served by a separate forum, where the thread could be marked as "done" when the coupon code expired. Just my 2 cents.....and no, I'm not giving out coupons for $.02!

Woofie,
I agree that wading through expired codes is no fun! I've done it too often. For the moment, I'm going to try to keep the current coupon codes updated in the first post on my thread so it is easy to find the current offers. I'm guessing that if it grows out of control, then that would be a good indicator that Dave should start programming his "Goodie."

So you mean start a new thread for each coupon found? @woofie That could mean a lot of separate threads. Having them all in one thread, most people can then see the date of a post and then go from there.
But if this really takes off, I am sure Dave would be able to create something functional that is easy to use for everyone!

Hmmm, I see what you mean. Sue. But is that really more onerous than having a separate thread for each Plant ID question? Just thinking about it is all. It could be a very useful feature.

Sue, I think that Woofie is thinking long-term, like when there are 15 pages of posts to search through. Trying to find a code for a specific vendor that is not expired could get very tedious in that situation. That's why the current method requires the thread starter (me, for example) to update the offers in the original post on a frequent basis. Otherwise, it would become too cumbersome to be easily used.

(Edit)Oops, cross-posted with you Woofie!

And my thinking is that setting up a forum where threads could be marked "closed" or "done" would also allow the searcher to specify "only open threads" when looking at the coupon threads. Just seems like that could be very useful when looking at coupons. Supposing that posters could be relied upon to mark threads closed when expired. Hmmm, maybe dave could set it up so that the original poster would be required to include an expiration date on the thread, so that it would automatically be marked "closed" when that date had passed? Easy peasey, right dave?

>> maybe dave could set it up so that the original poster would be required to include an expiration date on the thread, so that it would automatically be marked "closed" when that date had passed?

Or each individual post might auto-expire and remove itself from the thread.
But then you couldn't list two different coupons in one post.

woofie said:And my thinking is that setting up a forum where threads could be marked "closed" or "done" would also allow the searcher to specify "only open threads" when looking at the coupon threads. Just seems like that could be very useful when looking at coupons. Supposing that posters could be relied upon to mark threads closed when expired. Hmmm, maybe dave could set it up so that the original poster would be required to include an expiration date on the thread, so that it would automatically be marked "closed" when that date had passed? Easy peasey, right dave?

Well, for now I'm thinking that just having it all in one thread will let us know if there's enough interest to keep this going. And if there is, then we'll abandon the forums and take it to a Goodies app.

So, just to clarify, we're just going to leave the thread in the Co-ops forum for now, is that right?

Yes.