Heya! I love the new seed swap tool, a big improvement on the system we've used previously (posting have/want/promised lists). I'd like to utilize it for our upcoming Mid-Atlantic seed swap, which will be open to both ATP and DG MAG forum participants. It's not a mail-in swap... we meet annually at a Chinese buffet in Frederick, MD... but I think this tool would work very well for us!

I can't find anything on the main seed swaps page to tell me how to set up a swap... Please let me know what to do.

While the feature is so new, I've been giving hosts access to starting swaps on a case by case basis.

I have added you as a host so you can now go in and create a swap. Go to the front page:

http://garden.org/apps/swap/

at the bottom, you'll see a new button that says "Access the Swap Hosts Control Panel" - click that and you'll be under way.

Thanks, Dave! Bluespiral invited me to the beta test, but I was crazy busy at the time. I'll do my best to catch on quick!

I thought I had things set up correctly for our upcoming seed swap party... people signed up, created seed lists, and started trading, so far so good... but one of our members just clicked her way over here and said when she clicked on the mid-atlantic swap it said "this swap is not recruiting new members."

Help!

How do I set up the dates so our swap can continue accepting participants once trading has begun?

Right now nobody can join a swap once the trading begins but if you tell me the username of the person who wants in I can manually add them to your swap.

Thanks, Dave, that clears it up! For now, I've changed the start day for trading to Jan 20 (10 days before we meet in person), and if we have any latecomers signing up for the swap, I'll treemail you with their usernames.

For the record, I think that would be a useful option, perhaps something to add to the control panel? It could be a set-up option, whether or not to allow people to sign up after trading has begun.

Better yet would be if the host could manually add names, letting the host keep up with newcomers and just adding a measure of control... in fact, it might not be bad to be able to let the host remove names from the participant list also, just in case a "bad apple" pops up. I'm sure a lot of this has already been discussed... I've tried to find a thread about it, will look again.

Thank you!!

Those are all fine ideas. Until those get added (which may not be for quite a while) I'll be glad to manually add or remove any members that need adding or removing.

I think you're wise to let the new tool settle in for a while before making further changes. Thanks!