I've received numerous PM's lately from people who are completely stumped because their posts and article are looking weird.They are utterly clueless as to why this is happening. The explanation is actually quite simple: unnecessary and extraneous HTML coding.

If you copy and paste anything from any other program or website into any text box on GardenHere, there is a high likelihood that the content contains harmful source code from MS Word or HTML or some other software.

It is best if every types directly into our text boxes for all posts to GardenHere.  Please do not copy and paste any text from another source on to our site --and especially not in to your signature area.

If you feel absolutely must copy and paste from MS Word or another software program because of editing needs or dial up connections, you must remove all the unnecessary coding before saving your post to GardenHere. 

Everyone who posts to our site can help by clearing clear out all of the HTML (or other) coding except for two things which you want to keep. They are:

• <p> This is what you want to place before each paragraph.
• </p>This is what you want to place at the end of each paragraph.

To see if your content contains extra and unnecessary coding, select the little blue HTML link in the menu at the top of the text box.  This will force a pop-up box with all your content and coding if any.  If there is anything extra in or around your content, delete it with the exception of <p> before each paragraph and </p> at the end of each paragraph.  The one exception to this are photos/images, do not delete any coding related to photos or images you have inserted in to your content. 

On another topic --entering recipes . . .

For people who are posting recipes, if you encounter difficulties when you're trying to indicate fractions, you can use a decimal point to indicate a fraction so, for example, rather than typing in 1 and 1/2 which would probably make the formatting look weird, you'd type in 1.5 and it should show up correctly.

If everyone is mindful of these small things and take the time to clear the extraneous HTML coding out of your messages, blog entries and articles, you'd be helping both me and Al greatly and doing the site a huge service. This is just another of the small ways in which each of us can do our part to make our site the best place it can be!

If you are ever stumped or have questions, I hope you all will always feel free to contact me or Al. We'll gladly help you however we can!