I don't like Crochet Pattern Central's new format.

[minkajane]

It's now full of Google ads, the design is hideous, and the search function doesn't work anymore. It used to be my favorite site. What happened??

[lhendrix35]

It is a little hard to find stuff. My eyes don't like the bright blue print. I use Firefox and change to the "no style" view. It changes the print to a better hue of blue, and the page is not so busy. I go back again and again and it seems to be still changing. I can't find things at all!

[RoseRed]

Rachel retired. The new company that's running it doesn't seem to be doing anything to it except for placing ads on it.

 

Amy just announced that the ville is starting their own free pattern directly here.

[Amy]

After many years of hard work and effort devoted to making Crochet Pattern Central a resource that was a favorite of many Villagers, Rachel decided the time was finally right for her to retire and move on to other things. The new company does not appear to be maintaining CPC with the loving care and attention Rachel gave it.

 

Donna and I just announced the creation of Crochetville's new free pattern directory. You can read our announcement here. You can visit our free pattern directory here.

 

Our directory has lots of information about each pattern listing, including thumbnail photos! Because of the extra information, it takes much more time to create listings than it would to create pages of text links only.

 

We're asking for help in populating this directory. Crochetville members and visitors are welcome to submit information about their favorite free patterns. We're building a team of volunteer editors who will proofread submissions, add photo thumbnails, and publish the listings to the directory.

 

Please help us! This directory has the potential to be great once it's jam-packed full of pattern links. CPC had over 19,000 free patterns, and more are created every day. So we need lots of help creating a listing page for every free crochet pattern out there!

[brendaKbrown]

I am glad to hear that Rachel is okay. I wondered what had happened. There seemed to be no notification at all. All of a sudden she was gone and there were no new updates and of course, the new site isn't easy. Like was mentioned, the search box does nothing. Oh how I miss Rachel! How greatful I am to her for all of the work she put into it!

[Empress Busy Bee]

There seemed to be no notification at all. All of a sudden she was gone

There are at least five threads about CPC including the one where Rachel announced retiring.

 

[crs5]

I totally agree. The first time I saw it, I didn't like it either. I liked it the way it was.

 

Carol:hook

 

It's now full of Google ads, the design is hideous, and the search function doesn't work anymore. It used to be my favorite site. What happened??

[CLLinda]

I totally agree. The first time I saw it, I didn't like it either. I liked it the way it was.

 

Carol:hook

 

 

I did too. Now, there's way too many ads on it. they are integrated into each pattern. That's a little crazy.

 

[Amy]

There will probably be quite a few sites cropping up to replace CPC, since so many people have expressed their unhappiness with the new management of the site. It's much easier and quicker to populate sites that are nothing but text links to other patterns, so those sites will likely be populated much more quickly than our new site. For example, in the time we spent developing our site's infrastructure, we could simply have copied and pasted all the links from all the other free directories out there and used them on our site. But we felt the added functions we added were more important over the long-term.

 

I really hope that our members will focus their efforts on helping make Crochetville's new site the best it can possibly be. How can you help? Here are some suggestions:

 

1. Promote the existence of our new free crochet pattern directory (http://www.crochetville.com/freecrochetpatterns) by mentioning/linking to it on your websites, Facebook pages, blogs, etc.

 

2. Add links to your favorite patterns.

 

3. Encourage your crochet friends to add links to their favorite patterns.

 

4. Let our site be the first you visit when you need to find a pattern. Granted, we do need to add a lot more pattern links before our site can be as useful as those that can crank out thousands of links very quickly by copying and pasting links from other existing sites.

 

 

While we believe our site will be the most helpful and useful site once it is fully populated, it's going to take some time and effort to get it full of links. If we have to work alone, it would take Donna and me years and years to do it by ourselves, working 14 hours days doing absolutely nothing else.

 

But if our members and visitors would each commit to uploading just 5, 10, 15, or 20 of their favorite pattern links, we could be done in just a matter of a month or two.

 

The important thing: we need YOUR help. If you love and enjoy Crochetville and would like our directory to be your first stop when seeking new patterns, please help us!

 

Crochetville's Free Crochet Pattern Directory

 

Easy Tutorial on How to Submit Links to Your Favorite FREE Crochet Patterns

[Elle]

I have already mailed the link for the new Crochetville free pattern directory to all my real life friends and relatives who crochet! I'm thrilled to see that we have it!

 

I just absolutely DO NOT like the new Crochet Pattern Central. The format is HORRIBLE and, as Amy has pointed out, the new company most definitely does not seem to be interested in maintaining it as Rachel did, all they are interested in is plastering ads all over the place, making it almost impossible to see the pattern links. I don't see myself using it a whole lot more in the future. I'll stick with the new directory here and the pattern directory over on Ravelry.

[kraftynkrazy]

There will probably be quite a few sites cropping up to replace CPC, since so many people have expressed their unhappiness with the new management of the site. It's much easier and quicker to populate sites that are nothing but text links to other patterns, so those sites will likely be populated much more quickly than our new site. For example, in the time we spent developing our site's infrastructure, we could simply have copied and pasted all the links from all the other free directories out there and used them on our site. But we felt the added functions we added were more important over the long-term.

 

I really hope that our members will focus their efforts on helping make Crochetville's new site the best it can possibly be. How can you help? Here are some suggestions:

 

1. Promote the existence of our new free crochet pattern directory (http://www.crochetville.com/freecrochetpatterns) by mentioning/linking to it on your websites, Facebook pages, blogs, etc.

 

2. Add links to your favorite patterns.

 

3. Encourage your crochet friends to add links to their favorite patterns.

 

4. Let our site be the first you visit when you need to find a pattern. Granted, we do need to add a lot more pattern links before our site can be as useful as those that can crank out thousands of links very quickly by copying and pasting links from other existing sites.

 

 

While we believe our site will be the most helpful and useful site once it is fully populated, it's going to take some time and effort to get it full of links. If we have to work alone, it would take Donna and me years and years to do it by ourselves, working 14 hours days doing absolutely nothing else.

 

But if our members and visitors would each commit to uploading just 5, 10, 15, or 20 of their favorite pattern links, we could be done in just a matter of a month or two.

 

The important thing: we need YOUR help. If you love and enjoy Crochetville and would like our directory to be your first stop when seeking new patterns, please help us!

 

Crochetville's Free Crochet Pattern Directory

 

Easy Tutorial on How to Submit Links to Your Favorite FREE Crochet Patterns

 

Submitting patterns is easy and can be very addictive. I have been having a lot of fun submitting patterns to our new directory!

[darski]

I have been wondering about CPC for ages now... I'm glad I found out what happened.

 

RE: our new directory... I've posted a link to both of my Yahoo groups to encourage everyone to make use of this great resource.

 

Today, I'm going to try to replace some picture links in my patterns to make them a little more user friendly.

[darski]

It would have been nice to know that the directory is a completely different site and is not available to Ville members without more spam to come

[Amy]

It would have been nice to know that the directory is a completely different site and is not available to Ville members without more spam to come

 

Darski, which site are you talking about? I'm not sure if you think you'll be getting spam from Crochet Pattern Central or Crochetville's new directory.

 

I can assure you, Crochetville's new directory won't be sending spam out to anyone. Crochetville doesn't do spam. I spend a good portion of my life fighting all the spammers that try to register accounts and post spam here. I certainly wouldn't have Crochetville send spam out to people.

[LI Roe]

They are now actually adding new patterns. I tend to check anyway and did see "new" when I was looking at certain catergories. Then I went back and clicked on new links and it was update to January 26, 2013. Still don't care for the format (Crochetville's pattern collection is getting bigger, I like that) but I  had to be nosy on CPC.

 

LI Roe