MOP-DB Help

MOP-DB is a shared, member based, on-line database for plant collectors.
Membership is free but is only offered to friends of Admin.
The primary use is to keep a record of the plants in one's own collection.
The database has multiple fields for each plant that cover taxonomy, description, plant care, photos, colors, properties like height and water needs, etc.
When you have more than one of a plant you can create a history for each one that includes fields like location, purchase date, and date planted or potted.

Members can add data describing their plants and can add photos from files or directly from any device equipped with a camera such as a smart phone.

There is export capability that saves all your data to spreadsheets along with any photos you have uploaded.

MOP-DB gives you on-line storage for information about your plants along with photos. You can use MOP-DB anywhere you can get on-line. The search engine allows complex searches of the many data fields, helping you to find your plants even when you can't remember the name. Uploading photos allows you to browse plants visually.

Once you are a member there are a number of scenarios:
1) Search for the name of a plant, using photos uploaded by yourself or another member as a visual aid.
2) Keep accurate details of the taxonomy of a plant.
3) Store information about a plant, such as description, origin, cultivation.
4) Keep track of plant properties, like when it blooms or how much sun it likes.
5) Use the history fields to keep track of a plant’s purchase and progress.

The main reason for creating MOP-DB was the number of times I got frustrated coming across a plant in my collection that couldn't be identified because the label was either missing, broken off, or faded. With MOP-DB when one gets a new plant the name of the plant can be saved along with a photo that helps to identify it later when the label is long gone. I have also found that taking the time to research and fill in the details of a plant teaches me a lot about that plant. Also looking up the meaning of the latin name can create a mental picture that helps to remember the name.

No. At the time of writing (September 2023) it probably doesn't work with Internet Explorer. You need a modern browser that adheres to HTML5 standards, like recent versions of Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Safari, Brave, Opera, or Vivaldi.

You don't need to become a member to view plants that have been made public, but you do to add or edit plants.

Due to limited resources only friends of Admin are granted membership. So if you don't know Admin you will only be able to view plants.

100% secure ... no, of course not. Any site is a target for hackers. A lot of effort has been put into security, which at times can be a little annoying. MOP-DB will log you out if it sees anything suspicious.

The approach in MOP-DB is to only store sensitive data that is absolutely necessary.
Personal data stored is limited to your display name, your username and password, your email address, and optionally your phone number and any comment you offer. Only your display name is exposed to other users.

Your display name is shown on screen and used in email sent from MOP-DB to you, it can be seen by other users including non-members when they view a plant you have made public.

Your password is encrypted before storing, nobody can read it, not even admin.
Being a secure HTTPS site your password is encrypted when you send it over the internet at log in.

All your personal data can be changed at any time, you are identified internally by just an ID number. However your display name, username, and email must be unique among MOP-DB members.

MOP-DB does it's best to adhere to best practices, such as never including your password in an email, and allowing passwords to be long phrases with spaces.

If you are a friend of Admin you can use the 'Sign Up' form to request an account. You have to supply an email address when you sign up and if your request is accepted by Admin you will be sent an email with a link to confirm your email address. Your email address must be unique among MOP-DB members.

NOTE: email providers like Yahoo, AOL, etc. are becoming over-zealous about blocking email.
To make sure that email from MOP-DB reaches you it is recommended that before you sign up you add our email to your address book a.k.a. contacts a.k.a. safe senders. You can find our email address on the 'sign-up' form.

The 'sign up' process is as follows:
1) You fill in the 'sign-up' form a.k.a. 'Account Request' which sends the request by email to Admin.
2) If Admin approves your request a provisional account will be created and you will be sent email with a confirm code and instructions.
3) You click or tap the link in the email which connects you to a MOP-DB page that asks you to create a password. When complete you are sent another email with your account details.
4) Once those steps are complete you can immediately log in and proceed to change your settings, add a plant, etc.

When you are editing there are blue labels associated with input fields. These are live, if you tap or click them you will see a tooltip, which is a popup explanation of the field. Tap the label again to hide the tooltip. If you have a mouse, hovering over the field itself will show the same help.

You need to be a member and be logged in to add a plant. Click or tap the 'Add Plant' button on the home page. In the 'Plant Add' form you can enter the "Scientific Name" of the plant. If you don't know the correct 'Scientific Name' of the plant you can enter an approximate name and maybe change it later.

When the plant is first added the 'Plant View' page is opened for that plant, click or tap the 'Edit' button to enter the plant's information.

You can delete any plant that you have added, all histories and photos you uploaded for the plant will also be deleted automatically.

Plants are referenced internally using a hidden ID, so any field that appears on the 'Plant Edit' page can be changed at any time.

To read how MOP-DB handles scientific names see the help section above 'Plant Scientific Names'.

The default privacy for plants is that they are public, which means that any visitor to the site can see it. You can hide your plants by setting the 'View Permissions' on the 'Privacy' tab of the 'Plant Edit' page. MOP-DB would prefer that all plants remain public.
The 'Privacy' settings are:
    Public = any site visitor can view
    Members = any logged in member can view
    Private = only you can view.

When editing a plant you can add a history for each copy (i.e. instance) of that plant that you want to track.
Histories contain data like location, date purchased, and date planted or potted.

When you first add a plant an initial history is created named "Default", you can change the name.
The history section is at the bottom of the "Plant Edit" page, there you can edit any history or add other histories.
To delete a history open it for editing and hit the Delete button.

Note that photos are attached to a plant rather than a history, if you want to associate a photo with a history you could edit the photo's caption adding the name of the history or some other information as a reminder.

When you delete a plant all of it's histories are also deleted automatically. There is no limit to the number of histories for each plant.

MOP-DB uses a custom search engine for finding Plants (also Bugs and Bug Comments). Some very complex searches can be made once one understands how to use it. The best way to get to grips with it is to experiment with it, searching does not change any data.

When not logged in you can only search plants that have been made public. When logged in the default search is your own plants but you can select 'Public Plants' or 'All Permitted' which is a combination of your plants, public plants, and other members plants that they have shared with members.
For an explanation of plant privacy see the above help section 'Privacy, Hide a Plant'.

By adding filter rules you can narrow your search to pinpoint plants, and a set of filter rules can be saved by name for recall later.
It is important to understand that a set of filter rules will ignore database fields that are not yet filled in unless a rule with 'is empty' is included, see Example 2 below.

Example 2: You are looking for plants that are not Cactus or Succulent. But you also want to include the plants that do not have 'Life Form' filled in yet.

Steps:
1) Press 'Search' on the home page or in the main menu at the top of the page.
2) Press 'Delete' to remove the default group.
3) Press 'Add group'.
4) Select 'Life Form' 'not equal' 'Cactus'.
5) Press the 'Add rule' button immediately above where you entered the rule.
6) In the new rule at the bottom select 'Life Form' 'not equal' 'Succulent'.
7) In the top row of the tool press 'Add group'.
8) Also in the top row press 'OR' to change it from the default 'AND'.
9) In the empty rule at the bottom select 'Life Form' 'is empty'.
The resulting logic is: find ((not Cactus AND not Succulent) OR empty).

When browsing or searching plants the results are shown as thumbnails of the photos that are attached to plants.
If more than one photo is uploaded for a plant the photo at the top of the 'Keep these' box on the 'Photos' tab of the 'Plant Edit' page is the primary photo and is used for thumbnails. You can drag any photo to the top of that box to make it the primary photo.

Members can disable thumbnails if they are taking too long to display, there is an option on the 'Settings Edit' page.
Members can also choose a default thumbsize in their settings.

Thumbnails can be in one of three sizes ... Small (100x100), Medium (200x200), or Large (300x300). The size can be chosen at the top of the 'Plant Browse' page and on the 'Plant Search Options' page.
The size you choose is saved on your device rather than the server so that you have a setting for each device you use, for example you may prefer 'Small' on a desktop and 'Large' on a phone. The size saved on your device will override your default setting.

MOP-DB stores metric units in it's database. However there are tools on the Plant Edit page that allow input using other unit systems, English or American.
For example:

Clicking on the icon with the left and right arrows brings up the tool that allows input in alternate units. The drop-down box allows you to choose the units.
For length the choices are centimetres, metres, inches, feet, and yards. For temperature the choices are Centigrade and Fahrenheit.

The export feature allows you to save your plant details off-line. The output is a zip file containing spreadsheets and your photos.
The spreadsheets are Plants, Histories, and Photos.
There is currently no import in MOP-DB, the export data is for your personal use.

The spreadsheets are in CSV (Comma Separated Values) format suitable for use in spreadsheet applications like Excel, OpenOffice Calc, Apple Numbers, etc.
The Plants spreadsheet contains one plant per row, the last column is a list of the photos you uploaded for the plant.
The photo files are included in the zip file inside a folder whose name is the year and month that they were uploaded, for example 2020/03/Aloe vera.jpg.

To export select 'Export' from the 'Tools' menu and select the plants that you want to export.

The 'Plant View' page is suitable for printing as a data sheet. It should be possible to send it to your printer using your browser's print feature. Ctrl + P on some systems. Be sure to click anywhere you see 'more...' to expand long text fields.

Any member can enter a bug report. Please do so if you spot an error or see an opportunity for improvement.
Use 'Report a Bug' under 'Tools' in the main menu. If you don't want to create a bug report you can simply send admin a message using the "Contact Us" form.