Complete Geocaching

[+Jozii]

It's 5 in the morning and I've spent the entire night working on material for Complete Geocaching, my new resource website about geocaching. My aim is a good-looking site with beautiful photos and high-quality articles. An extensive section for beginner but with an equal amount of odd stuff that no muggle would ever understand, and that no geocacher will find anywhere else.

 

I'd be happy to get any feedback I can, which is why I'm writing here. What kind of content works and what doesn't? What would you like to see more of? What do you think of the looks and feel, navigation, etc. of the site? Please have a look

 

http://completegeocaching.com/

Edited July 2, 2012 by Jozii

[+geocat_]

At first glance I like it. Pretty unique numerical guide to geocaching experiences. Did you "invent" it?

[+oxford comma]

cool site- I bookmarked it - looking forward to seeing it as you add more

[+niraD]

There are other geocaching dictionaries that are more complete, but yours is a good start.

 

I'm not sure where some of your "rules for swag" come from. Specifically, the supposed prohibitions against "things with an age limit or that may be offensive in any way", or against "commersial [sic] objects, advertisements, discount coupons, etc.". A lot of trade items are freebies with company names on them, for example.

[BoredRoom]

Looks like an aggregation of material collected from elsewhere, constructed to drive hits to ads on the subject pages.

 

I can't wait until this google ads thing collapses on itself; there are too many sites like this.

[+Sol seaker]

Man, did he have a bad day or what?

 

It's a nice looking site, that is easily navigated.

 

I didn't look through it all, just a few things. I think one thing I'd like to see on any "complete" geocaching website is a puzzle page.

 

No website should give away puzzles of course, but a lot of people have problems with them.

A page with many different cyphers would be great.

A page with links to the many different puzzles caches that are dedicated to helping people learn how to do puzzle caches.

Any other help, lessons or clues that would help people work puzzles, but not give away any specific puzzles.

[+Jozii]

Hi all! Thanks for the comments

 

It's far from "complete" yet, but it's not supposed to be. I'm adding more stuff all the time and have plenty planned

 

@BoredRoom: I appreciate the comment but that's not at all what it is. All material is my own (unless otherwise stated), both texts and photos, and there are no ads anywhere!

 

@niraD: There are rules against these things (or have been in the past, I will double check it) in the geocaching.com guidelines, but many are not obeyed. Especially that of not having commercial stuff.

 

The first "newsletter" is out which summarizes things: http://completegeocaching.com/2012/07/05/newsletter-1/

[MisterEFQ]

Looks like an aggregation of material collected from elsewhere, constructed to drive hits to ads on the subject pages.

 

I can't wait until this google ads thing collapses on itself; there are too many sites like this.

 

What ads?

[BoredRoom]

Looks like an aggregation of material collected from elsewhere, constructed to drive hits to ads on the subject pages.

 

I can't wait until this google ads thing collapses on itself; there are too many sites like this.

 

What ads?

 

The ads that were there before, on the sub-topic pages, which are no longer present. I should have taken a screen shot.

 

I can't be the only one who has that thing where they google search something, click on a link and find that they are taken to a page that contains...

 

...ads and the results of an embedded search of the original request...

 

It has become habitual for me to scroll down through a google search to find the not-top-ranked hit (which is probably up top from being google-bombed) to get to actual content. I also copy-and-paste the resulting URL into a new window; clicking on the displayed link doesn't take you to it without going thru some google stats collecting page first.

[+The A-Team]

It's far from "complete" yet, but it's not supposed to be. I'm adding more stuff all the time and have plenty planned

Understood. My comments below should be taken as constructive criticism.

 

@niraD: There are rules against these things (or have been in the past, I will double check it) in the geocaching.com guidelines, but many are not obeyed. Especially that of not having commercial stuff.

The guidelines on contents are here under section 3. Note that there is no prohibition of commercial items, and I don't recall there ever being such a guideline.

 

A few other things I noticed:

-On the Cache Types page, you have Locationless listed under the "Archived" section, which has the description "However, they do still exist – old ones have not been removed and can still be logged." Locationless caches do not still exist and cannot be logged. Every single one has been archived and locked.

 

-Based on your "What Do Reviewers Really Do?" quiz, you seem to have a misunderstanding of the "Needs Maintenance" and "Needs Archived" log types. The answer to #3 would be false, not true. Reviewers do not get notified about "Needs Maintenance" logs. Only "Needs Archived" logs do that. Some reviewers do perform regular scans of their regions for caches with "Needs Maintenance" logs, but many don't.

The answer to #5 would be "It varies". If a disabled cache receives a "Needs Archived" log (note, not a Needs Maintenance), they will look at it. Otherwise, the time frame is completely dependant on when they stumble upon it. There's no set time frame at which reviewers are notified of a disabled cache. I can point you to many a cache that was disabled for years without any reviewer intervention.

 

-On the Questions & Answers For Beginners page, did you intend to have the 3rd Q&A be in Swedish? It seems kind of odd in amongst all these english Q&As.

 

-Miscellaneous spelling mistakes. You might want to run each page through a spell checker. Some of the mistakes are pretty bad and can be distracting, such as "A cache may never be hidden on privet property without concent or where it may disturb other people."

 

All in all, it's not a bad site. Using a blog format, this kind of resource doesn't really work well because there's no logical order or system to find what you're looking for, but that's just my opinion. Something like a wiki works well for that kind of thing. I wish you luck with developing your site.

 

Looks like an aggregation of material collected from elsewhere, constructed to drive hits to ads on the subject pages.

 

I can't wait until this google ads thing collapses on itself; there are too many sites like this.

 

What ads?

Just ignore BoredRoom. They're a sock puppet.

[+niraD]

@niraD: There are rules against these things (or have been in the past, I will double check it) in the geocaching.com guidelines, but many are not obeyed. Especially that of not having commercial stuff.

The only rules about trade items that I've ever seen on this site have been about keeping the contents family-friendly (no explosives, lighters, knives, etc.), and about protecting the cache and its contents from damage (no food, no scented items, no liquids, etc.).

 

Cache listings that solicit have been prohibited for years. However, AFAICS, commercial trade items have never been prohibited. Naturally, expired and/or soggy, mushy coupons are worthless, and people rant about them in the forums. But gift cards, freebies with company logos, and other "commercial" trade items are perfectly fine.

 

BTW, I just realized that your rule against "things with an age limit or that may be offensive in any way" may have been intended to mean "family friendly". That isn't how I read it initially. If that is what you intended, then the rule is fine, although it may be possible to clarify it.

[+Jozii]

I truly appreciate all the feedback! I have fixed everything mentioned and made some changes

 

@BoredRoom: Wordpress, which is the platform I use, has such a Google ad feature. However, it is and always has been disabled on this website. If they have appeared anyway it sounds like a bug, but I haven't seen them myself and I hope they will never appear again.

 

@The A-Team: Great comment! Like I said, I've fixed it all. Regarding spelling, I have stumbled upon several embarassing mistakes myself and I will make a thorugh spell-check of all articles in the near future. If you see any others, please let me know

 

The 3rd Q&A is the same as the second, but in Swedish. Of course the Swedish one wasn't intened there. I have removed it.

 

And finally, regarding the blog format, I experimented a lot before setteling for this theme. It would be ideal if pages rather than blog posts were seen on the front page, but that's not the case. The page menu at the top of the site should solve it, but perhaps it's still not clear enough?

 

It has been my aim for the front page to be an ocean of articles, very mixed and in no particular order, because it's fun to browse. But it's also intended to be divided very clearly and articles should be easily found using the top navigation bar based on what type of stuff you're looking for (Beginners, Experienced, Interviews, etc.). Perhaps it was a bad idea? Suggestions?

 

@niraD: I have changed it to refer to "family friendly" instead

[+bflentje]

It's not that I don't like your site. It's just that there's already plenty of sites that already do the same thing. If you keep at it, I suggest focusing on one thing that may be out of the ordinary. And I have no idea what that would be.

[+caughtatwork]

Very geocaching.com focused.

Geocaching is not about geocaching.com

The rules (for example) do not apply in the game of geocaching, only those which are listed at geocaching.com

There are many other cache types out there which geocaching.com do not have and there are sites where locationless and virtual caches are wildly popular.

[Keystone]

I just learned from the reviewer quiz that my job is to "approve" caches online.

 

I am delighted to hear this. It will cut down my workload to a fraction of what it is currently.

 

As it stands, though, I publish all caches that meet the listing guidelines, including many that I don't personally approve of. I also have to deny publication to caches that I really like, but which violate a guideline in some way.

[+slukster]

I am seeing an ad at the bottom of all of the sub-pages:

 

Nice site so far. Keep up the hard work with more info.

[+The A-Team]

I just learned from the reviewer quiz that my job is to "approve" caches online.

 

I am delighted to hear this. It will cut down my workload to a fraction of what it is currently.

 

As it stands, though, I publish all caches that meet the listing guidelines, including many that I don't personally approve of. I also have to deny publication to caches that I really like, but which violate a guideline in some way.

I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not. Do you like LPCs and GRCs? Hopefully those wouldn't make the "approve" pile.

 

The answer for #1 would be closest to ( b ), without the international part and changing "rules" to "guidelines".

 

I am seeing an ad at the bottom of all of the sub-pages:

<snipped image>

 

Nice site so far. Keep up the hard work with more info.

I wasn't seeing anything at first, but I have an ad-blocker (Adblock Plus for Firefox). As soon as I turned it off and refreshed the page, an ad showed up exactly where your screenshot showed. To Jozii, do you maybe have an ad-blocker installed on your browser? That could explain why you don't see any ads. They're definitely there, though.

[Pup Patrol]

Not sure why there would be a need for a blog to reiterate everything that is already on the Groundspeak site.

 

And I'm not sure that doing re-writes of Groundspeak content is such a good idea. As already noted, your interpretation of the "swag" rules was more than what Groundspeak's guidelines are.

 

The article about hiding your first cache glosses over the Review process.

 

And, yeah, there's ads on each page. I'm getting sick of looking at Bill Clinton's face, so I'll stop looking at your blog.

 

 

B.

[BoredRoom]

@BoredRoom: Wordpress, which is the platform I use, has such a Google ad feature. However, it is and always has been disabled on this website. If they have appeared anyway it sounds like a bug, but I haven't seen them myself and I hope they will never appear again.

 

It looks like the ads are a "feature" of Wordpress; you will need to actively opt-out to get rid of them, according to http://en.support.wordpress.com/advertising/

 

Note: To support the service (and keep free features free), we sometimes run advertisements from partners like Google, Sharethrough and SkimLinks. We try hard to only run them in limited places. If you would like to completely eliminate ads from appearing on your blog, we offer the No-Ads Upgrade.

 

Just ignore BoredRoom. They're a sock puppet.

 

"You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means"

 

I pity the fool who makes unsubstantiated, scurrilous and potentially libelous accusations.

[+Jozii]

Point taken regarding basically re-written content that is already available on geocaching.com. I want to site to (in the long run) be "complete", which includes a lot of basic articles like those for beginners. But, the main focus should be a site with highly unique content that you won't find anywhere else. You've already seen this with the interviews, quizzes, etc. that go much deeper. I want it to be very unique so you'll see a lot more of that, trust me

 

Regarding ads, I just learned something new. I have been using WordPress for years and I knew that the occassional ad might pop up every now and then, but it's very rare since they spread it out across the millions of blogs they have. I'm not sure if they have increased the ads now. I will, though look into paying for having them removed, as BoredRoom linked to above.

 

@bflentje and Pup Patrol: I hope you'll keep visit and enjoy the more unique articles After all, you can choose what you read.

 

@Keystone: I will rephrase the quiz.

 

@caughtatwork: I take note of everything written here and will apply most of it on the site, but I can already say that that's one thing that unfortunately won't change. It will be a geocaching.com-specific site, with potentially an article or two about alternative sites in the future.

 

Thanks again for all the feedback

[+Jozii]

I just spent some money on this site.

 

First of all, I thought long and hard about the name. As commented above, Complete Geocaching refers to something too wide, and any successful website needs a more narrow but good focus. The focus of this website is intented to be unique, high-quality, awesome stuff that you won't find elsewhere. Something that goes a lot deeper than beginner's guides and general posts. Thus, the domain awesomegeocaching.com has been registered (completegeocaching.com and any previous links will redirect automatically).

 

A slightly corny name perhaps, but it feels and sounds a lot better to me. If someone has a better suggestion, I'm all ears

 

Second, there are now NO ADS WHATSOEVER! An ads site is not at all what I want to run and I've understood from this thread that it can mean a lot to people and their impression of the site. So now they are gone entirely

[+tozainamboku]

You continue to insist that there are rules on geocaching.com that forbid commercial items as swag in caches.

 

I'd like to know where you see this.

 

There are rules (or rather guidelines) limiting commercial caches. The word "content" as used in the guideline refers to the listing (i.e., the content of the cache page) and not the contents of the physical container. The guidelines point out that on rare occasions Groundspeak may partner with an organization to publish a sponsored cache, or series of sponsored caches; so it's not as if geocaching is free from commercial content even on the cache listing.

[+L0ne.R]

I just spent some money on this site.

 

First of all, I thought long and hard about the name. As commented above, Complete Geocaching refers to something too wide, and any successful website needs a more narrow but good focus. The focus of this website is intented to be unique, high-quality, awesome stuff that you won't find elsewhere. Something that goes a lot deeper than beginner's guides and general posts. Thus, the domain awesomegeocaching.com has been registered (completegeocaching.com and any previous links will redirect automatically).

 

A slightly corny name perhaps, but it feels and sounds a lot better to me. If someone has a better suggestion, I'm all ears

 

Second, there are now NO ADS WHATSOEVER! An ads site is not at all what I want to run and I've understood from this thread that it can mean a lot to people and their impression of the site. So now they are gone entirely

 

I would suggest that you add the email subscription widget. It should help to increase the number of followers. I, for one, prefer to follow blogs by email notifications of new posts.

[+Da' Hoffie]

Bookmarked...going to do some reading of the site this evening.

[+Jozii]

@tozainamboku: Whoops! I hade removed the "rule" about it, but not the paragraph below it that referred to the rule that I had already removed Fixed!

 

@L0ne R: I was considering that, but wanted to push for people to sign up for the newsletter instead. But since the newsletter is also published as a post, perhaps doing both will work? However, for now I'm posting a bunch of articles at once to build a good base, so if I add it, I will do it later when posting is not so frequent any longer.

Edited July 7, 2012 by Jozii

[+niraD]

The focus of this website is intented to be unique, high-quality, awesome stuff that you won't find elsewhere.

Good luck. There is already a lot of high-quality content elsewhere, including Groundspeak sites and an assortment of hobby sites (e.g., Markwell's site, GeoLex, Cacheopedia, and any number of regional sites).

 

Meanwhile, your Cache Sizes page has problems. For example, you don't mention an actual size for small (which should be "100ml or larger, but less than 1L"), and the size you mention for regular ("one liter") is the bottom of the range for regular (which should be "1L or larger, but less than 20L"). And while you can list anything as size other ("See the cache description for information."), technically a nano cache "is a common sub-type of a micro cache that is less than 10ml and can only hold a small logsheet." (See the "What does a geocache look like?" section of Geocaching 101 for references.)

 

And some of the example containers you suggest on that page are poor geocache containers: "old film canister" or "used ice cream containers".

 

I haven't gone searching for problems, but so far, I haven't found a page that doesn't have problems like this.

 

Thus, the domain awesomegeocaching.com has been registered (completegeocaching.com and any previous links will redirect automatically).

Awesome? Like, totally? Fer sure!

 

(SICNR. I have a tough time taking "awesome" anything seriously.)

 

[edit: fix broken bbcode]

Edited July 7, 2012 by niraD

[+Jozii]

@niraD: We're still focusing too much on the "basic" content in this discussion. This is NOT supposed to be another site like those three you linked to, or the Groundspeak sites. Where else can you find an interview about the tribute to the world's first cache, a story about caching among landmines, a 100-point checklist, an interview with a geodog, creative trackables, the geocaching rank, quizzes, etc.? Those are the unique articles.

 

The ones with "problems" (many points that are brought up here aren't even entirely wrong, just poorly phrased from my side, and I'm fixing everything as it's mentioned ) are those that resemble the stuff found on other sites like those you linked to. I will be posting a lot less of those.

 

"Awesome" is in my opinion a lot better than "complete" and the site is not supposed to be taken that seriously. It's fun. It's entertainment. Like said before, if you have a better suggestion I'm all ears. I'm not going to change the name as billion times, but am always open to suggestions

[+niraD]

Where else can you find an interview about the tribute to the world's first cache, a story about caching among landmines, a 100-point checklist, an interview with a geodog, creative trackables, the geocaching rank, quizzes, etc.?

Some of those sound like the kind of articles I've seen on Groundspeak's blog and other hobby blogs. But I think you need to decide what you're going to focus on. When I check the "extensive section for beginner" and find errors and bad advice, it doesn't give me confidence in the reliability of the other content.

[+Jozii]

Where else can you find an interview about the tribute to the world's first cache, a story about caching among landmines, a 100-point checklist, an interview with a geodog, creative trackables, the geocaching rank, quizzes, etc.?

Some of those sound like the kind of articles I've seen on Groundspeak's blog and other hobby blogs. But I think you need to decide what you're going to focus on. When I check the "extensive section for beginner" and find errors and bad advice, it doesn't give me confidence in the reliability of the other content.

 

It will be extensive, and it will be without flaws But the focus is the more unique content. Sure, others might have the same type, but I'm going for a more visual presentation and I'm sure no one else has exactly the same stuff Just wait and see. It will be even more awesome

[+The_Incredibles_]

I like the idea and the layout of your main page is great. Lots of potential here.

 

I haven't been through the whole thing, but a couple things I noticed:

 

Cache sizes - micros: In our area, we have mostly bison tubes. We have some film canisters, occasionally with magents, but not as a rule. Also quite a few hide-a-keys.

-nanos: These, for us, are listed under 'micros'.

 

Cache types - Mystery/puzzle-in our area, these include night caches and challenges

 

Quizzes: Like these. Would be nice if they have checkboxes/radio buttons, with the site 'marking' your quiz for you. I did something similar to this and needed to learn php. If you need help, let me know.

 

Creative hides - Caches without a container - For example, a sharpie and a sign-I thought someone on the forum said these were not allowed.

[+Jozii]

I like the idea and the layout of your main page is great. Lots of potential here.

 

I haven't been through the whole thing, but a couple things I noticed:

 

Cache sizes - micros: In our area, we have mostly bison tubes. We have some film canisters, occasionally with magents, but not as a rule. Also quite a few hide-a-keys.

-nanos: These, for us, are listed under 'micros'.

 

Cache types - Mystery/puzzle-in our area, these include night caches and challenges

 

Quizzes: Like these. Would be nice if they have checkboxes/radio buttons, with the site 'marking' your quiz for you. I did something similar to this and needed to learn php. If you need help, let me know.

 

Creative hides - Caches without a container - For example, a sharpie and a sign-I thought someone on the forum said these were not allowed.

 

Thanks for the comments I have made updates. Regarding the quizzes, that's something I too would have liked, but that is not likely to be added because of the design. Doesn't work.