Logging in to geocaching.com with a facebook account

Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2012 7:37 pm

This week Groundspeak made a change to the way you can log in to geocaching.com. You can either use your existing username and password, or you can log in with a Facebook account. Any thoughts? I haven't heard why they did this or what the advantages/disadvantages are.

Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 5:28 am

It was mentioned somewhere that this was put in so folks could actually use their facebook username and password to login to geocaching.com.

Many apps and sites have gone to this "facebook connect" sort of as a way to provide a single authentication point rather than multiples since so many people use facebook. "click here to login via facebook!"

I've had my account linked with facebook for awhile. Theyv'e had the ability to post logs to facebook for awhile. It was added around the time that you used to be able to "like" a cache but then that functionality was removed I beleive.

I don't push my logs to facebook. I do push them to twitter though.. not that I have that many followers... nor that many logs to write!

One interesting tidbit about this site update in general. The release notes used to go into the mundane details of bug fixes. Either they didn't have bugs to fix this go around or they're no longer fully disclosing their updates.

Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 7:28 am

-cheeto- wrote:

One interesting tidbit about this site update in general. The release notes used to go into the mundane details of bug fixes. Either they didn't have bugs to fix this go around or they're no longer fully disclosing their updates.

That must be it, they've finally caught all the nasty little bugs................never mind. Laughing

Having a way to log in using a single source log in like Facebook is nice but will only effect people going forward. Us old geocaching war horses that have been doing this forever will just end up sticking with our current username and passwork, or am I missing something?

WGA Member Joined: 2007-11-26 Posts: 3259

It's an intriguing idea but it doesn't work for me.

When I try to log in using Facebook, I get the message saying "you already have a geocaching account, so log in that way."

Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 9:21 am

gotta run wrote:

It's an intriguing idea but it doesn't work for me.

When I try to log in using Facebook, I get the message saying "you already have a geocaching account, so log in that way."

Oh yes! You need to first disable the 'smartassery function' in your Facebook Profile............ LOL

Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 9:31 am

There's that great word again! Laughing

Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 11:06 am

I'm afraid that GR's smartassery can't be disabled with a single mouse click.
Razz

Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 11:10 am

Team Black-Cat wrote:

I'm afraid that GR's smartassery can't be disabled with a single mouse click.
Razz

Sledgehammer? Wink

WGA Member Joined: 2007-11-26 Posts: 3259

huffinpuffin2 wrote:

gotta run wrote:

It's an intriguing idea but it doesn't work for me.

When I try to log in using Facebook, I get the message saying "you already have a geocaching account, so log in that way."

Oh yes! You need to first disable the 'smartassery function' in your Facebook Profile............ LOL

That would pretty much eliminate my whole profile.

It's not my fault that the whole world doesn't agree with me yet. You'll all come around eventually.

WGA Member Joined: 2007-11-26 Posts: 3259

Here's the message I get. You gotta like it for it's simplicity...

Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 12:23 pm

That error reminds me of high school for some reason....... Dry

Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 12:43 pm

Gee if I started receiving on my wall messages every time one of my FB friends found a cache, I'd have to put them all on ignore. That would be too many messages. Be careful what info you want to share!

Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 2:00 pm

hack1of2 wrote:

Gee if I started receiving on my wall messages every time one of my FB friends found a cache, I'd have to put them all on ignore. That would be too many messages. Be careful what info you want to share!

Yes apparently it's bad to do that, had someone get rather testy with me for posting all the caches I found once. I stopped doing it

Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 8:10 pm

hack1of2 wrote:

Gee if I started receiving on my wall messages every time one of my FB friends found a cache, I'd have to put them all on ignore. That would be too many messages. Be careful what info you want to share!

Yes but facebook does a much better job of auto-filtering things like this from newsfeeds now. And high-volume posting items like foursquare and uploading pictures and such are now grouped together into single entries instead of lots of separate items. That may be what happens from geocaching.com as well. Test away! Wink

Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 9:32 pm

OK I tried to link mine, but have failed, Oh well