[MTCLMBR]

Just gotta get out and make that placement and stop thinking about it 🙂 . People will still come and find it, people will still like it, people will still log just a “TFTC”, some people will still say it was too long of a hike, some will say it was too short. If its ready to place just go out and place it.

I’ve got a large number of ideas and plenty I’m wanting to do as well. For me now its a mix of life changes and not having the same amount of time to caching as I used too. Some of it is I’ve now got so many out there is having to keep up with maintenance. Some of it is just not getting out and just placing the hide. Thats what happened for half of my Windmill Geo-art. I had half the caches placed one summer but just never pushed to get the rest out. Had to finally do that the next year to just get out and place them so I can get the series posted.

It’s a lot of fun hiding, at least I enjoy it. Some of my hides are creative, some of them not so much. Some are placed for one reason, some are placed for another. I’ve wanted to and have tried to get a variety of hides placed in my name so there can be a little bit of a variety. Plus I like finding all types as well.

Now I just need to get past some mental blocks in solving how I want to make some of this new caches I want to make but have no idea what I want to make for one of my next series. If you know what I mean haha.

Climbing To New Adventures

**The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.**

[MTCLMBR]

Haha very nice. Well hopefully it stays somewhat nice so I can change the oil in our car tonight before the cold weather comes back and before our trip to SD next week, otherwise I guess I’ll take it somewhere.

Climbing To New Adventures

**The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.**

[MTCLMBR]

My summary, and thoughts for all part of the survey. I place a – or + by thoughts that were good about site or bad about the site. Feel free to add or minus or add your own comments to what I have mentioned below. I tried to include stuff that could be address, that wasn’t addressed, or understandable.

There seem to be either strong feelings for or against the overall of the current website. Some wish for the old site or preferred that (personally I never saw it so don’t know anything about it. But sadly times change and we have to change with as we likely won’t be able to go back to that version. 🙂 )

 

Website Layout and UI:

-People feel its outdated/hard to use. Modernize
-Menu organization isn’t easy to follow/menu is duplicated/mixed up between the side and the top
-Feel its not mobile friendly, even though parts do conform for mobile use, our WGA games aren’t necessarily mobile friendly
-WGA cache page information not working ~~ I Checked and it is working.
-Too many columns
-login at the very bottom on mobile device
-top menu to long and it wrapping
-allow comments on announcements/posts

Forums:(Could address some of these through additional plugins or additional development potentially)

+Better Recent posts/remembering what I have seen or not seen/similar thoughts
-/+ Some like Thread Stealers. Others say forums get off topic fast
– Some feel lack of use. (Hard to fix unless you get people to post, and more than Thread Stealers. Facebook makes this hard to battle)
– opinion that forums are hard for newcommers
– Would like to see the year with Topic post title. (can see the year of each individual post, more of user preference) But could potentially make happen
– tough to find forum topics.
-bring back some of the forums that have disappeared throughout the years (?)
-posts since last visit

Lonely Cache Game:

-More publicity needed
-Difficulty with using the maps
-Better rules or training. Saw a comment or two about when a cache is found and no longer lonely (no you can still claim the points)
-Feels that there are very active players that kills the wind for other players
-Like to see the list grow beyond 500

Cache of the Month:

-Hard to vote/nominate cache (has it already been a winner, etc.) ~~Should add some validation
-Currently no longer showing if you have found the cache or not
-GC.com bookmark lists and website lists outdated/out of sync ~~ Maybe add an automation to this.
+ Like COTM but just don’t get on to vote often (they blamed themselves)
– needs more publicity
– seems it has dwindled since GC.com’s fav points
-haven’t found any nominated caches so can’t vote
+ Like displaying the image on their cache pages
-make it easy to use/ find not using features cause either hard to figure out or not sure how to use

Cache Rescue:

-more emphasis needed, some shared they didn’t know what this was. (Very common was didn’t know about it)
-automatic system when a cache gets archived by reviewer (sadly need assistance from reviewer on this)
-make it easier to understand
-POST MORE
-to many clicks to get needed information

State Park Series:

-SPS finders list isn’t updating (few comments) ~~ Known issue plan to fix
-feel has fallen to wayside, maybe should be new series with new elements
-pictures
+hope it continues

 

Other:

– Requesting photo albums 🙂 ~~Planning to get this going at somepoint
– Like Recent logs back ~~ Currently unable to do this, GC removed their recent logs which provided the information for ours.
+ Many shared they liked/used the website for finding upcoming events
– Out of state cacher would like to have full/similar access as members. They live right across the border and cache a lot/mainly in WI
– Miss seeing fellow cacher Milestone posts.
+ Like the blog/articles posts. Like that posts come from fellow cachers, posts can be seen weekly/like frequency
– Tough finding BOD information (some has been addressed with getting the link back). Who is leaving the BOD (during election time), BOD history
– Links for newsletter
+ Like all the information on the site
+ Like the games
+ Like the events postings
+ Like it as it helps stay in touch with others
+/- Like Photo of the month, but losing interest in the forums, this might create less traffic there. Not all use facebook.
– Site is slow
– Landing page just announcements, doesn’t engage participation, forums buried. Old site had all that information on the landing page.
– dislike the facebook feed. clutters the site, additional time to load, feels no value added.
– no tutorials on how to use GPS devices
– would like to see information for new geocachers (not just hiding), about caching in WI, stuff geared to newer cachers
-mobile app
-ability to update username (so they can have it match gc.com)
-see different public posts by all BOD so membership see they are active (there is the BOD activity page and is publicly viewable)
-add merchandise sales to the website
-more integration with social media
-sometimes post in forums and facebook come across as inside jokes and don’t feel inclusive.
-like to see a monthly post of useful information. Like how to use GSAK, how to do an intercache, other education topics, using the newer technology
-advertisement (make website sustainable) on geo related ~~ personally mixed on this. Nice idea but people both like and hate advertisement.

Climbing To New Adventures

**The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.**

[MTCLMBR]

Final Survey Summary. 40 responses in total.

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Climbing To New Adventures

**The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.**

[MTCLMBR]

Here is the rest of the individual survey responses. I’m currently working on putting the full results together and will get that added along with my personal notes/thoughts.

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Climbing To New Adventures

**The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.**

[MTCLMBR]

Since I’m up, might as well get FTP before going to bed for 3 hours. Joys of being a night owl.

Climbing To New Adventures

**The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.**

[MTCLMBR]

The Happy Hodag! wrote:

Has anyone else had problems logging into GC this morning?

Something funky is going on over there. I was logged in and able to do things although slow. But the Events calendar and other modules on my dashboard weren’t loading. Now its logged me out and not opening. Issues with Cachly and hitting the API. Glad to know we aren’t the only ones with issues at times 😉

Was hoping to get out during my lunch too!

Climbing To New Adventures

**The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.**

[MTCLMBR]

Posting to share and then get any feedback if there are any oppositions.

I would like to update some software on the server which will require me to take the website down a couple different days. I would plan to provide a few days notice to both via the website and via the facebook page warning people. I would try to plan the times so it would be late evening into the late night when most would sleep anyways for these updates.

The updates would be getting the various software updated to more latest versions which many of them at the core level show speed increases which would help with one of the many pieces to trying to get stuff to load faster.

First would be updating our Web Server. We are using apache v2.2.x and would plant to upgrade to v2.4.x. This software is what makes our website available to be accessed. This would be one night of it being down.

Second I would be updating our database. We are using MySQL v2.4.x(I believe) and would ideally like to get it updated to either v2.6.x but ideally v2.7. This would hopefully be one night of it being down but could be 2 as I have to update it to each major version incrementally and not straight up to v2.7

Third would be updating PHP. PHP is the programming language that WordPress and everything is programmed in. Our current version is at EOL (End of Life), meaning its not longer supported/no new updates, etc. Likely would be updating and making this final change when I finish the new website version as likely there would be issues with current code if I update it now. At a minimum I’d like to get it updated to v5.6 but ideally would like to get it to v7.0 as there would hopefully be significant speed differences at that version but our custom plugins as well as all the third party plugins would need to get updated to be compatible with v7.0 as there are a number of major changes which could make some of the plugins and such no longer work.

I know a mix of technical in there but just providing all the information. So main point is I would be looking/planning to take the website down a few different nights to process some of those upgrades as I can’t do that with the website being active. Would plan to do it at night, make it aware when we would be taking it down, and hopefully as long as things go somewhat as planned would be back up and working in the morning. If there are any major objections just let me know or if you have any questions.

Climbing To New Adventures

**The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.**

[MTCLMBR]

HamFam wrote:

I don’t know what’s better, your abiblity to perform these programming changes or your innate drive to keep everything documented. The best changes in the world aren’t any good if they aren’t documented for everyone else. Thanks.

Haha, the programming aspect comes from where I’ve specialized my skillset just like a mechanic with cars. But the documentation part comes from a mix of past experience and then I deal with it daily at work. Since our team does consulting installs, configurations, and customizations of certain softwares along with our own. We deal with multiple environments, duplication of test environments, and documenting it all so we can do that and make sure we have high quality. Then on the flip side I’ve been in situations both at work and in hobbys where documentation is not good, others did setup and configuration before you and you have no idea whats going on. (For example with stuff with our site and in more particular our server). So I’ve been documenting beyond this when I have figured some stuff out that would be of good information whether its something I already know, or something new that I had to figure out. Make future knowledge transfer and issues easier to resolve.

But thanks for the kind words.

Climbing To New Adventures

**The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.**

[MTCLMBR]

Updating my list 🙂

• Thread Stealers thread, going to most recent post(not sure if anything can do but will look) –update 3/27 posted issue in support forum for the plugin, will see if I get anything.
• BOD Activity tab and recent visit/logon. Date is last when logged on but not necessarily when last visited. (I think log in time is less than a week so that’s as late as it will be. Might look into improving this with website enhancements.
• Add Facebook and Instagram to websit. (Added FB, might change plugin)
• Mobile App —voted down for now (might play with in that free free time-think might get a push in activity again)
• Website Redesign—Create survey for member opinions just needs to be posted. Finish setting up test site3/27: results are coming in. Will post final results once closed. Currently updated all plugins, current theme, and WordPress. Test site has been setup, just need to make some adjustments after doing some changes on production from upgrade fall back.
• Get the photo albums working (somewhat tried but not fully working so turned off again for now)
• Have ability for anyone to create polls in the forums. (Will require us to upgrade WordPress to v4.4 so feature as part of enhancements most likely)Activated plugin now that I got WordPress updated
• Have a chat service enabled for between logged on users? (Found plugin, need to test, might want to figure out other website speed issues before using as could be another factor to slow down)
• Look into other potential web hosting/costs/speed — On hold for now, other options out there but got current hosting cost reduced
• Fix the authentication token renewal to work properly (mainly for LCG upload, also impacting COTM)
• Some of the pages of BOD information not visable to membership/public ie List of BOD, Motions, etc…Fixed 3/27
• Issue with the COTM Banner creation page

Climbing To New Adventures

**The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.**

[MTCLMBR]

Go ahead and try checking it out and let me know. It appears to be working now after i did some changes. I tested it out feel free to do do as well.

Climbing To New Adventures

**The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.**

[MTCLMBR]

JimandLinda wrote:

On BING! search, the association title shows as “Geocaching” instead of “Wisconsin Geocaching Association”. I can still get here, though. Something not recognized?

Thats weird, just looked into that quick and basically its bing’s fault. There are a couple things I can try but basically its bings algorithms decide what to pick for the title of the website to try and have it be more friendly to users. But as you can tell not always the case, and I can’t force change it. There is a couple things I can (and will) try but it is all up to Microsoft and the bing team. (Might have to reach out to my friend who works on the bing team and see if he can change it haha)

Also pushed an update for the width/cramped issue, hopefully the server will refresh it soon with the update.

Climbing To New Adventures

**The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.**

[MTCLMBR]

Might as well grab the FTP while finishing testing various updates to the website (behind the scenes) to make sure stuff is still working and not people unable to make posts. 🙂

Climbing To New Adventures

**The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.**

[MTCLMBR]

Change Date: 3/27/2018

Changed By: Chris Stolte

Issue: NA/Outdatted

Resolution: Updated all of our various plugins(used and unused) there was like 23+ needing updating, themes(used and unused) the parent theme went from v1.0 to v2.x, and wordpress. Updated WordPress from Version 4.1.12 to 4.9.x

Climbing To New Adventures

**The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.**

[MTCLMBR]

bartrod wrote:

MTCLMBR wrote:

bartrod wrote:

I still haven’t found a link/site for TB mission statements.

There is a link to print a TB info sheet on the trackable page on Geocaching.com. Not sure if that satisfies your needs. Otherwise I have created my own one that I use to create and then laminate.

I don’t personally need the statement…would like one available for other/new cachers to access. If there’s one on the Geocaching.com website I can’t find it. I found a reproducible one years ago…don’t remember where. Maybe it was on the WGA website but things have disappeared off here over the years.

I’ll keep an eye out as I’m going through various files that are on the server.

But I have attached screenshots from what I was talking about. Just visit any trackable page, doesn’t have to be one you own i believe, and click on the “Print Info Sheet”.

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Climbing To New Adventures

**The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.**

[Author]

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