[MTCLMBR]

Thanks for the bump. I’m game to start getting some feedback to then start looking into whatever the results drive whenever the BOD feels ready and good to post.

Can use this link: http://wi-geocaching.com/website-survey-and-evaluation/

Climbing To New Adventures

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

[MTCLMBR]

Noonan wrote:

Just noticed there is a checker built into the page. Is that something new from Groundspeak?

They added that a few months ago as they have been rolling out the new UI changes and features. But it only checks with the coords unlike some of the other checkers out there will do phrases or a custom confirmation message

Climbing To New Adventures

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

[MTCLMBR]

I do like the idea of adding the winners to the trailer for a few different reason. Like previously shared, the TB Race the winner has no influence on winning vs LCG its all my work. But also like with the TB race I think there is involvement both with the awareness of seeing it but people also want to try and get their name on the trailer which might create a new incentive for involvement with the LCG.

Granted I understand and could potentially agree with the argument of the trailer becoming cluttered, as well as the way its currently setup at least on the back you would be redoing the entire TB race winners and removing or placing it on the side or front of the trailer.

I do slightly agree with no traveling trophy, as nice as I was close to winning one year I don’t know what I would do with it for a year if I did win. It probably would’ve ended up on my desk at work as no room at home. Which then I would of forgotten to grab and bring home with me and then to the event. Great idea but doesn’t provide the full awareness as on the trailer or some other solution could resolve.

Now I know there is a budget for the LCG Event, which I don’t think has been made well aware the past two years since being merged with the chili-feed. I know that budget is suppose to help cover location rental but maybe used for prizes. I think more so my suggestion of standardizing prizes originally was more so for the first couple places, whether its using the funds to purchase an ammo can from walmart each year, or for the gas cards we have done the past couple years (which I have kinda liked). But something more standard for the first three prizes with then any remaining, whether top 10, or raffle or best story, last place, whatever is by donations gathered by host or if unable using remaining funds for WGA gear or something.

Or we get rid of prizes all together 🙂 and everyone gets nothing bwah hah ha!

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 thing, but I understand that I find hardest and has probably cause lack of involvement from myself in the past (especially then when I had a thousand or two less finds) Was that I could never vote for any of the nominated caches that were listed. Since I think there has been once or twice when I have looked that I could. That left me with either not voting, or having to go and search and decide on one to nominate. Sadly have picked the easier route most of the time in the past. Every once in a while I might add a nomination, but my lack of interest died when I could never vote.

Now I understand why the rule is in place to have to have visited the cache in the past so you can have an opinion and not saying to get rid of it is the answer but when you look at the numbers. For a high Favorited cache that has been in existence for a year maybe more in a well visited area might have 100+ visits, but could be less, could be more. If out of that 100, how many are WGA members as you always have out of state/town people visiting, and not all WI cachers are WGA member. So what 50% maybe 33% or even less, nothing scientific just thinking it threw. Then out of that remaining population, how many visit the website, then even from that small pool how many will vote/nominate. So with that rule in place there is already a very small selection to potentially vote on the cache. Just a thought throwing out there but no answer 🙂

Tying in with that and with previous comments, I lean both way to merge to one a month or leave as is with the quadrants. I think with the above thought and if we have only one to vote one. We may end up with a large number to vote upon each month as they are all nominated into one pool now, but how many could get multiple votes from others or are all nominations going to be just the nominations with no additional votes. I like leaving as is with all the sections due to the ability to see and showcase more caches throughout the state with the COTM rating and see that grow.

From a management perspective, it seems it was previously shared that there was a bookmark list out there that is out dated, keeping that list updated and promoting it in addition to just voting might encourage seeking which then hopefully encourages voting. (We can talk about seeing if we can automate that step 😉 ) Also I know when I recently won a COTM, I know I saw it announced in a FB group that I had won but never was sent (to my knowledge unless I missed it) the COTM banner information to put on the cache page 🙁

Also what could help encourage voting is that when a cache gets nominated to add a “note” to the cache page stating that it has been nominated for ___ month for WGA COTM with a link. That way those that may be watching see the note and go vote, following cachers might see the note and might go and either vote or at least have now become aware of the COTM if they weren’t before if its to late. As well as I think in the past on past winners I have seen a note also stating that they may of won the COTM. (There might be potential to try and automate that step as well 😉 one or both of those ideas mentioned)

Sorry for the longer post, but a mix of thoughts, some with answers.

Climbing To New Adventures

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

[MTCLMBR]

rawevil wrote:

dmnrec wrote:

Pixiestix13 wrote:

I think the hardest thing about positing photos in the forum for POTM would be how to tally “likes.” Any ideas?

Over the border in Minnesota, we started a geopic of the month contest. Participants submit a picture taken while geocaching in MN during that month by the 25th. From the 1st to the 7th of the following month, members vote on their favorite pic. Our intention is to create a 2019 calendar of the winning pictures. If your forum format doesn’t allow polls, you could conduct one with google forms and post a link to it in the forums. Here is a link to our January voting thread: http://mngca.freeforums.net/thread/223/january-vote

Thanks! I follow your page as well and have seen this.

There is always the chance too for someone to develop something for the site 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]

HamFam wrote:

For how long is it free?

Until they decide to change it. Our plan renews yearly and our base bandwidth has now been upgraded from 200GB to the 2TB/mo. That means when it comes to renewal next January it will be the same price as this year and our bandwidth will be renewed at the 2TB level.

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:

Chris, you’ve really done a lot here as far as research, once again thank you for all your hard work. As a newbie here to site structures and servers and whatever else we’re talking about; what do you suggest? And how much difference are we talking from el’cheepo option to the Cadillac option? Couple other things too, not to pile on too much to you here but can you shed some light on what you refer to by “more control and resources”, “loose some of the admin controls”, and “have root admin access to server/computer and ability to configure and install additional services”. Pardon my ignorance, just trying to keep up with the conversation.

I’ve been digging into more with research and what the best options and route to go would be, from a cost but also effort standpoint if we were to look at changing hosts as there is technical effort on my part but can try and plan to do this smart 🙂

The simple and vague answer to the control and resources and admin controls and root access is as this. With the lack of control/no root access/fewer admin controls, means you could not always be limited to one specific setup with certain programs installed, can only control some features through a Website provided by the host company. With more control/root access/etc. depending on provider and package you can start having access to be able to install additional software/programs, be able to access/login to the server remotely and have more configuration control options in our power.

No easy answer but to keep current features and performance we would be looking at a similar package that we have and wouldn’t recommend to go down. And there is really no need for more power and control right now for us then what we have so no need to pay extremely more.

Climbing To New Adventures

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

[MTCLMBR]

Okay finally added myself to the website committee haha. Might have to create a seperate test user account for the future with less access.

so my notes but feel free to add

• Thread Stealers thread, going to most recent post(not sure if anything can do but will look
• BOD Activity tab and recent visit/logon. Date is last when logged on but not necessarily when last visited. (I think long 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)
• Website Redesign—Create survey for member opinions just needs to be posted
• Event Calendarr sidebar, update link colors so more visable
• 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)
• 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)
• Remove Gray Bars behind post images
• Look into other potential web hosting/costs/speed
• Fix the authentication token renewal to work properly (mainly for LCG upload)

Climbing To New Adventures

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

[MTCLMBR]

I want to say I thought I saw Dawn share that they had stuff for presenting :/ but I can’t currently find that anywhere.

Another option is it looks like I will be in town this weekend and will hopefully be able to swing by. I can rent a 70″ screen from the library for free again like I did for last year.

Climbing To New Adventures

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

[MTCLMBR]

Currently have now 14 caches waiting to be reviewed and hopefully approved.

3 are for fun puzzles outside of the event.

2 are puzzles for the event

1 letterbox

1 multi

7 regulars

might get one more pending property owner approval.

Climbing To New Adventures

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

[MTCLMBR]

Missed that post when it was posted. Sounds good, Was already planning to potentially ask the reviewers to get posted Friday night if possible. But will make sure to include it being tied to the event. (I’m actually surprised as I thought HQ said geocaches couldn’t be placed for events except for ones Grandfathered in, ie WBCB. Unless they pulled back that ruling or our reviewers are awesome 🙂 )

I’m hoping to place the rest of the caches Tomorrow (Sunday) and after getting the cache listings done I’ll add here. In the end hoping to have a couple puzzles, letterbox, and multi.  I did get one Arduino(electric) Gadget cache completed. Hoping to have 6-8 caches placed. I’ll provide an update when I know actuals 🙂 Might have a couple others submitted earlier in the week that are also puzzles and not necessarily for the event.

Climbing To New Adventures

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

[MTCLMBR]

awhip80 wrote:

Labrat, Thanks for provide the link to the Cache Rescue page. I thought I saw that somewhere before. So, the points for the cache rescue game are awarded in the LCG, even if the cache in need of rescue is not on the LCG bookmark list for that time period?

Thats correct. Cache Rescue is both its own and separate thing. You get rewarded LCG points for completing a rescue. But the list of rescues is on the separate 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]

Okay I’ll try this again.

Attached should be the same presentation I had together last year for stats with the updated and new information. Feel free to copy over, use, merge with what you may already have. Also if you feel there might be another fun or interesting stat that I don’t have captured feel free to let me know as I can query against all the LCG logs on the backend.

Also if you are looking for more photos I found out that Project-gc can pull up and show photos that are in logs from a list of geocaches. So if you haven’t pulled any photos from logs we can quickly find some using that, just let me know.

Attachments:

You must be logged in to view attached files.

Climbing To New Adventures

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

[MTCLMBR]

Finally finished getting all caught up on logging my caches…… Been slowly working on that the past couple weeks. Hadn’t logged to 300-400 caches since before the West Bend Cache Bash. I enjoy giving a little more with my logs, but after getting that far behind and time passing, I don’t think they were to what I would like in my logs. But good to get that off the chest and now stay current. Might of missed that cache or two, but I guess it will be easy to find if I have to give it a second go.

Climbing To New Adventures

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

[MTCLMBR]

I can agree and disagree with the needs for a mobile app. Depending on the information or reasoning for it as well if changes are made to the website. Downsides it creates another location and object to be maintained and updated. But if we put some of the WGA games on there like ability to log LCG reports or more.

The website could use a face lift and redoing in most cases, and with that could be updated to fit the needs of WGA members today of finding information. I think there is a plus to keeping the site as well as social media. Got to have one source for accurate and Official information plus the ease and ability of doing things like the LCG, BOD Voting, or even easy organizing/finding past forum topics as other information gets lost on facebook. Doesn’t mean discussions can happen there. But with todays market, making the site mobile friendly is a big need though in my opinion. If its mobile friendly, do we need an app then that would have the same info????

 

Another more of an idea suggestion I saw on another association website is to have maybe a “Member of the Month” voted by other members, just like the COTM. Then after the MOTM is voted, have a questionnaire, like what do you like about geocaching, whats your favorite cache, what do you do outside of geocaching, etc…. and post it on the blog/website. Maybe the voted member could get a special MOTM Geocoin or pathtag or nothing at all. But could be fun to learn about members from across the state.

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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