new state pages [closed]

Discussion about the Geocaching Australia web site
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ideology
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new state pages [closed]

Post by ideology » 23 January 05 5:27 pm

we've modified the state pages in an attempt to provide a better list of the most recent caches

see http://geocaching.com.au/nsw/ for an example

there's a few changes
- most of the screen is devoted to listing caches, with the leaderboards on the site
- caches are split up into forthcoming and latest caches. this allows you to see event caches at the top yet still focus on the latest caches
- geocaching australia caches are highlighted
- geocachers sites are now automatically generated off your forum profile, so no need to send us messages asking for changes, and no need for us to manually update this. yay!
- only the stats part of the page is cached, so any new caches you list on geocaching australia will appear immediately

let us know what you think

once we get this bedded down, we'll fix up the bugs in cache listing and open that up for beta testing
Last edited by ideology on 07 October 05 8:11 am, edited 2 times in total.

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Post by sc00t » 23 January 05 7:10 pm

I like it....layout is much better :)

I do miss the Team site logos though, but i'll leave that with you.

nice effort :D

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Post by Team Piggy » 23 January 05 9:51 pm

Crowded :( Preferred it before !

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Post by caughtatwork » 23 January 05 9:52 pm

Is it possible to put they cache type (eg. traditional, multi), size (eg. small, medium, large, etc), terrain and difficulty there as well? You might be able to fit it all in, I'm not sure.

This would give a better snapshot of what you might want to tackle without going into each page.

Can you also choose something else for highlighting AU caches.
The green is a bit off :D

If you listed the waypoint name on the page (I know, that's a lot of detail), then maybe the GA waypoint names could be highlighted showing a GA cache waypoint ID then you could remove the green.
Wasn't there going to be different colors for the internal (GCA) and external caches? This would be better than the green IMHO.

Keep up the good work though.

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Post by Aushiker » 23 January 05 11:08 pm

Hi

I really appreciate your efforts, whatever you do, honest :D, but just one comment. It seems that the advantage with gca.com.au is in the adding of value to the secondary site rather than duplication. A lot of what was there before was value to me. The revised listing of recent caches is something I can already get from gc.com.

What I miss is the YTD links, the team logos. This was information about WA that I couldn't get from the secondary site and made gca.com of value.

Sad to see those neat features go.

Regards
Andrew

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Post by crew 153 » 23 January 05 11:16 pm

If you click on the Recommended Caches on the state page, you get a short list of caches. If you select one of these caches and from that cache page select Recommended caches (under nearby caches) you get a longer list which includes interstate caches as well.

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Post by Horus » 24 January 05 12:16 am

A couple of small things -

If I click on the Tassie page, I get a list of about 30 'newer' caches, then all my Oz only caches in green, but there doesn't seem to be anywhere for me to get a complete listing of Tassie caches anymore. Have I missed something, or did it get broken with the changes, or are you only going to show recent caches?

In the top finders stats I appear to have one cache for Jan 2005, I haven't placed a cache in Jan. yet, but I did do a draft for "Something a Little Different" to test out the submission form, I'm assuming it's counting the draft? If you click on my name "Something a Little Different" is listed as a new cache, I'm assuming it's still a draft, not sure if anyone else can see it, or just me.

Another little thing - on the Tassie state page, if you go down to the bottom where all my Oz only caches are listed, there is no indication of what year they are, it only has the month, which seems a little pointless - two caches just have "March", doesn't really give any valuable info.

I realize these are just small cosmetic things, I have a few thoughts about the site in general, but I need some sleep, so I'll think about the rest tomorrow when my mind is fresh. Goodnight. . . .

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Post by Webguy » 24 January 05 12:36 am

You don't seem to be able to click the month next to top finders to see the months logs anymore or has that been moved?

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Post by swampgecko » 24 January 05 6:24 am

Honestly, I preferred the old pages.

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Post by ideology » 24 January 05 8:48 am

thanks for your feedback

crowded: yes, it does look a bit crowded when we look at in the morning! perhaps we were attempting to do too much on the one page. we were trying to get a one-page status of caching in a state. any suggestions to minimise the crowded feel?

cache details: we could add cache types, difficulty and terrain as shown in search results, but it would make it even more crowded. perhaps we should have links to

duplication of secondary site: we included secondary caches so that we wouldn't have to go to both sites to see what new caches were out there. at the moment it lists the last 3 months of secondary caches and all the caches on this site. should we drop the secondary caches and only display ones listed on this site? personally we prefer a complete list, but we're happy to go with what people want.

ytd and month links: we accidently zapped the ytd and month links, but plan to create a better stats page where you can compare across states and months a lot better.

complete state listing: we zapped that link too. the functionality is still there in http://geocaching.com.au/search?s=tas, it's just a matter of linking to it. sorry about that!

team site logos: we'll have a look at re-using the forum avatar like we do on cacher pages

list including interstate recommended caches: not sure if you were offering this as a suggestion or a bug! it's working as designed: the first link gives you recommended caches within a state. then, if you ask for recommended caches near that, it will look nearby even if that's over the border.

top finders stats - one cache in jan 2005: oops, yes, we were accidently including your draft cache. we've fixed the bug. it's hard to find all those bugs - we designed the site to show data rather than to hide it, so we need to modify almost every query in the system to hide draft caches! thanks for alerting us to this one.

highlighting australian caches: we were trying to accommodate comments about not being able to distinguish recommended secondary site caches from new secondary site caches. is it the highlighting or the colour that is the issue, and if what would you like it to look like?

prefering the old pages: can you tell us which bits you liked about the old pages and we'll try to incorporate them

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Post by crew 153 » 24 January 05 8:55 am

Additional to my comment about the Recommended caches , If I click on the nearby recommended caches on the cache page of cache in Brisbane it includes caches in Sydney. That is hardly nearby. What is the criteria for selecting nearby caches. I would have thaought that it would have been a shorter list than the states recommended caches list.

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Post by ideology » 24 January 05 9:04 am

it currently returns the nearest 50 recommended caches. how about we change the link to read "nearest recommended caches"? we dimly recall deliberately not having a distance limit so that the more remote WA caches would appear on the lists. another possibility is that as more queensland caches get recommended, there won't be as many caches popping up over the border!

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Post by xf king » 24 January 05 5:43 pm

I love the new pages. Ticks on the side of caches i have done, more new caches and even a part about forthcoming caches. Good work guys [:)]

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Post by Webguy » 24 January 05 8:18 pm

You could put all the cache listings into an iframe, most browsers support them now so it should not be a problem, if not, you could re-direct them to the longer page with javascript perhaps, then the page is only ever 1-1.5 pages long.

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Post by Aushiker » 25 January 05 1:30 am

ideology wrote:duplication of secondary site: we included secondary caches so that we wouldn't have to go to both sites to see what new caches were out there. at the moment it lists the last 3 months of secondary caches and all the caches on this site. should we drop the secondary caches and only display ones listed on this site? personally we prefer a complete list, but we're happy to go with what people want.
Okay, understand the thinking and the more I look at it the more I like it.
ideology wrote:highlighting australian caches: we were trying to accommodate comments about not being able to distinguish recommended secondary site caches from new secondary site caches. is it the highlighting or the colour that is the issue, and if what would you like it to look like?
Looks good to me. I find this highlighting approach works better than the different colour fonts. The pale green seems okay to me.

Thanks
Andrew

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