Geocaching Australia Development List

This page lists the development ideas for Geocaching Australia. If you want something added to this list, please post your request in the forum.

For changes to the Wiki, see the Wiki Development List.

Roadmap

• Get collaborative development process going (done)
• Move to mysql (done)
• Single sign-on for gallery, forum, wiki, gca (upgrade all packages) (done)
• Images, swaggies (done)

Hey as of 25-Aug-2009, we're there :-) But seriously, the roadmap needs updating.

Work in Progress

Ideology

• finalising the development and release processes

Mind Socket

• Tidy up and merge the small tweaks in your dev area, you slacker! :p

Riblit

• look into fixing postcode database
  • new postcode data has been uploaded - states can check the accuracy

still some concerns - some locations are not listed

CraigRat

Current tasks under active development

Recent Items

• Zones
  • list zones in filterable ways a-la caches

Ideas

• Random Encounters - Be able to list cachers with whom you have met out on the caching trail
• Tag search - Made types/regions selectable
• Website preferences, move away from using phpBB for this
• Auto-text in GCA logs to allow embedding of gallery items in a nice pretty way
• Format the tags / view page (eg. http://geocaching.com.au/tags/view/all/playground/) like the caches page (eg. http://geocaching.com.au/caches/gca/au/). Then I could sort by the appropriate distance or direction.
• Improve Tag and Gallery visualisation
• Administrative Pages for Tags and Gallery, plus some stat generation
• Upload of MP3 files for podcaches
• Caches along a path
• Cache Raid Planner
• Tea making USB peripheral to turn on 15mins from last find for Bronze.
• Cacher Specific Stats feed?
• Locationless caches: Alert User if co-ords match those placed by another cacher if the owner decides they should be unique finds...
• Place restrictions on number of finds if selected by user
• Add a notification bar to the header to allow notification of save/edit/addition rather than a blank page with a 'return to what you were doing' link
• Integrate phpbb into the site in a better manner
• Real Time online chat? NO WAY! This will flag the site as "social networking" site vs. a messageboard and websense will block it.

Fix Bugs/Basic Functionality

• Get swaggies working (import, listing and logs)
• Bed down importing utility: protect against smart waypoint names
• Get cache updates working properly for GCA caches which have a delay between drafting and publishing
• Add locationless to gpx and anchors
• Add links to profiles and website on cacher pages
• auto-populate state field (or at least default to something reasonable)
• Fix character encoding bug
• Fix apostrophe bug in cacher name admin panel
• Fix COPA page - part of bbs update
• Tag virtual caches
• Improve auto-archiving: unarchive a cache when a find is imported through the wizard

Search

Better Search options, searching all items (logs/gallery/tags/cachers/caches etc etc as requested in obscene detail by the one known only as "The Ginger Loon")

---

Additional functionality

• Something that Loon wanted about making the footer text into links to recommended caches, etc
• GeoLists
• Postcode editor
• combinations of "planned" lists, possibly based on mates (caches my mates are also planning)
• What do my mates recommend?
• User-friendly layout control of cache pages / logs (use BBCode?)
• Site map
• Automatic winners' page for finders
• international caches
• When logging a cache, allow a non-published note to the owner (sends PM?)

Bonus Sharing

• Moveable cache trails
• iCal feed for upcoming events/caches

Gallery

• Cacher specific galleries in new gallery system

Stats

• Cache(r) half life, plot decline in find frequency
• Cache(r) find frequency. Straight, and vs diff/terr
• team v location: where different teams are putting their caches. colours represent teams
• terrain v difficulty: correlated as most people don't understand the difference?
• terrain v location: urban are are easy terrain, the ones away are harder?
• difficulty v location: opposite to above
• team cache style profiles: terrain v location, coloured blob represents team. colour gets brighter/blob larger as teams plant more caches of that style.
• hit/miss ratio v terrain, difficulty
• time to first find v location, time: hypothesis is that ttff is small in sydney but large further out. other hypothsis is that average ttff has decreased significantly over the past 12 months
• team territorial analysis - thematic plot of where each team is usually active. for each team, assign (say) 5 points for a cache that they have laid, 2 points for a first find and 1 point for a normal find. then start shading areas based on the pointscore and see what you get. should be able to see odlid dave sitting down there in jannali, dogs up in hornsby, etc

Mapping

• Area warnings, eg Lane Cove National Park
• User correctable maps to improve quality
• Integrate GPSBabel to support zillions of formats

Hosted sites

• Database-driven blogger which makes it easy to make websites
• Aggregate comments to one page to make a community
• Links into geodashing, confluence points, etc, not just secondary site
• Autotext in comments, eg replace i! with i!, team names with links
• Auto cross-links between stories (perhaps as part of autotext, prompting bloggers to comment on each other's stories)
• Summarise comments across sites
• Auto-populate comment username