Cache Up NB New User Guide
Sooooooo, you’ve found your way to Cache Up NB and you’re not sure where to get started. Well, this post is intended to help those people who have just arrived find their way through all of the resources that can be found on this site. With that said, let’s get started.
Click on the section you would like to know more about:
The first thing you should do when you visit this site for the very first time is Register Your Username. Cache Up NB is all about contributions from it’s visitors and you can’t contribute without registering your username.
Cache Up NB has a policy that the name you register on our site has to be the same as your official geocaching.com user id. To help with that, we have fully integrated our login system to www.geocaching.com.
How do I log into Cache Up NB using my www.geocaching.com username and password?
Along the right hand side of the website, near the top, there is a “Login” box. If you are already logged in, it will say “Dashboard” and you will need to log out. From that Login box, simply choose the “Geocaching.Com ID” from the Login type drop-down box and click “Connect with Geocaching Live!”. If you had previously logged on to geocaching.com and checked the “Keep Me Signed In” checkbox, you’ll be brought directly to a security message, otherwise you will be prompted to log into geocaching.com.
Once logged into GC, you will be prompted with a message regarding Cache Up NB’s usage of your GC login. You simply click “Allow” and you will be brought back to Cache Up NB.
Comments are welcome on any article that is posted to Cache Up NB. Now comments can be anything from your own opinion about the topic being discussed, or perhaps you want to share a story or piece of information that is similar or related to the topic at hand. Regardless of what you want to say, all comments are welcome.
There is only one requirement in order to be able to add a comment: You must be logged in! If you are not logged in to the site, you cannot post comments. Anonymous comments are not permitted on Cache Up NB to minimize the amount of spam that appears.
To comment on an article, scroll to the bottom of the article and simply enter in whatever your comment may be. Below is an example:
You simply type out your comment, click “Leave comment” and it will be submitted.
Articles shown on the main page of the site can be commented on by clicking the “Read More” link on the bottom right hand of the post. This will load the full article and display the comments box at the bottom of the post (as seen in the above image).
If you have never posted a comment before then your comment will not be displayed immediately. All first time commenters have their comments held for moderation by an administrator. As soon as you have your comment(s) approved, you will not be moderated again.
In other words, once you have a single approved comment, all comments after that are automatically approved.
This moderation helps to reduce spam and unwanted comments from appearing on our articles.
If you have something you would like to add to this site, the easiest way to get it added is to use the “Submit News” link found along the top navigation bar. Details on how to use this can be found below (keep reading).
Submissions can pretty much be anything as long as it has something to do with geocaching. Articles can contain information about (but not limited to):
- Interesting new caches
- Logs you’ve seen or received on caches
- Upcoming events
- Editorials
- New trails or trail activity
- GPS Hardware & Software
- Trackable items
- New stores to visit for caching gear and swag
- Funny caching stories
- Websites / Tools for caching
- Many more
Try to do your best to not submit something that has already been submitted or appears somewhere else on the website. If there is duplication, the article will not be approved. Do not submit articles that are merely commentary on other posts. Please use the comments feature for that.
If you choose to submit something, here’s the basic rundown of how it all works.
When you click on the “Submit News” link, you will be brought to a new page called “Add New Post”. You then enter in your “headline” for the article. The headline is what will appear as the main link for the article when it is displayed. Try to make the headline interesting and have it reflect what your article is actually about.
Just below the “headline” box is the main body window for your article. There is a toolbar above it for performing basic formatting like bold, italic, bullets, etc. You would write the “body” or main part of your article in this box. Feel free to format it any way you want and apply any kind of styles you wish to it. You can add “links” by highlighting a piece of text and then clicking the little “link” icon. You can also embed images and video by clicking the little “film” icon. You do not have the ability upload any images or other content. You have to reference them using a URL.
Once you have completed writing your article, you should choose at least one category to assign it to. Categories can be found as checkboxes along the right hand side. You can have more than one category on a post. Simply check off the categories that apply to your post. If you cannot find a category that suits your post, do not pick one and simply put a note at the bottom of your post of what you think the category should be. An administrator can decide whether or not to create a new category for you.
When you are done with categories, you are ready to “Submit” the article. In the upper left hand corner of the page there is a blue button marked “Submit for Review”. Click that button and your article will be placed into the queue to be reviewed by a moderator/administrator.
As a general rule of thumb, try to make your submissions more than just a single line. These types of submissions will likely be deleted and not published.
All submissions are reviewed by an admin or moderator. The content of the post may be edited for spelling or grammar, but the original poster will still be given credit for the article. All articles have the name of the user who submitted/posted the article to the site.
Since all material is reviewed by someone else, anything deemed to be inappropriate for content on this site will simply be deleted.
In the event that someone submits a post that would make a great addition to one of the “pages” found through the navigation menu, the author will be contacted and permission requested to have that added as a permanent link on our nav menu.
Feel free to submit as many articles as you wish. The more stuff we get, the more we can share!
As Cache Up NB continues to grow, we see more and more article contributions from our readers which is absolutely fantastic. That having been said, there’s a couple of things everyone should know about how to submit content, what should and shouldn’t be submitted, and how to manage the articles you submit.
Managing Your Own Submissions
For starters, any user is permitted to submit a new article for publication by simply clicking the Submit Story link found on the navigation menu at the top of every page on Cache Up NB. This brings you into the article editor where you can put in a headline, and write the full article.
What you may or may not know is that if you don’t “submit” it, that article sits in a “drafts” folder until something is done with it. If you click on the “Dashboard” link (found along the right hand column of this page, where it shows your username and avatar), you’ll see along the left hand side a “posts” widget where you can click on “Posts” to see info about every post on our site. For articles you submitted, or only half finished, they can be edited by yourself so you can either retract them, or even delete them. If you start writing something and then don’t submit it, it will sit in the drafts folder forever so try and either finish off your submissions or delete them. Our editors here also periodically review the “drafts” and either contact the author and get more info, or delete them.
What Makes A Good Submission
Remember that Cache Up NB is all about sharing news, stories, and other relevant information about geocaching that folks from NB might be interested in. So that having been said, here’s a few things to keep in mind when submitting an item to be published:
- Articles should have a good length to them. Remember we are sharing news and information to our readers so whatever articles you do write should have a good amount of content in them.
- If you are relaying/re-posting a full blown article from another site, be sure to include a reference to where the article was originally published, and include the entire article, not just snippets. Also try to include something at the beginning that is not from the original article that gives the reader a rundown on what they are about to read. Lastly, try and make sure whatever article you are sharing is relevant and interesting to cachers in NB.
- Try to space the article well. Lengthy articles that consist of one giant paragraph don’t look very nice when seen on a page. Try to find logical points within your article where you can separate various pieces by paragraph. Don’t get too obsessive about it but try and break it up a little bit.
- If you have access to images or links that are relevant to the article, try adding them into your post to add a bit of splash to it.
- Avoid posting flame bait. Articles which contain large amounts of negative commentary towards a particular cache, cacher, or other geocaching association will most likely be deleted. There’s nothing wrong with posting a commentary about a particular topic, but try to avoid pointing the finger at someone specific or turning your article into a massive rage against someone else. Cache Up NB is not a place for trolls and flame bait.
- Have fun. Geocaching is really about having fun and enjoying the sport so try and make your submissions fun and interesting. Not everyone is good at writing so if you have a really cool idea but just aren’t the writing type, pick another cacher on here who does write well and pick their brain on an article idea. You can always collaborate somehow.
News Items vs Quickies
Since anyone can submit content. Sometimes you might just have a quick question and want some feedback on it. Other times, you might have a nice long story to share. Cache Up NB supports both of these types of stories for our readers. We typically break them into two “types” of items: News Items & Quickies.
- News items are full blown articles that consist typically of 100+ words. These are news items, anecdotes about a caching trip, or just other larger items that fit into our standard news reel. These are the main body of content that our readers see when they come to the site and browse the main page.
- Quickies are quick little messages that are submitted the same way as regular news, but they appear in a smaller list along the right hand side. These items do not show up in the regular feed but are still visible to all users. The idea is that for short q & a type posts, or other items that would be considerably smaller than regular news, we place them in this section so that they still have visibility, but they ar ekept out of the main news feed since they are relatively small.
Cache Up NB has been a success mainly due to it’s loyal reader base. Our readers interact with each other in a variety of different ways through Cache Up NB. Here are the most common ways to interact with Cache Up NB users:
- Comments
- Many of our readers love to share their joy of geocaching with others through posting comments on the various articles available on Cache Up NB. As a registered user, you can comment on almost every page you see on this site. The most recent comments are always visible along the right hand side so you can get a feel for where the big conversations are happening. You can also rate up and rate down various comments based on your own opinions. Comments are probably the most active part of Cache Up NB.
- Scribbles
- The scribbles, known on other websites as a shoutbox, is nothing more than a real-time chat window that appears in your right hand sidebar. This chat window is where Cache Up NB can chat with each other in real time. The scribbles are not moderated but we generally try to keep it pretty clean.
- Who’s Caching (Google Latitude)
- Cache Up NB supports the ability for each of it’s users to share their location on a Google Map using Google Latitude. If you are thinking about going out caching and are wondering if anyone you know might be out doing the same thing, if they have Google Latitude and their CUNB account configured, you can look on the map and find them and possibly join them.
- This feature requires a Google Latitude account, the Google Latitude app for your mobile device, and that you be sharing you location publicly. You do have the ability to turn this feature on and off within Cache Up NB via your profile page.
- Live Ticker
- On our main page, there is a live news ticker which will display various news items about geocaching in realtime. Along with the news items, it also displays the tweets (and any images associated with the tweets) of anyone who has used the Cache Up NB hashtag on Twitter (#cunblive). Any time you include the #cunblive hashtag in one of your tweets, our ticker picks it up and displays it as part of our live news.
Geocaching is not just about going out and finding the cache and signing the log. It’s really about people. So for folks on Cache Up NB, we keep a pretty up to date list of all of the geocaching events going on within the province.
At any point in time, you can click on the Calendar link and it will give you a full calendar of all geocaching related events going on within our province. The name, date, time, and location are always given, and there is always a link to the actual event cache listing on geocaching.com.
If you use Google Calendar or other calendar apps, you can also subscribe to the Cache Up NB calendar. This allows you to have the full list of events within the province on your own calendar so you can be kept up to date at all times.
Many cachers love to take photos of their caching adventures and readers of Cache Up NB are no different. We love to be able to share those photos with our fellow locals. Cache Up NB has teamed up with the photo sharing site Flickr to provide a quick and easy means for you to share your caching photos here on Cache Up NB.
If you don’t already have a Flickr account, go ahead and get one created and then you can start uploading your photos to share. For each photo that you want to share on Cache Up NB, simply add the “cacheupnb” tag to that photo, and it will automatically be added to our gallery here.
Much like the way we share photos with Flickr, we do the same thing with video using Youtube. If you want to share video content with other Cache Up NB users, simply upload your video to Youtube and give it a “cacheupnb” tag. Within minutes, that video will be available here for all of our readers viewing pleasure.