It's been a while since my last news post and I'd just like to start by thanking the many of you who are using caves.app to track your trips.

We are just about to hit 50 registered users and 2,000 trips, which I think is pretty good going for a site I set up originally just for my own personal use! It always makes me smile when I check the statistics and see that people are logging in and making use of the various features, and I appreciate all of you doing so.

I've been quite busy with life but I've found some time today to make some brief changes to the trip report functionality. The code for this was a mess and I've significantly simplified it by removing trip reports as a distinct entity and instead embedding them into individual trip records themselves.

Previously, a trip report would only be able to be viewed on a separate page from a trip, and require editing separately from a trip. Now, trip reports are displayed amongst all the other information for a trip, and are edited from the trip edit page.

Aside from this, the feature is functionally identical and all your trip reports have been automatically migrated to the new system and no data has been lost. You can still use rich text formatting and any existing links to old trip reports will now redirect to the trip record.

With the old system, it was possible to have different privacy settings for a trip report and its associated trip. Now, as trips and trip reports are the same entity, there is only one privacy setting for the trip itself. If you had a trip report which was set to a higher privacy level than the trip it was associated with, such as a public trip but a private trip report, the trip will have been set to the most conservative privacy setting to ensure that no data is accidentally leaked as part of the migration to the new system.

I hope these changes will make the trip report functionality easier to use and understand, and when combined with the ability to keep your notes private, will allow you to keep a brief set of private notes for your own use (in the notes field), and a more polished report for public consumption (in the trip report field).

As usual, if you have any feedback, suggestions or requests - no matter how minor - just send an email to admin@caves.app

Cheers!

Ever wanted to see a map of all the different caves you've visited? Well now you can! Your personalised cave map will be automatically generated from your trips and can be accessed from the sidebar.

In order to make use of this feature, you'll have to start adding cave locations to your trips. As of today, when you create or update a trip, you will be offered the option to enter a latitude and longitude - or a nearby place name - to store as the cave location.

To make things easier, there is an easy to use interface to update your existing trips. The page will present you with the details of a random trip to quickly add a location to. In addition, it will offer a list of similar trips to update simultaneously, so that if you have many trips to one cave system you do not have to update them all separately.

I realise that cave location privacy is a hot topic and many people are not comfortable sharing them. At the moment, all cave locations added to caves.app are completely private. There is no option to make a cave location public. Nobody who views a trip will be able to see the location of the cave — even if the trip is public. The only person who will be able to view the stored location is the person who added the trip. The cave map is also completely private and can only be viewed by you.

If you don't feel comfortable adding locations to your trips then you simply do not have to. The full functionality of the service remains without adding any location data. If you want to use the map feature but don't want to store your cave locations on caves.app, you can simply add locations that are in the general area (such as a nearby town) but not the location of the actual entrance.

More location based features will be added in the future — such as listing trips to other caves nearby when viewing your trips, or using the location and time data from a trip to match it with a trip that your friend has added. As with everything on caves.app, these features will be implemented with the privacy of your data as the primary concern, and any sharing of data with other users — even ones you've added as friends — will be made extremely explicit and be strictly on an opt-in basis.

With all that said — I hope you enjoy the new feature! Thanks for using caves.app.

P.S. Tell your friends!

Some new functionality has been added to the main trip search as well as a new search feature added on the user profile page.

The main search can now search by most trip fields, including notes, and you can select which fields you'd like to search within. As before, it will show trips from other users, but only if their privacy settings allow it or if the trip is public.

The user profile page search is intended as a quick way to find the trip you are looking for. Simply start typing the cave name, entrance or exit name, or the name of a caver on the trip and matching trips will appear instantaneously below the search box.

Hopefully this makes it easier to find and manage your data on the site.

The ability to add photos to trips has been added! Once you've created a trip, simply select the 'photos' page from the sidebar (or top menu on mobile) to access the upload page. An unlimited amount of photos can be added to each trip, with a maximum size of 10 megabytes per photo.

Once uploaded, the photos will be visible to anyone who can view the trip and to your friends in the social feed. If you don't want this, you can make photos private on a per-trip basis. The option to do this is located below the upload dialogue on the trip photos page.

Photos that have been added to the trip will appear on the main page for the trip and a caption can be added via the 'edit' button. You can delete photos individually via the main trip page, or delete all photos for a specific trip via the trip photos page. The photos are ordered by the time that they were taken — starting with the oldest first.

For a demonstration of the photos feature, why not have a look at my through trip from Cueto to Coventosa a few months ago?