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?

You can now add totally custom data points to your trips by using the new custom fields feature.

Do you want to track a specific type of cave identifier, or how many bolts you've placed, or quite literally anything else? Simply set up your custom field labels via the account page and the fields you have defined will be available to add to any trip, and displayed just like the existing data fields.

Do be aware — once you've set a custom field up and started adding data to it, you won't be able to rename or delete it without removing the data from all trips that reference it first — so make sure there aren't any typos!

I've fleshed out the help page with some explanations of how trip privacy works, as well as some information about exactly where you can expect your data to show up — will it appear in search engines, for example?

I realise that confidentiality of information is a huge issue in the caving community, and it has always been my ambition to ensure that all data submitted to caves.app is totally private until the user specifies otherwise. It goes without saying that it is unlikely that anyone would want to use a website where they have concerns about the privacy of their data, or are confused about who their data is visible to.

Everything on caves.app is totally private, by default. It will always remain that way, even when new features are added. All profiles are, by default, visible only to the user they belong to. Trips, by default, inherit the privacy settings of the user profile — so they are private too. If a user does choose to make their profile visible, either to their friends or the general public, they will have to opt-in (via their account settings) to have their trip notes displayed to other users. I don't want anyone to be displaying any data to the world by accident.

For further information about exactly how the privacy system works, have a look at the new items on the help page.