Geocaching.com Site Update

By now you have probably noticed that the entire look and feel of the geocaching.com web site changed somewhat dramatically this week. The upgrade, according to Groundspeak, was done to "modernized the site to allow us to move forward with future projects in an effort to better address the needs of our users". You can read all the details, and many early reactions from geocachers, in the release notes forum post.

My first reaction was that of annoyance over all the extra white space that now appears on the site:


This will be very hard to get used to, but it was apparently done in the name of bug fixes and other site improvements, including:

• No longer requiring username/password to remove oneself from the email list.
• Cache submission now defaults to 1.5 star terrain for all geocaches.
• Fixed error in DeLorme Send to GPS when one or more of last 5 logs contain a blank line.
• Added http://www.geocoins.ca/ and http://geocachingshop.nl/.
• Added http://www.logicweave.com/cachestats.html.
• Added text describing how to print an info sheet and how to transfer ownership
• of a trackable.
• Added proper notation to .GPX to indicate the time format used is UTC.
• Now requiring account validation to login.
• Made some fixes to address the mileage update issues for Trackables.
• Updated text for Premium Membership expiration email to remove erroneous information.
• Updated Geocaching.com logos on the Logo Usage page.
• Added agreement checkbox to submission pages when the Earthcache type is selected.
• Updated home page cache counter with new text and statistics covering 30 days instead of just 7.
• Fixed issue where the time zone drop-down reverted to GMT, overwriting user’s previous settings.
• Map now reflects coordinates accurately.

As well as many others fixes and upgrades. Still, I have a problem with the new look of the site, but I'm sure it'll grow on me over time.

Cache On!