This article was originally published on Cache Up NB. It has been mirrored here for archive purposes only.
We’ve seen a lot of growth on this site recently so I thought maybe we could remind folks, or introduce newcomers to the different ways you can interact with geocachers here on Cache Up NB.
Live Twitter Feed
You may have noticed the little “ticker” at the top of our site. This ticker shows our most recent news items, but it also pulls in things from cacher’s in the field.
At any point in time, you can use Twitter and the hashtag #cunblive and your tweet will be displayed in the ticker. This is really handy when you want to show a photo of something you spotted in the wild. Our ticker will automatically thumbnail the photo so folks can see it in the ticker.
So if you use Twitter, post your photos and your geocaching updates using our hashtag.
Scribbles
You may have seen the little chat box along the right hand side. This chat window, known as the Scribbles, allows our logged in users to chat with each other in real time here on Cache Up NB. You have to be logged in to use it, but that only requires you to log into your GC account and “connect” in. You can then post your chats in there.
You will also hear a “beep” every time someone posts something new so that if you have the window/tab open but not active, you know something new has been added. You can disable the beep both on the chat window itself, and through your own user profile in your Dashboard.
You can use special emoticons shown on the text entry box, and can even use a custom icon by adding it into your User Profile within the Personal smiley option. Just put the URL in there.
It also has a “pop-out” window that allows you to see the Scribbles in a separate, full screen window. This is handy on tablet or mobile devices.
Lastly, if you prefix anything you write with “/me”, the Scribbles will write it in the 3rd person. So writing “/me tries something” would produce “Zor tries something” in the Scribbles window.
If you’re wondering why it’s called Scribbles and not a shoutbox, read our article here.
Submitting Stories / Quickie Posts
On the main menubar, there’s a link that says “Submit News”. You can submit any article for us to publish on the site. We generally say that our main news feed is for larger articles and things you want to really read about. So if you have a cool story about caching, or want to share something cool with us, feel free to submit it as a news article.
Cache Up NB doesn’t have a forum, and will not have a forum, but we still have a way for folks to post forum style discussions. Use the Submit News option, and when picking a category (shown on the right), simply choose “Quickies”. Quickies are small little posts that don’t show in the main news feed, but show up along the side for people to comment on. This allows old school forum posts to exist and be commenting on, without clogging up the news feed with basic questions and things that are not really news.
Comments & News Interaction
The main news feed contains our regular content. If you are logged in, you have the ability to comment. Simply fill in the comment form found at the bottom of the post, or click reply to one of the existing entries. You can use basic HTML tags to add images and links as needed but you do need to know the syntax for it to work.
Any post (news feed or quickies) has a rating button so you can rate the quality of a post depending on what you think of it. Ratings are anonymous. Further to that, each comment has a thumbs up and down option giving the user the ability to flag it as something they like or dislike, without having to actually comment.
Our comments are the core of our community so please feel free to add your own voice to the discussion.
