GrottoCenter Blog

  The IKARE project is a speleological-karstological inventory of North-East France.     This is a partnership between the Rhine-Meuse Water Agency, the Grand Est Speleology League (LIGES), the GEREE design office and the LOTTERR laboratory of the University of Lorraine, which has made it possible to build a very comprehensive database.   The data contained in this database have been partly made available to the Wikicaves association so that they can be integrated into Grottocenter. This work will be carried out gradually, it relates to nearly 1400 karstic phenomena.  

  Take part in the General Assembly of the Wikicaves association The Wikicaves association publishes the site https://grottocenter.org which allows information to be shared on the underground environment. It invites you to participate in its general meeting which will be held from April 16 to 23, remotely by exchange of emails, with a conference on Thursday April 20 at 9 p.m. (Paris time) This will be an opportunity to find out how it works, who is involved in the project, how it is financed, etc. You will also be able to give your opinion on the priorities concerning the features you expect for 2024. If you want to participate, to get involved, it will also be possible to discuss with all the people who contribute in 1000 different ways. To participate in the general assembly of the Wikicaves association, tell us by sending a message with your email address from this form https://en.wikicaves.org/contact See you soon.  

  Grottocenter is free software that you can download at any time. You can very easily request new features, report a bug or participate in development. All information is here https://github.com/GrottoCenter  

  Vincent has just published 3 improvements on the maps:   The scale is indicated, which makes it possible to quickly have indications of distance ; A button allows you to choose whether our location is used to center the map and to display a point where you are ; The map URL can now be shared, it contains positioning and zoom information.      The cave where I organized an outing last weekend is located here   https://grottocenter.org/ui/map/45.72423528362707,6.093984246253968,20

  Benjamin has just reorganized the menu bar and added a link to the online help, so that it is accessible from all pages.  

 Benjamin has just released an update that makes the pages more user-friendly.  The most visible evolution concerns the buttons which are better organized, their role is easier to understand

  Vincent has provided us with an enhanced quick search. As soon as you type 3 letters you have a list of proposals with more information: the summary of the document, the location, the development and the depth for the caves  

  Benjamin has just made new base maps available to us, including the long-awaited TOP25 from IGN, for France.   He took the opportunity to improve the pop-up that opens when you click on a pictogram: now it contains the development and depth of the cave.  

  Cécile and Julien, 5th year students at Polytech Montpellier, have just completed a feature that allows you to have a view of all the modifications that have occurred on the page of a cave.   Thus the CC-BY-SA license is fully respected because it is possible to attribute to each contributor what he has brought to Grottocenter. To discover this feature, just click on the button below which has just appeared on the entries page.  

  From the page of a country or a massif, a button allows you to view the list of cavities associated with this country or this massif with an indication of the quality of the data available on this territory.     At the bottom of the page you can find the explanations on the method used to build this index. All you have to do is contribute to improve the quality of the data available on your favorite sector.  

  Since this morning you can discover new key figures on the Grottocenter home page, in a block that has been redesigned to make it more dense.   Let's keep in mind that when these new statistics were put online, Grottocenter offered information on caves located in 126 countries for a total development of 30464 km.  

  Ophélie and Margot, 5th year students at Polytech, have just provided you with statistical data for each country and for the massifs which are described by a polygon.  

  A new feature has just arrived on Grottocenter: the history of contributions. So you know who contributed, when. Just click on the new icon attached to each element that makes up the page of a cave.  

 The Fosdem is one of the biggest European event around free software. It is held each year in Brussels; Christopher Peeters will give a presentation of Grottocenter on Sunday February 5 from 10:40 a.m. to 10:55 a.m. in room H2215 https://fosdem.org/2023/schedule/event/grottocenter/  

  Vincent has just published a new page allowing you to create or modify entries, organizations and beds on Grottocenter.   The main developments are as follows:   Everything is done on one page rather than in stages It is possible to locate the entry or the organization directly on the map.   Language and country is suggested from your location     It is possible to indicate the year of discovery of the entry   The massifs can be described by a polygon which can be made up of an unlimited number of points  

  On Grottocenter we don't delete objects, they become "ghosts". That is to say that we can no longer find them thanks to the search engine but they still exist, differently.   This makes it possible to keep the history of the actions carried out, possibly to cancel them and to give a clear answer if another site has stored the URL of a deleted object.     Benjamin created the page of deleted objects, "ghosts". Often these objects are deleted because they were duplicates, the new reference object is then indicated  

 Vincent took over the code so that it is much lighter to download, that it downloads gradually and he added a waiting page... But it's so fast that you won't be able to enjoy it!  

From now on it is possible to indicate a country by its code but also by its name in English, French and in the language of the country.  

Benjamin has just transferred the Apis server to a new machine on Azure infrastructure.   This should bring better quality service to users. From now on the update will be carried out in a fully automated way and for the Wikicaves association this new solution is less expensive.  

Vincent has just done a major job of reorganizing the entrance and network pages on Grottocenter. Basic information is better displayed, clearer, a new link allows you to view the caves on Google Map in addition to OSM.   And now it's possible to put a description on the page that describes a network   It may be necessary to reload the site to see the new version (Ctrl + R under Windows)