GrottoCenter Blog

Paul has just released a new feature on the entries page. Now you can copy coordinates, display the point on an OSM, Google, or Grottocenter map, and also display these coordinates in the coordinate system of your choice. He has also added a feature that allows you to right-click on the map to select your coordinate system and copy the coordinates into it.

Starting April 23rd, when you create an account or log in for the first time, you will receive an email allowing you to confirm the validity of your email address. This verification will allow us to offer you, in a few weeks, a service that will allow you to communicate with other users without your email address being shared. Thanks to Zouhair for this excellent work.

How can we offer even more criteria for searching on Grottocenter while simultaneously making that search easier to access? That's what Paul has just implemented, and it's a truly impressive achievement that I encourage you to explore right away.

Paul and Clément have just launched a very important new service. It allows users to indicate, for each cave, the rules to follow to protect the environment: presence of bats, following a marked path, cave-specific rules, and wearing clean clothing. It is also possible to share information related to risks present in the cave: pollution, CO2, rockfalls, and flooding. Finally, it is possible to report tourist caves to offer access to the underground world to those unfamiliar with it. Do you know a particular area well? Would you be willing to provide this information about the caves you know and share your experience with these new features? Thank you for your help.

Is the data on Grottocenter of good quality? Excellent question, and one we're answering today. On each entry's page, you have access to an overall score and a score by category, as well as explanations of how that score was calculated. Thanks to Paul and Clément for their excellent work.

Thanks to the combined work of Clément and Paul, we now have access to a view of the massifs in Grottocenter directly from the map. Historically, the massifs in Grottocenter were areas defined by cavers to define their intervention zones. Now, it is possible to use this tool to define an area according to the criteria of your choice. Initial use focuses on protected areas. American national parks have been integrated, and Natura 2000 sites in Europe are currently being added. Paul has ensured that each massif is clearly identifiable, even where there are overlaps, and a click allows access to the chosen massif. This makes it possible to quickly determine if the massif you wish to work on already exists, and potentially modify or create it.

Paul is introducing a new feature that makes it easy to share information from Grottocenter. At the top of each page, you now have a button to copy the page address. But if you hover your mouse to the right of any section of the page, a button will appear; a button that lets you copy the address corresponding to that section. Share and build connections around Grottocenter with your friends and acquaintances!

A significant improvement has just been released regarding the mapping tools on Grottocenter. > Clément has reworked the server-side functionality to limit calls to only what is truly necessary when viewing the map. This allows for a faster response even when displaying the entire world, and it reduces the load on our database. He also took the opportunity to fix a bug related to the OSM map display. > The map search and menus have been redesigned by Paul. He has replaced the icon icons for entries with dots of varying sizes depending on the entry's importance. It is now possible to select the types of entries you wish to see.

Last night, Paul finalized work to improve the Grottocenter header. Your initials now appear when you're logged in, and your menu has been redesigned. In addition, Paul has made it possible for you to install Grottocenter as an application.

Jeorg Dreybrodt led two expeditions to Malaysia in 2025 and 2026. With the members of the "Malaysia-Swiss Caving Expedition" team, they decided to license their work under CC-BY-NC-SA, and Jeorg provided us with the files so that the data could be integrated into Grottocenter. Thank you for sharing.

Thanks to Paul for implementing a new feature that allows you to search not only place names, but also entries, networks, and organizations registered in Grottocenter, and to directly access the location of the selected item.

Paul Aubertin has just joined the Grottocenter development team and is offering a fantastic new feature starting today. From a cave's page, you can preview the images corresponding to the documents associated with that cave. You can also scroll to see all the images within a single document. It's magnificent!

Clément has just published new services associated with the massifs - Now it is possible to have a massif made up of different zones, these zones can include holes - It is possible to import a file corresponding to the perimeter of the massif - The display of entries associated with the massif uses clustering (display of hexagons in areas of high density of caves) and a limit size of the massif to avoid inappropriate use of the service This system responds to a request from the NSS but also from other organizations to have massifs which correspond to areas which benefit from particular protection.

The Wikicaves team wishes you a wonderful 2026 and invites you to participate in sharing information about the underground environment. The link below will show you how you can support us. https://www.helloasso.com/associations/wikicaves