UKC

Not sure which forum to post this one on but anyway...

Given the steady stream of similar posts asking along the lines of, "what climbing / crags / easy 'sport' climbing is there within 10 miles of my house" and given the fact that this information is very readily available on this site - Would a "crag finder" banner be useful on the site homepage ? for a beginner I'm sure its not intuitive to look under "logbooks" to find it.

In reply to GrahamD:

Once you've used the logbooks a while, it becomes easy. For the uninitiated it is a nightmare. Just way too many crags with weird names.

Asking the forum also gets you feedback about the crag and particular routes that you might not necessarily get in the logs. Which I like.

In reply to GrahamD:

because surely hundreds of years UKC'er knowledge is better than a simple crag search

a crag search can send you to some right holes

In reply to GrahamD:

The Crag Search page is very powerful yet was a little buried. We have added a link to the Directory menu and made the direct link under Logbooks a bit clearer.

We are running out a new Logbook section over the next few weeks which should feature an improved search as well.

Alan

In reply to zimpara:

Asking for specific information about specific crags is one thing, but many of the questions appear to be from first time users just asking whether there is any climbing within e.g 10 miles of Norwich for which a simple crag search is all they need. Regular users will have found their way round the site a bit - first time visitors won't necessarily get to crag search.

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

Hi Alan, my main point was more to do with the visibility of the crag search function - its not obvious to me why a first time user of the site would think to look under "logbooks" for a crag search ?

In reply to GrahamD:


Which they now don't since we have added an extra link under Directory. This also is in sync with the Rockfax app which has the crag finder and Listings directory in one place.

Alan

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

The difficulty in creating an interface that is "obvious" to everyone

Even under "Directory" it isn't obvious to me (I had never looked in that menu until you mentioned it), Looking at the menu contents I think a better menu title would be "Find a ..." since apart from "Full listing" and "Help" they are all "Find xxx"

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:
It would be helpful if a quality rating on crags (like the size of your crag markers) was used to list results first in the search field (rather than distance). Few cares about a highly esoteric venue being the nearest if classic crags are on the outer ring of the search radius.

In reply to Bob:



Me too its a tough one to get right (if there is indeed a "right") !

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

Hi Alan

A couple of improvement suggestions:

At the moment the zoomable map is difficult to use if you don't know the area well:
- the distinction between major and minor crags is not well drawn (i.e the marker size difference should be much more pronounced
- the markers aren't clickable/hoverable until you are really well zoomed in so it's hard to do an area overview or look at alternates
- many crags are now broken into sections and so appear smaller than they are

More (very very) useful (although I realise much more coding) would be the ability to click on a map spot and have a table of top 50 nearest crags listed in proximity order and showing number of routes (in grade bands), aspect, trad/sport, height, rock type, walk in time, total stars (or other quality indicator). This would be particulalry good for being on holiday somewhere new and seeing what's around or, as happened this summer, needing to drive to better weather and find a suitbale destination (we abandoned the Bregaglia and went to Lecco).

In reply to JJL:

We have many improvements which are being rolled out over the next few weeks to the whole Logbooks system. This includes a new map system which has a function similar to the one you ask for above although it isn't as sophisticated as your second request.

Alan

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

Hi Alan,

Not sure if you can do it - on each crag, is it worth displaying recent logs? (abit like the comments on the right, of the rockfax site)

Would be very helpful when going to a more esoteric crag, to know if ascents have been made recently/it is climbable/clean?
At the moments, I just open all the starred routes and look at them individually which is a pain

Jonny

In reply to ashtond6:


Yep, all in the new system.

Alan

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

brilliant news! thanks

In reply to Bob:


I have also never clicked on 'Directory', I assumed it was to search for Companies etc related to climbing.
I'd second the suggestion of calling this section 'Find a...', and maybe change 'Help' to 'Find Help'

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:

Hi Alan. Hope it includes possibility of a question mark for the date of the log entry so that everything doesn't get piled up in the current year because it is not possible to trace or remember when a climb was done.

In reply to Alan James - Rockfax:



As an improvement to the existing system, could you add an extra few crags nearby to my postcode? Preferably within about a 10 mile drive.

Cheers!

In reply to Kieran_John:

... and some dry weather as well??