Opencaching.de
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|
|---|---|
| Geocaching website | |
| languages | German, English, French, Italian, Spanish |
| operator | Opencaching Germany e. V. |
| user | approximately 77,000 |
| Registration | required for active use |
| On-line | August 13, 2005 |
| https://www.opencaching.de/ | |
Opencaching.de ([ oʊ.pən 'kæ.ʃɪŋ ] , short: OC ) is the second largest - formerly largest - geocaching hosted and operated in Europe with around 26,000 active geocaches (as of September 2018) Website. The listing platform is operated by Opencaching Deutschland e. V. operated in combination with a geocaching wiki .
Opencaching emphasizes the non-commercial character of the platform in the self-presentation. The website software is available under a modified GPL license that prohibits its use on commercial geocaching platforms; the content is under a CC-BY-NC-ND license. The sponsoring association is financed exclusively through donations.
Range of functions
Opencaching.de offers all the basic functions of a geocaching platform such as publishing ( lists ) of geocaches, logging caches, uploading images, an overview map, monitoring and search functions and e-mail notifications about new caches and logs. Compared to the market leader Geocaching.com , OC also offers a WYSIWYG editor for cache descriptions, detailed filter options for cache searches and so-called virtual geocaches without containers; therefor missing z. B. Filter options for e-mail notifications and friend lists.
Also only at opencaching.de, but not at Geocaching.com, are so-called safari caches . This is not about looking for a previously hidden container. Rather, any location must be found that fulfills a previously defined property, and the coordinates of this location must be specified when logging.
The content of the website is completely visible to every visitor. Anonymous registration is required to set up your own logs or cache listings.
history
Opencaching.de was founded by Oliver Dietz and went online in 2005. In 2006, the German Wanderjugend took over responsibility for the project.
In the geocaching boom of the late 2000s, the platform saw strong growth. Three years after it was founded, it had around 10,000 listed geocaches and 200,000 logs. The further development was designed by several geocachers in the form of a free project . The software developed in Germany also served as the basis for other, independent geocaching platforms ( code forks ), which also appear under the name Opencaching , among others in the Czech Republic and Poland (2006), Sweden (2010) and the USA (2011) . Opencaching.de, on the other hand, concentrated on the DACH region , Italy and Spain and offered localized versions of the website accordingly . Opencaching is now available in more than ten countries. An originally planned networking of the international open caching "nodes" was not implemented.
After a few years of development standstill and due to withdrawal plans by the old operating and development team, all users of the platform were asked in early 2012 in a circular email to participate jointly in the project. Shortly thereafter, a new OC team was created, which, under the direction of Michael Vaahsen, Opencaching Deutschland e. V. founded and initially took over the further development, from 2013 also the technical operation. Numerous new functions have been added to the website.
The number of active caches in 2014 was around 28,000 and the number of logs around 800,000.
technology
Opencaching.de is based on software written in the programming languages PHP , JavaScript and SQL with around 100,000 lines of its own program code as well as other JavaScript and PHP libraries . The user interface is mainly based on Smarty templates ; MariaDB is used as the database . For geocaching apps one is web - programming interface called Okapi available. Like Wikipedia, the OC Wiki uses the MediaWiki software.
The Opencaching.de websites run on a server at Host Europe . CentOS is used as the operating system in a virtualized environment.
Comparable platforms
Opencaching.de is one of the few geocaching websites with an active community and a larger number of cache listings (over 10,000), alongside the market leader Geocaching.com (GC) based in the USA, Geocaching Australia in Oceania and Opencaching.pl (OP) in Poland.
In addition to the Opencaching.de Wiki, there is the somewhat larger, platform-independent and also German-language CacheWiki and a Polish Opencaching.pl Wiki. There are also smaller wikis for English-language open caching sites.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c counter under "New Caches" on https://www.opencaching.de/
- ↑ 10 years of Opencaching! on blog.opencaching.de, August 13, 2015, accessed on August 18, 2015.
- ↑ Source code license on GitHub
- ↑ Donations at www.opencaching.de, accessed on June 14, 2014.
- ↑ a b c Opencaching.de in the Opencaching Wiki, accessed on June 14, 2014.
- ↑ Opencaching in the OC-Wiki, accessed on June 14, 2014.
- ↑ Robin Ewers: Geocaching - practical knowledge from professionals to equipment, cache types and search , Bruckmann Verlag , ISBN 978-3-7654-5988-7
- ↑ Team overview at www.opencaching.de, accessed on June 14, 2014.
- ↑ Version history at www.opencaching.de, accessed on June 14, 2014.
- ↑ OC program code on GitHub
- ↑ OKAPI at www.opencaching.de, accessed on June 14, 2014.
- ↑ Technology in the Opencaching Wiki, accessed on March 22, 2015.
- ↑ https://www.cachewiki.de/
- ↑ https://wiki.opencaching.pl/