The New nrmg.org Is Live. Go Put Yourself on the Map.

On October 22 the grotto's website moved house. The old WordPress site, which spent its last few years held together with plugins, duct tape and one very tired webmaster, has been retired, and the new nrmg.org is live. It was built from scratch for the grotto, it runs on a small server in a member's basement (honestly the most caver place a website could live), and it does a whole lot more than the old one ever did.

Here's the tour. Grab a headlamp.

First, sign in

Your old password still works, and your email address works in place of a username, so most of you don't have to do a thing. If an officer added you and you've never signed in, you don't have a password yet: click Forgot your password?, type in your email, and pick one.

Put yourself on the member map

This is the big one. The member map shows where grotto members are, so you can find caving partners near you instead of driving four hours to a trip and discovering the guy in the next sleeping bag lives six blocks from you. About 150 members already have a pin. Here's how to add yours:

1. Sign in and go to Edit profile.
2. Find "Your pin on the member map" and click the map to drop your pin. Put it on your town, not your driveway.
3. Tick "List me in the member directory."
4. Save, then go admire yourself on the map.

The fine print, because we take it seriously. Pins are drawn a kilometre or two from where you put them, so nobody can zoom in on your house. Your street address is only seen by the officers, so the grotto can mail you things, and it's never on the map or in the directory. Your email and phone number are shown to other members only, never to the public, and you can leave the phone blank. The directory is members-only, every view is logged, and scraping it or using it for anything but caving business is a quick way to lose your membership. Untick the box any time and you disappear from both, like a caver who said "I'll be right behind you."

While you're on that page, add a photo (you can drag it around to get your face in the square, which is more than the cave camera ever did for you), write a line about what kind of caving you're into, and tick which email lists you want: grotto announcements, the Bighorn–Horsethief survey project, or both.

Your membership, all in one place

Your profile page now has everything. It shows when your membership runs out, gives you a membership card as a PDF and receipts for what you've paid, and lets you manage or stop your PayPal auto-renewal yourself without emailing anybody. You can change your own email address too (the site confirms it from the new address first). Before your membership runs out, the site sends you a reminder, so nobody lapses by accident. Not a member yet? It's $12 a year for adults, and you can join with PayPal auto-renew, a one-time payment, or a check in the mail.

Trip reports got a glow-up

There are 334 trip reports on the site, going back to 2011, and the new ones are better than ever:

• Write one right on the site. You don't even have to be a member.
• Add photos to any trip report by dragging them in. The site strips the GPS location out of every photo on the way in, so a picture of an entrance can't quietly tell the internet where it is.
• Every report has a "Save as PDF" button. When an officer approves a report you wrote, you get it back as a nicely designed PDF. Print it. Put it on the fridge. Make your family read it.
• Text somebody a link to a trip report and it now shows up with the title and a photo, instead of a sad little "NRMG."
• The day after a cave trip on the calendar, the people who said they were going get one friendly email: write it up while it's fresh, with the form already filled in with the trip, the date and who went. One email. Not a nag. You can switch it off on your profile.
• Comment on trip reports and news, and when somebody replies to you or comments on your report, you'll get an email about it. Also switchable.

The calendar is yours now

Any member can put an event on the grotto calendar: a cave trip, a training day, a talk. Pub nights used to happen in Whitefish, Missoula, Bozeman and Billings, and we would love for somebody to get one going again, so put it on the calendar and people can RSVP. You can also subscribe to the whole thing in Google or Apple Calendar with the calendar feed, so you never again find out about a trip the Monday after.

Caves, photos, and the rest of the good stuff

• The cave catalogue (members): what the grotto knows about 361 caves in Montana and Wyoming. Locations stay with the grotto, always. See something wrong or missing? Suggest an edit right from the cave's page. There's even a list of caves that still need a photograph, if you're looking for a mission.
• Photographs (members): every picture from every trip report, in one place.
• What's new (members): every new trip report, photo and comment, newest first. The fastest way to see what everybody's been up to.
• The Darkside: all 43 newsletter issues we have, ready to read.
• Search: the big bar at the top searches caves, trip reports, news, all of it. Press the / key anywhere on the site and it's ready for you to type.
• Bats: 7,964 bats recorded and counting. Saw some underground? Report them.
• The annual small grant: up to $500 for members doing cave research, conservation or education. Applications are due April 15.
• Phones: the whole site works on your phone now. Like, actually works.
• Old links: bookmarks and links from other grottos' websites still land in the right place.

If something's broken

It shouldn't be. But it's brand new, and caving has taught all of us that "it shouldn't" and "it isn't" are two very different things. If something doesn't work the way you'd expect, tell us and we'll fix it.

Now go put a pin on the map.