Wayward Waymarking - Live and kickin'

Team Hikenutty is proud to announce the creation of our new Website, Wayward Waymarking, found at www.waywardwaymarking.com. The idea came to me when I started writing my beginner's guide and was getting so many emails from people wanting help getting started in the game. Slowly (too slowly) the idea evolved and we've created a site that will be helpful for beginners, but also has some great features for more advanced users. This blog's sidebar will change a bit, as the "feature" sections are duplicated and expanded on the website. The poll will be moved to the website now, and can be found as "waypoll" on the site's menu. Some parts of the site are still being tinkered with, so bear with us as we continue with the site's construction. I'll run through the sections of the website now and tell you a little about them.

Waypoll - Those of you who regular the blog will now find this feature on the Website instead. We'll poll you on different waymarking topics and you can view the current results to see how other folks fell about the subject. On occasion I'll post about the results of a poll here on the blog.

Wayfeature - The wayfeature section expands the features that you see to the right in the blog's sidebar. Having a full webpage allows us to add extra info and to add a few new feature topics as well. The four features currently on the Website are: Featured Category, Featured Waymarker, Featured Waymark, and Featured Wayphoto. The featured pages will change monthly at this point, while I'm busy adding to the site in other ways.

Wayblog - Next on the menu is a button that will send you to this blog. I probably should have moved the posts over to a blog on our server, but since a lot of people already have this spot favorited, and blogspot has done such a great job with features, I'll leave it here for now and won't change it's name.

Wayinfo - This section will hold tutorials, news and other waymarking related info. Currently it has the beginner's guide that I have written, a latest news section, and BQ's waymarking brochure that you can download and print up to bring to your local geocaching events. Later in the summer, after our road trip, I plan on writing additional tutorials on topics such as creating a category, group management, and more. The tutuorials are in depth, step-by-step guides written with the new waymarker in mind.

Waytools - Next in line is the waytools section. Currently in this section there is a Category spreadsheet that I created that lists every category and its basic requirements. The requirements are in a simple code (P=picture, C=coordinates) to save space, and there is a separate sheet included that has a key for this code. The second tool I have in the section at this time is a spreadsheet of the category grid with the boxes filled with the names of each category rather than the icons. I use this for playing waymarking bingo by highlighting the boxes of categories that I have posted in and it makes it easier to see what categories I still need to find waymarks for. Both of these documents can be opened in either MS Excel or PDF format. If you have a waymarking tool that you think I should add, let me know.

Wayfun - This section is a links page. It contains a section of links to other waymarker's blogs (only the ones that focus on waymarking,) a section for links to other location games, and a section for some of the wild and wacky sites that we come across while net surfing that have to do with travel or waymarking.

Waybooks - Last but not least is the Waybooks portion of the site. Here at Hikenutty headquarters we are avid readers and this is the section of the site that I'm most proud of. The concept is that many waymarkers enjoy the learning aspect of the game, and some of you are quite knowledgeable in the topics of certain categories. This section provides a place to recommend books about your favorite category to your fellow waymarkers. The waybooks section has a page for each of the 15 sections of the waymarking site. On those pages you will find books related to categories within that section. If you're interested in buying a book and supporting Wayward, hover over the book title and an Amazon.com link will appear with a photo of the book and its price. I've started things by adding a couple of book recommendations to each of the pages, but hope that the book reviews will grow as you guys make additional suggestions. I'm still working on adding the recommendation form to the main waybooks page, so until then you can email us with suggestions at info@waywardwaymarking.com . Include the book title, author, category that it's related to, and a little blurb with a description of the book and why you enjoyed it. When the "This section under construction" line disappear from the lower portion of the page, you'll be able to open a book review form by clicking on the clipboard at the bottom of the page.

So, there it is. Wayward Waymarking. We hope that you'll find it fun and informative. Spread the word about the site. If you have a website and could add a link to it for the Wayward site, we'd appreciate it. Thanks to those of you out there who have supported and helped us during the development of Wayward and to Dan Schlitzkus of www.atomicartone.com for the great web design. Happy Waymarking!