Badges and Belts, Oh My!

As several new cachers have joined, I thought I’d share this bit of information.  Did you know you are earning badges and belts as well as souvenirs when you cache? 

You can access them many ways. I use Project-GC.com  It’s free (though they have a paid version, too).  Once you access the website, click the Authenticate button in the upper-right corner so the site can access your Geocaching.com stats.

After you authenticate, you will find several really cool features including the Profile Stats (found under the Profile menu option). 

When the Profile Stats page opens, you will see tabs that include Finds, Milestones, FTF*, Hides, Maps, BadgeGen, and Souvenirs.  On the BadgeGen tab, you can hover over each badge (see attached image) to see how many qualifying caches you have found and how many more you need to level-up!  You can also click for Badge and Belt detail at the bottom of the page.

*Just a quick note because this always comes up…. For some of you, why is the FTF tab blank?  Because you have to code your FTF logs so the Live API will pick them up and add them to your statistics.  In the body of your Found It log, enter one of the following (these are the more common examples): {*FTF*} {FTF} (FTF) [FTF]

Sometimes I find Project-GC.com works better in Chrome versus Internet Explorer.  I find this to be especially true using the Discover feature under the Tools menu option. 

Also, if you are a GSAK user, you can pull your BadgeGen stats via a macro.  There are pluses and minuses of each.  Running BadgeGen from Project-GC uses the LiveAPI so it’s always includes your latest data.  However, if you are not a paid member, the latest data can be almost a week old (free members get updated weekly).  To run the BadgeGen.gsk macro in GSAK, you will need to create a “My Finds” database first.  However, you will need to manually keep your “My Finds” updated.