Navigation: TowerBells Home => What's New

What's new in these pages?

This page reports on the evolution of this Website as it occurs, both for the sake of those who like to follow such things and to help the Webmaster remember what was done and when. The changes are reported in reverse order, with the latest at the top. Dates show when groups of pages were installed on the Web server, which is not always the same as the internal dates of revision of individual pages.

This report covers not only the root directory but all subdirectories.

NOTE: If you have a tool or method for monitoring changed Webpages, this is the only page that you need to monitor on this Website, because it will always point to all other recently changed pages where the cause of the change was something other than a typographic error.

2018/10/01 - Revised 69 site data pages and added 26 (see list or map), revised affected indexes and regional maps accordingly. All carillons of France are now listed.

Revised the "Direction" note block which follows (and floats in this page):

"To travel far, you must choose a direction"
William F. Woo, "Letters from the Editor" (chapter title)

The direction in which the TowerBells Website is traveling can be seen in the worklist which is set out below. In roughly prioritized order, this shows the major tasks which the author has set himself, and which are intended to result in future news items on this page.

Add information on ethics and professional conduct.
Post to the site data pages all additions and changes reported by correspondents, found in publications, or discovered from Google Alert messages.
Finish adding site data pages for (traditional) carillons in the Netherlands.
Map independent great bells:
1. Determine lat/lon for all great bells not part of carillons, chimes, etc., and add that information to all detailed lists of such bells.
2. Extend the Google site locator map functions to handle independent great bells (requires specifying a substitute for page name to use in "Fix it" requests), and add map links to all detailed lists of such bells.
3. Expand the Google regional locator map system to handle independent great bells, and encode them all.
Finish adding site data pages for other instruments in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, British Isles and the Netherlands.
Extend the Google site locator map functions to show nearby sites upon request.
Expand the Google regional locator map system to add filter capability (by size, type, type of institution, denomination).
Move existing photos in site data pages from Links block to Photos block.
Search my photo archives for relevant material which can be posted to site data pages.
Regenerate all site data pages older than July 2012 for which information exists about auxiliary mechanisms and/or tower details.
Write an essay on HTML maintainability, for the guidance of those who don't appreciate the necessity of it and the subtleties involved.
Add numerous entries to the lists of great bells for Germany and other continental European countries.
Find and fix obsolete links to the Global Gazetteer.
Supply all of the "planned" items listed on the Data_Top page.
Update all Summaries that are more than a year old.
Review the index to the work of miscellaneous bellfoundries to determine whether additional separate indexes should be constructed.
Actively hunt for information to resolve various "unknown" details (foundry, year, weight, number, keyboard ranges, etc.), including location and status of Deagan tower chimes that are not yet mapped.

The words "roughly prioritized" indicate that work on many of these tasks may be going on simultaneously, so that particular sub-tasks may be completed in a different sequence. There will also be changes from time to time that have no apparent connection to any of these major tasks. Furthermore, there will be no explicit description of revisions to this task list, nor any record of prior revisions to it, though it will move up on this page whenever such a revision occurs.

/signed/ Carl Scott Zimmerman, database owner

2018/09/28 - Revised 14 site data pages (see list or map), most being merely regenerated with improved display of certain technical information from the database.

Added a paragraph about the California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894 to the page of North American sites that are no more, providing the probable early history of the bells of Mills College.

Revised the Introduction PDF to reflect additional maker codes in the database from which site data pages and PDFs are generated.

Revised the bellfoundry index advice page to clarify when replacements or recasting do or do not have separate index entries.

Added the sub-bourdon of Blois to pages about great bells.

Deleted 11 links to Panoramio photos, since Google has shut down that service.

2018/09/05 - Revised site locator maps and regional maps to account for changes in the versioning system of the Google Maps API.

2018/08/06 - Activated API keys for site locator maps and regional locator maps, to comply with Google's revised terms of service. This will require me to pay Google for the cost of visitors' use of these maps in excess of a still-unknown limit.

2018/07/31 - Revised the page about St.Louis bellfoundries.

Added A.F.Shapleigh Hardware Co. to research notes on Goeppinger's book.

2018/07/27 - Added two names to the page about St.Louis bellfoundries.
Added Simmons Hardware Co. to research notes on Goeppinger's book.

2018/07/25 - Added details to the page about St.Louis bellfoundries

Fixed or removed broken links in 87 pages (not itemized).

2018/06/29 - Revised 15 site data pages and added one (see list or map), including one downgrade from traditional carillon to non-traditional; revised affected indexes and regional maps accordingly.

Revised format and some maps in Great Bells pages.

2018/06/21 - Revised the description of the 2012 Olympic bell.

Revised the regional map system so that info windows can reflect the number of great bells that are included within an instrument. (This will not happen in single-type regional map subsystems -- only in the main system that shows all types of instruments.) Independent great bells are not yet mapped.

Moved the short list of great bells in the region of Central and South America into a separate page, and revised the regional index page accordingly.

Revised the Website Map slightly.

Split 2017 news into the separate history file referenced below, to save space here.

2018/06/15 - Changed Weblinks for wikipedia/wikimedia/wikimapia resources in 235 pages so that they will load faster for visitors.

2018/06/14 - Added Hunt Owen to the Goeppinger book page.

Corrected 22 email links.

2018/05/21 - Revised 20 site data pages (see list or map), including 4 revisions from 2016/09/06 that had unaccountably been omitted; revised affected indexes and regional maps accordingly.

2018/05/19 - Added commentary about Cornelius and Ephraim Force to the Goeppinger book page.

2018/05/18 - Tweaked a few definitions in both the alphabetic and the logical versions of the Glossary.

Added commentary about the Milwaukee bellfoundry names to the Goeppinger book page.

Added a privacy policy and reorganized the home page slightly.

2018/05/09 - Revised 24 site data pages and added 2 (see list or map); deleted one (see relocation notice); revised affected indexes and regional maps accordingly.

Added Trinity Episcopal Church, New York City, and University of Washington, Seattle, to the page of multi-instrument institutions in North America.

Updated Weblinks to the British Carillon Society, which has changed its domain name.

Corrected placement of the vanden Gheyn bellfoundry in the list of foundries by country.

Added another typo to the Errata for the first and second printings of Neil Goeppinger's book.

Added material related to the 2017 closure of the Whitechapel foundry.

Revised the help for Google maps.

Revised the page about things that are not carillons.

2018/04/20 - Corrected an error in linking the current version of the Website map page.

Restyled the Website Search, Website History and Website Map pages, as well as the general introduction page and everything in the section of unrelated essays.

2018/03/21 - Fixed selection naming and site counts in several regional maps, as well as clustering in NC.

2018/02/18 - Corrected two entries in the index to North American carillons by keyboard range, and made minor changes to the associated text.

Split 2016 news into the separate history file referenced below, to save space here.

2018/01/31 - Renamed the Website map page.

Corrected the description of the travels of the Ward-Belmont bells through Sellersville, PA and their downgrading to the Virginia Arts Festival, as well as how that affected the history of North American traditional carillons.

Fixed broken links in this page and elsewhere.

2018/01/08 - Revised the Goeppinger book announcement to reflect a second printing in which many of the typographic errors of the first printing have been corrected; the corrected typos are now listed on a separate page, as are remaining typos, commentary and research notes.

Removed Bing Maps locator map links from 852 site data pages after discovering that Bing no longer recognizes links in the format used. Revised the map service history page and the main map use hints page to reflect the situation.

Prior years' news has been moved into the following separate files to save space here:

[Tower Bells Introduction] [Website Map] [The builder] [What Is New]

This page was created 2000/03/02 and last revised on the topmost date above.

Please send comments or questions to csz_stl@swbell.net