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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 chronological 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 correction of a typographic error or addition of an external Weblink.

2025/08/16 - Revised 35 site data pages and added 13 (see list or map); revised affected indexes and regional maps accordingly.

Expanded the page about the author/editor/owner of this Website.

Added a "not AI" notice to the home page.

Split 2024 news into the separate history file referenced below, to save space here.

2025/08/01 - After finding that the hosting company had apparently managed to restore the missing update for 2025/06/30 but not the one for 2025/07/21, restored the latter, with today's date on the home page. This was possibly the first operational recovery attributable to the use of an archival policy which has been in effect for more than 25 years.

2025/07/24 - BAD NEWS: On this date, the hosting company for this Website (HostMySite) migrated it to a new platform (HostWay), but did not fully explain in advance all of the impacts of that migration. Consequently, the updates for 2025/06/30 and 2025/07/21 (see below) disappeared temporarily, and other strange things may have happened. Watch this page for news of their restoration.

2025/07/21 - Added an entry for a newly discovered American bellfounder (Wishart Bros. & Brubaker) to the Research Notes for the Goeppinger book; added new research notes to the same page for the known foundry of J.C.Harrington, and made a few minor editorial corrections in various other places on that page.

Expanded the history of the Vanduzen bellfoundry.

In support of the major policy change announced on 05/08 (see below), revised the last list of "sites that are no more" for conventional bells (North America) and provided 88 site data pages (see list) for defunct sites in this region (some previously listed only in PDFs).

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.

Work on migrating from the present offline flat file database (see this page for details) to a modern online database. This is a major project, with many components, so details of what needs to be done and what has been accomplished will not be listed here.
In support of the major policy change announced on 2025/01/17, review all defunct sites to determine whether any should instead be regarded as degraded, having some surviving bells still in use (e.g., as a clock-chime). Likewise, review all great bell installations to determine which of them are accompanied by other bells that should now qualify for presentation on a site data page.
Solve the problem of why WordPerfect does not preserve the width of spaces in fixed-pitch fonts; this is preventing the production of correctly-formatted PDFs from the database that underlies this Website.
Identify (and if possible correct) all entries where an instrument has an Extended phase but not a Foundation phase.
Solve the problem of why Map Service Select does not always pass through a map request when it should automatically do so based on previous settings.
Post to the site data pages all additions and changes reported by correspondents, found in publications, or discovered from Google Alert messages, revising indexes, locator map links and regional locator maps as needed.
Improve the new Error 404 handler to redirect requests for deleted site data pages automatically. (It already tells human visitors why they are no longer present.)
Construct a page that describes and illustrates the various types of keyboards, chimestands and chiming racks that are in use in various parts of the world.
Finish mapping independent great bells already listed in Europe, Russia and Asia-Pacific (Oriental profile).
Investigate anomalies in various summaries, as well as discrepancies between instrument counts in summaries and the corresponding indexes.
Enhance the statistics and/or filter panes on regional maps with respect to type of instrument, type of institution, denomination.
Extend the Google site locator map functions to show (additional) nearby sites at the user's request.
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, including photos contributed from others which should have been posted already.
Regenerate all site data pages older than July 2012 for single-phase sites for which information exists about auxiliary mechanisms and/or tower details.
Add numerous entries to the lists of great bells for continental European countries.
Write an essay on HTML maintainability, for the guidance of those who don't appreciate the necessity of it and the subtleties involved.
Find and fix obsolete links to the Global Gazetteer.
Supply all of the "planned" items listed on the Data_Top page.
Review the index to the work of miscellaneous bellfoundries to determine whether additional bellfoundry-specific indexes should be constructed.
Regenerate all Summaries that are more than a year old.
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 usually move up on this page whenever such a revision occurs.

/signed/ Carl Scott Zimmerman, database owner

2025/06/30 - Fixed 2 bad links in BellFoundries page

2025/06/02 - Updated the worldwide summary of carillon keyboard ranges, and slightly revised some of the related regional keyboard indexes.

Revised the introduction to unrelated essays.

2025/05/27 - Revised 44 site data pages and added 1 (see list or map); revised affected indexes and regional maps accordingly.

2025/05/08 - Revised 199 site data pages and added 10 (see list or map); revised affected indexes and regional maps accordingly.

Updated links to the NAGCR Website for all extant North America rings.

Implemented a major change in policy and organization:
Previously, defunct carillons and chimes (those which no longer exist for various reasons) had no site data pages; each one had only a brief entry in a "_no_more" page, and that entry was referenced only from the appropriate bellfoundry index(es).
Going forward, those sites will (eventually) have site data pages that differ from ordinary pages by having a pink background with an appropriate watermark. Those pages will usually have no locator information other than the ordinary place identification, and therefore no site locator maps, but each will be referenced from both the appropriate bellfoundry index(es) and the appropriate "_no_more" page. This change will also provide for more consistent display of Weblinks related to places of historic interest.
Some of those "defunct" site data pages actually describe sites that have a few surviving bells (perhaps even a great bell or two); these may eventually be changed to non-defunct pages in accordance with the policy change dated 2025/01/17 (see below).

In support of that major change, revised most of the lists of "sites that are no more", as follows:

and provided 78 site data pages (see list) for defunct sites in those regions (some previously listed only in PDFs).

Added another name to the Hanks-Meneely genealogy.

2025/04/17 - Fixed clustering in the map of Belgian traditional carillons.

2025/04/10 - Fixed clustering and labeling in two North American maps.

2025/01/25 - Fixed an erroneous historical date in the BellFoundries page.

Added a new essay.

2025/01/23 - Fixed many broken internal links — not surprising in view of the size of the previous update.

2025/01/17 - Revised 171 site data pages and added 21 (see list or map); revised affected indexes and regional maps accordingly.

Implemented a major change in policy:
Previously, no installations with fewer than 8 bells were entered into the database, even though there was no technical reason not to do so. Eight bells could span a diatonic octave, making that a reasonable criterion for the minimum size of an instrument capable of playing music.
Going forward, sites with fewer than 8 bells may be included in the database if their characteristics make them equally interesting. Such a characteristic could be a baton keyboard, inclusion of a great bell, etc. However, this expanded criterion for inclusion does not change any definitions of terminology in use here.

Following that new policy, existing handmade pages for five South African rings of fewer than 8 bells have been replaced by database-generated pages, and are included in the itemization above. A few of the new pages in the list and map referenced above also fall into this category. (See also 2024/11/09 below.)

Implemented a major change in the organization of site indexes:
Previously, most of the Nordic countries (Norway, Sweden, Finland) were mixed in with the rest of mainland Europe; only Denmark had its own set of indexes. (That was because Denmark has more carillons than any of the other Nordic countries.)
Because that arrangement was not convenient for the members of the multi-national Nordic carillon society (NSCK), the various European site indexes have been reorganized to put all of the Nordic sites together under the heading of Scandinavia. This is similar to what has long been the case for North America and for the British Isles. If you find any inconsistencies in this new pattern of indexing, please use the email link at the bottom of the affected pages to notify the Webmaster so that they can be corrected.
All site data pages affected by this reorganization have had their back-links to indexes revised appropriately, but if there were no other changes then they are not included in the itemized list and map linked above.
Note that summaries for Denmark and Europe have not yet been revised to fit this new pattern.

Changed some site tags for consistency of style, without changing their indexing.

Fixed 18 bad site locator map links (not itemized).

Added external links to numerous site data pages (not itemized) without altering the database.

Expanded the page about the author/editor/owner of this Website.

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

Please send comments or questions about this page to csz_stl@swbell.net.