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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.


2024/11/16 - Split 2023 news into the separate history file referenced below, to save space here.

Added another unrelated essay.

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 will not be listed here.
  • 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

2024/11/13 - Fixed indexing and regional mapping of the only traditional carillon in Finland.

Converted all remaining index pages and some others to UTF-8.

Fixed several broken internal links (not enumerated).

2024/11/09 - Regenerated 637 site data pages for traditional carillons and baton-keyboard chimes around the world (not enumerated or mapped) to show transposition in terms of the resulting key relative to C.  (It was already shown as the number of semitones up or down.); updated locator maps to latest version as needed; revised display of North American telephone area codes without changing revision dates in the database. 
Included in that number were 20 site data pages (see list) which had not been previously published and announced after their database entries were updated.  Mea culpa!

Replaced three old handmade pages for the independent 6-bell rings of North America with similar pages created from the database (see list) after verifying that the present database system can in fact hold instruments made of fewer than 8 bells.
Provided missing links to an existing page about 5- and 6-bell rings in Australia and New Zealand; through an oversight at its original creation in 2013, it has until now been accessible only from regional locator maps.

Improved the page about the standard format of site data pages.

Revised the page about Website maintenance to reflect progress toward a future version of TowerBells.

2024/09/21 - Revised 67 site data pages and added 3 (see list or map); revised affected indexes and regional maps accordingly. 

Removed the site data page for the University of the Cumberlands, Williamsburg, Kentucky, after discovering that its tower contains nothing but bell shells and loudspeakers.

Replaced links to the lost ARPAC Website (in France) with links to the equivalent archived pages on the Wayback Machine (not itemized).

2024/09/01 - Revised 38 site data pages and added 24 (see list or map); revised affected indexes and regional maps accordingly.

Added a video of the great bells of Markham, Ontario

2024/08/29 - Re-authorized Apple Maps, after the previous certificate expired unexpectedly.

2024/08/19 - Updated instrument counts in a variety of regional locator maps (not enumerated).

Revised the page about standard format to explain "Tower details" more fully.

2024/08/16 - Updated the figures in the worldwide summary of instruments by country and type.

Revised the geographic list of indexes to traditional carillons to show the association of the member societies of the World Carillon Federation with each country or region.

Added a new index to traditional carillons in Belgium, this one sorted by region (corresponding to the purview of the two carillon societies in Belgium).

2024/08/12 - Revised 40 site data pages and added 23 (see list or map); revised affected indexes and regional maps accordingly.

Added an entry to the page of North American sites that are no more based on newspaper evidence of a chime made by Andrew Fulton of Pittsburgh PA.

Revised the page of European sites that are no more to restore access to the similar page for Germany, which has been revised with the solution of the mysterious location of "Kruesinsee" (actually Krössinsee).

Added to the Olsen Foundry index page an obituary for Ole Christian Olsen Nauen (1939–2024).

Revised the Search page to explain a quirk in Google's indexing methodology, and to provide a workaround that might be helpful in some instances.

Updated the autobiographical page for the author/editor of this Website.

Added another unrelated essay.

2024/05/22 - Revised 51 site data pages and added 3 (see list or map); revised affected indexes and regional maps accordingly.

Added a province code list to the index by province for Italy.

Added a former great bell in Belgium plus two great bells in Spain to the list and table for Europe.

Revised the explanation of special characters slightly.

Removed partition tags from site locator maps for sites in Germany.

Added recently discovered external links to a variety of site data pages (not itemized).

2024/03/24 - Revised 148 site data pages and added 29 (see list or map); revised affected indexes and regional maps accordingly.  This included mapping mobile instruments to their home cities, as well as finding the actual locations of three instruments which previously were identified only by city; their files were renamed.

Added the definition of "bell metal" to the Glossary.

Added the carillon of Jasna Góra Monastery (Częstochowa, Poland) to the list of degraded instruments in Europe, and added its four great bells to lists and regional locator maps.

Changed the status of the Deagan tubular chime in El Paso TX from unknown to gone; revised affected indexes and regional maps accordingly.

Revised some of the text of the page about Instrument Type Abbreviations in Indexes to clarify usages of key words.

Revised the Observations in the Summary of carillon keyboard ranges worldwide.

Revised the maintenance page slightly, with the important addition of a Postscript about the future of the database.

2024/03/23 - Updated Apple Maps authorization token.

2024/01/11 - Revised the Glossary statement about hybrid carillons; supplied a new index to hybrid carillons worldwide, and standardized dual indexing of those instruments as both traditional and non-traditional (with "hybrid" tags).

Revised the index of travelling carillons into a main page plus three indexes, each listing all known mobile instruments in a different order; added a worldwide map of such instruments.

Expanded the page about special characters to explain more fully the encoding methods that we use.  That also tells what you should do when you observe erroneous characters anywhere.

Added a new project to the essay on philanthropy.

2024/01/01 - Added a new page about Website security, prominently linked from the home page; removed two previous "new" items there.

Revised the list of foundries to make it more useful.


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

2023 - See What was new in these pages during 2023?
2022 - See What was new in these pages during 2022?
2021 - See What was new in these pages during 2021?
2020 - See What was new in these pages during 2020?
2019 - See What was new in these pages during 2019?
2018 - See What was new in these pages during 2018?
2017 - See What was new in these pages during 2017?
2016 - See What was new in these pages during 2016?
2015 - See What was new in these pages during 2015?
2014 - See What was new in these pages during 2014?
2013 - See What was new in these pages during 2013?
2012 - See What was new in these pages during 2012 - the year of the merger?
A Website history explains the merger.
2000-2011 - See What was new in the TowerBells pages before the merger?.
1996-2012 - See What was new in the GCNA data pages before the merger?


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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.