Navigation:   TowerBells Home  => What's New => What Was New 2015

What was new in these pages?

This page reports on the evolution of this Website during the year 2015.  This helps to keep the "What's New" page to a manageable size.  The changes are reported in reverse order, with the latest at the top.  Dates of entries show when pages were installed on the Web server, which is not always the same as their internal dates of revision.

2015/11/24 - Added a new Summary of North American tubular tower chimes by state/province; revised the related list of indexes to such chimes.

Revised the history of Rincker bellfounding in America.

Revised the worldwide summary of all instruments by type.

Fixed bug in regional map for North American traditional carillons.

2015/11/19 - Revised regional maps to include mobile instruments, mapped to their home cities.

Added cluster ids to non specialized XMLs outside North America.

2015/11/02 - Updated the distribution figures in the article about Natlor-Vickers in North America.

Fixed a bug in a regional map. Also added cluster ids to all specialized XMLs (--RI,--TR,--TU,--NT)

2015/10/29 - Revised 29 site data pages and added 8 (see list); revised affected indexes and regional maps accordingly.

Added a word to the introductory paragraph on the home page, and a few more words about What's Missing.

Tweaked some wording on the Great Bells page.

2015/10/08 - Revised 16 site data pages and added 7 (see list); revised affected indexes and regional maps accordingly.

2015/10/02 - Revised 8 site data pages and added 6 (see list); revised affected indexes and regional maps accordingly.

2015/09/30 - Revised 4 site data pages and added 7 (see list); revised affected indexes and regional maps accordingly.

Clarified some text in the page about subscribing to update notices.

2015/09/23 - Revised 55 site data pages and added 1 (see list); revised affected indexes and regional maps accordingly.
Revised the page about subscribing to update notices to allow for stating one's interest in various types of instruments.

Revised the page about standard format to include "Associate Carillonneur" among the GCNA membership categories.

Added detail to the paragraph about the vanished chime of Normal, IL.

2015/09/10 - Revised 37 site data pages and added 10 (see list) based on changes to the GCNA membership roster in the past five years as well as changes to the WCF list in the past year; revised affected indexes and regional maps accordingly.  This completes the set of changes begun on 08/30.

Revised the history of former travelling carillons.

2015/08/30 - Revised 166 site data pages and added 1 (see list) based on changes to the GCNA membership roster in the past five years as well as changes to the WCF list in the past year; revised affected indexes and regional maps accordingly.  (More changes for these reasons remain to be made.)

2015/08/05 - Revised 27 site data pages (see list); revised affected indexes and regional maps accordingly.

Revised the Hanks genealogy with newly discovered details about Julius Hanks' work in Troy, NY.

2015/07/31 - Created a new page defining all of the instrument type abbreviations used in various index pages, and simplified those pages by referencing it.

2015/07/27 - Added two paragraphs to the end of the page about keyboard range, and expanded some other areas slightly.

Revised the index of North American traditional carillons by size to state explicitly which sizes (between 23 and 77 bells) do not exist.

Revised the index of North American traditional carillons by keyboard range, expanding the introductory text, correcting and re-sorting a few entries, and adding counts of keyboard configurations.  Added back-links into this index to all site data pages referenced.

Split 2014 news into the separate history file referenced below, to save space here.

2015/07/25 - Revised 25 site data pages and added one (see list); revised affected indexes and regional maps accordingly.

Added to the home page a paragraph about "what's missing" here.

2015/06/30 - Provided a new index to North American traditional carillons by keyboard range.

Revised the probable scrapping date of the Deagan tubular chime in Grace Methodist Church, Newport News, VA.

2015/06/24 - Removed site data pages about former Deagan tubular tower chimes that were in Grace Methodist Church, Newport News, VA, and in The Christian Temple, Norfolk, VA; replaced them with corresponding paragraphs (linked above) in the page of tubular chimes that are no more.
Removed the site data page about the former chime/collection that was in Coinjock, NC, replacing it with a paragraph (linked above) in the page of North American sites that are no more.

2015/05/27 - Revised the home page slightly, removing the direct link to the tubular bells introductory page, since that is already linked from the General Introduction page.  Revised the Website Map accordingly.

2015/05/26 - Expanded all of the summaries of traditional carillons by maker to include an additional table with numbers of bells in the various work stages.

2015/05/24 - Provided a summary of North American traditional carillons by maker.

Fixed various broken links.

2015/05/23 - Replaced both regional locator map systems (one for conventional bells and one for tubular bells) with a consolidated system based on the current application program interface (API V.3) from Google Maps.  This is the last step in merging the original TowerBells.org Website with the data migrated from the GCNA Website in April 2012.  Newly added functionality includes new markers (map-tack icons) showing more types of instruments, as well as the ability to display multi-region maps of the visitor's choice.  Revised the Data Top page appropriately.  Removed all locator maps for prior update packages and their links in this page.

Revised the site locator map system to use the current application program interface from Google Maps.  Also, the help and control panel at the right of the map has been improved, and scrolling of the map page is much less likely to be needed. 

Revised some map help pages, since Google's current Maps API no longer provides a method for detecting whether a visitor's Web browser is supported by Google Maps, as the previous Maps API did.

Added a new page of Notes on the Global Gazetteer.

Added a section of essays on unrelated subjects.

2015/05/02 - Added Global Gazetteer links to 25 site data pages (not listed).

2015/04/29 - Revised 310 site data pages so that site data pages for tubular tower chimes will use the same locator map routine that pages for other instruments do.

2015/04/28 - Revised 2316 site data pages to change the location of the MapQuest link icon.

2015/04/14 - Revised the regional locator map system for instruments made of conventional bells to present a clearer distinction between the maptack icons used for traditional versus non-traditional carillons.

2015/02/05 - Revised 31 site data pages (see list); revised affected indexes and regional maps accordingly.  All are for Deagan tubular tower chimes, and most of the changes were prompted by email failures in the general announcement of the preceding update package (below).

2015/01/30 - Revised 212 site data pages and added 2 (see list); revised affected indexes and regional maps accordingly.  All are for Deagan tubular tower chimes, and most of the changes were prompted by information recently acquired from a Deagan book of installation records for the northeastern USA.  Important information newly available includes not only location and major equipment but also identification of the donor and the installer.  Most of the revised pages have had locator maps added if they did not already have them; the exceptions are systems that are warehoused awaiting resale or reinstallation.

Removed site data pages about former Deagan tubular tower chimes that were in the Baptist Church of the Master, Cleveland, OH; in Butler, PA; in Clearfield, PA; in B.P.O.E. Lodge #2, Philadelphia, PA; in Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, Philadelphia, PA; in Mount Hermon Reformed Church, Philadelphia, PA; in New Castle, PA; in Atlantic City, NJ; in Ocean City, NJ; in Rochester, NY; and in Syracuse, NY; replaced them with corresponding paragraphs (linked above) in the page of tubular chimes that are no more;
added a paragraph about a newly-identified former Deagan tubular tower chime at St.Peter's Lutheran Church, New York, NY;
deleted the site data page for Park View Cemetery, Detroit, MI, upon discovering that it had been relocated to Toledo, OH, for which a site data page already existed;
revised affected indexes and regional maps accordingly, along with the Deagan sites list and the Deagan summary table.

Repaired numerous broken internal links, fixed numerous minor syntax errors and corrected encodings of several special characters (not itemized here), in the course of preparing to re-host this Website with a different company before the current hosting contract expires.  The company used since early 2012 (GoDaddy.com) terminated its Website statistics service in Nov.2013, and prohibits the use of third-party tools to identify broken external links, making it unsatisfactory for my purposes.



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

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?


[Tower Bells Introduction] [Website Map] [The builder] [What Was New in 2015]

This page was created 2000/03/02 and last revised on 2019/04/24.

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