Campanophile

Campanophile¹ n - The name of a once-popular ringing performance records website. www.campanophile.co.uk - now closed. Replaced by Bellboard

Campanophile² v - To research someones previous ringing, using Campanophile.

   Example - "I campanophiled Fred..."

Background and History

As computers became more popular in the 1990’s a need was perceived to have user-submittable ringing data available on-line. A diary had been made available by Graham Nabb but this required notifying him of the event.

Anthony (Tony) Parry developed a system known as Campanophile which was publicly announced on 22 Dec 2000 whereby users could enter their own submissions which were then immediately viewable. However there were probably some teething problems and the earliest submitted date is a handbell peal of spliced minor rung at Harpenden on 18 June 2001. Thereafter the system appears to settle down.

As well as ringing performances Campanophile extended to allow users to enter Diary events, Notices, Bulletin Boards, a front page and several other features. Editors assisted with articles and content. A snapshot of the main page from June 2012 is shown

• Campanophile-2012.jpg

. The system allowed entries to be forwarded to the Ringing World in a form suitable for typesetting.

Tony Parry was active on the email lists. In the early days pseudonyms were permitted and his postings were under the name of Gartenzwerg.

Tony had Motor Neurone Disease and there were concerns about what the future of Campanophile. On 12 January 2012, after the site had been unavailable for a few days, Tony announced “The Campanophile server is broken and I cannot fix it. Am currently considering whether it is worth purchasing a new server.” At this stage, whilst the Ringing World were able to accept submissions via their site, it became apparent that the volume of data was going to cause a problem and at their behest Richard Smith quickly developed a system to permit direct entry. The system was called Bellboard. At around the same time as Bellboard went live Campanophile was revived on a new server. The existence of two databases caused consternation with some preferring one or the other and some seeing resilience in having more than one system. Bellboard soon developed the ability to read submissions made to Campanophile.

Nonetheless Tony’s condition continued to take its toll and he became unable to maintain Campanophile. Heroic efforts were made by David Simpson (Staffs) to work out how to keep the system going and indeed import data from Bellboard giving two way synchronisation but eventually Tony’s brother, David, announced that the domain and server facilities would not be renewed and that no more donations were to be submitted. The system closed down at the end of 2016. Tony died on 21st March 2019.