About this site

Site credits

This Web site was created by Richard Hallas of KeyNote: Music Typesetting and General Desktop Publishing, and represents the webmaster’s first attempt at HTML and site design. Twenty years on, perhaps that now shows…! But the site still serves its purpose. Creation of the site was originally divided roughly equally between computers running the RISC OS and Mac OS X operating systems, though these days virtually everything happens on the Mac.		Music Typesetting and General Desktop Publishing

Site history

1st September 2022	Made the Summer 2022 concert ‘history’, set the site to display general historical information with no forthcoming events, and set the PayPal buttons to have zero stock so it’s no longer possible to actually buy any tickets.
27th March 2022	Updated the Summer 2022 poster artwork and concert page to correct the Kirklees Young Musician title to the now very cumbersome Huddersfield Mrs Sunderland Festival Young Musician of the Year and added Rose McLachlan, Piano as this year’s winner. Generally updated the site to bring things up to date, with Summer 2022 as the next concert.
7th March 2022	Amended the details of the changed Spring concert venue (concert page and poster graphics) and added an alert box on the opening Intro page.
5th January 2022	Brought the site up to date, showing Easter 2022 as the next concert, and brought the concert history and repertoire etc. up to date. Added the recording of the Winter 2021 concert (The Spirit of Christmas) to the Private area.
18th October 2021	Added a section to the Private area about our forthcoming choir merchandise. Updated the Covid page to account for both rehearsal rooms.
5th September 2021	Generally brought the site back up to date after 20 months of inactivity: Updated all the forthcoming concerts with the final info, which we now have AT LONG LAST. Added a new decade row to the concert history section. Updated the full concert history and repertoire list and brought all concert pages up to date. Added a special page for 2020 to indicate that no events took place, but to show the original versions of the two concerts that were planned and postponed (and whose artwork was created and – in the case of the Spring poster – printed). Removed the interactive jigsaws from the menu system and archived their pages on the 2006 Calendar page, since (with the death of Adobe Flash) they no longer work. Made some small changes and additions to the ‘Further details’ page. Updated the Personnel page, as far as possible, though not every necessary role has an incumbent at present. Gave the opening introduction page a fairly major revamp, changing around sections, cutting out old material, removing the jigsaws link and adding the new annual brochure. Created the new Covid policy page and linked it from an announcement on the intro page. There’s no other way to get to it yet; I’ll have to think where I can usefully put a more permanent link. Prepared the left-hand menu for the inclusion of a new Merchandise page, which is anticipated soon.
28th January 2020	Updated the Spring 2020 concert poster and page, and added it as our next concert.
25th November 2019	Added our new recording of Holst’s Wassail Song to the Sounds page.
6th November 2019	Brought the whole site up to date: Added the 2019–2020 brochure PDF and the full details and artwork for the season’s concerts. Brought the concert history up to date and corrected the presentation of several recent concerts; they now include the expected programme covers and posters. Updated the events to record the last open rehearsal. Updated the choir personnel table. Made various other minor updates and corrections.
31st August 2019	Added an SSL certificate. The site is now secure.
31st July 2019	Made various minor internal revisions to the index page of the private area, and rejigged the location of existing concert recording index files. Completely revamped the presentation of much of the index page of the private area; now, instead of lengthy sets of bullet-point lists for forthcoming concert music, archived music and concert recordings, everything has been made much easier to use and more space-efficient. Now, the future and archived concert recordings appear in a single section, side by side, with the archived material in a nice, neat, colour-coded table. And the growing set of concert recordings also now appears in a similar colour-coded table. (Also added a little CSS to this page to make the colour-coding easier to do.) Added the recordings (with new index pages) of the last four concerts (Summer 2018 to Summer 2019 inclusive). Brought the repertoire summary page up to date.
21st July 2019	Updated the opening page with the new choir photo, taken on the afternoon of our ‘Across the Pond’ concert, 13th July 2019.
24th May 2019	Added The Huddersfield Singers as a cause on EasyFundraising.org.uk so that people can raise funds for us when shopping online, and added information about all this to our site. This involved a new entry (and section) in the menu at the left, a new dedicated information page, and a new information section on the opening intro page.
16th April 2019	Changed opening page to show Summer concert as next, and allow tickets to be bought; updated Private area with some Raminsh resources.
1st March 2019	Summer 2019 concert artwork and details added, somewhat later than intended!
12th November 2018	Belatedly added the artwork for Winter 2018 and Spring 2019 and added the promo link to the Intro page. Summer 2019 artwork to follow shortly.
7th September 2018	Added the new 2018–19 seasonal brochure PDF.
4th September 2018	Updated/expanded concert details for the 2018–19 season.
24th August 2018	Made the last summer concert history and updated the repertoire summary. Added details of the coming Open Rehearsal to the Events page and added a temporary opening page for it. Added basic details (lots still to be confirmed) for the coming concert season.
17th June 2018	Following the recent GDPR changes, made a few updates to the Private area. 1. Hid the Print button on the choir membership list to discourage printing; 2. Altered/added to the wording on the Private area index page and the membership list printing notes, again to discourage printing of the list.
18th April 2018	Generally updated things to bring the site back to the present following our Spring 2018 concert. Amended the wording on the Intro page to acknowledge that Daniel is now our conductor and we’re not looking for anyone else. Added new details about forthcoming concerts. Added the recording of the last concert to the Private area.
24th January 2018	Created a fancy new Choir Membership Information List in HTML, to be a part of this site in future but designed to print as a Landscape A4 sheet like the old version. It should now be much easier to keep this information up to date. The new list is available in the Private area of the website.
4rd December 2017	FANTASTIC review of our concert in The Examiner! A solid five stars, and the best, most enthusiastic review we’ve had in years! Quoted extensively in the Press clippings section!
3rd December 2017	Updated the Winter 2017 concert page with final details and made it history. Updated the Spring 2018 concert page with final details and a revised poster. Updated the repertoire summary. Improved the presentation of a few concert pages in the concert history. Added a full high-resolution A3 PDF copy of the 2006 Calender and Year Plan for archival purposes. Made organisational improvements to the Private area to accommodate future recordings. Added a full recording of last night’s Christmas Fantasy (Winter 2017) concert to the Private area for the choir members’ listening pleasure.
2nd November 2017	Added extracts from the Examiner’s review of our 125th Anniversary Concert in 2000 to the Press clippings page. Thanks to Paul Clarke for discovering it and sending it to me.
20th October 2017	As a long overdue addition, included the PDF booklets of my original set of concert programmes to the concert listings in the ‘Concert history (since 1990)’ section, from Winter 1992 to Summer 1995 inclusive. Now, all of the programme booklets I’ve ever created for the choir are available online. Added the details, and PDF programmes, of some long-forgotten events in 1992: a special extra concert in October and two Sunday-afternoon Christmas Carols and Readings Concerts in December. Used a cheeky little bit of CSS to position the background graphic correctly in the Summer 1995 concert listing. Found and fixed a distressing number of straight apostrophes in the concert listings; all should now be nice curly ones.
2nd October 2017	Restored the normal opening page, now with Winter 2017 poster and ticket pop-up. Archived the recruitment page as one of the past events on the ‘Other choir events’ page. Added poster artwork for the forthcoming three concerts of the season.
27th August 2017	Updated concert details. Added new 2017–2018 annual brochure PDF.
7th July 2017	Lots of changes throughout the site to bring everything up to date generally, including to acknowledge a few recent developments such as Alex’s departure as conductor. Revised the concert pages as necessary, updated the poster/cover artwork for the Summer 2017 concert to the final versions, and made that concert ‘history’. Added basic information for all the concerts next season. Updated various aspects of the Booking tickets page. Removed all references to buying concessionary tickets (as we’re getting rid of those). Created a new PayPal button for season tickets (as there’s no longer a pop-up menu to choose concessions). Added new text and images to the Further details page. Revised the Introduction page fairly substantially. Made minor additions/corrections to the interactive jigsaws (Flash reference) and Choir personnel pages. Added a major new temporary opening page about our current recruitment drive; largely an online version of the brochure.
8th April 2017	Brought the site up to date again, putting the Spring 2017 concert into the history section and adding the full programme listing for Summer 2017. Removed auto-play from the Tempest page since it’s no longer behaving properly in the latest Safari, and auto-play generally isn’t a great idea anyway. Added a PDF of the 125th Anniversary Concert programme booklet, downloadable from the Summer 2000 concert page.
21st February 2017	Added information about two new group-contact email addresses: choir@ and singers@.
14th January 2017	Generally updated the site: Amended forthcoming concerts and concert history to put Winter 2016 into history; added Spring 2017 concert to the opening page; updated the Repertoire Summary list. Added quotations from the Examiner review of A Yorkshire Christmas. Replaced the Members Booklet with version 1.1. Fixed sound sample on the Tempest page. Added my complete recording of the A Yorkshire Christmas concert to the Private area.
25th October 2016	Added a ‘Listen now’ link to the iPlayer page for our radio broadcast.
22nd October 2016	Updated the Personnel page to include Press & PR Officers, along with myself as Press & PR Secretary (now a coordinating role), in view of the recent idea to split this work among several people on a per-concert basis. The new Members Booklet will now have to be updated to updated to reflect this slight change in how things work, but that will happen later.
17th October 2016	Added the first edition of the Members Booklet to the Intro page for choir members (or any interested party) to download (document contains the Constitution; Committee and Other Roles; Membership Information; Audition Procedure Guidelines); Added a splash about the HS radio appearance on Radio 4, Sunday, 23rd October 2016.
18th September 2016	Again, lots of small changes to bring the site up to date: Added new artwork for the Spring and Summer 2017 concerts, improved the Winter 2016 artwork (slightly more contrast in the star-rays), expanded the details about all three of the coming season’s concerts and updated the Forthcoming concerts page to list them all; Put Summer 2016 in the Concert history section; Added the new 2016–2017 brochure as a downloadable PDF to the opening page; Put the next (Winter 2016) concert as the featured concert on the opening page; Updated the choir’s image on the opening page with the latest photo; Coloured the ticket-buying table seasonally on the Booking tickets page; Corrected minor details on the Further details, 125th Anniversary, Join the choir!, Music Hire Library and Private area pages; Brought the repertoire summary up to date again; Put a LOT of effort into bringing the Choir personnel page up to date to reflect the latest (and actual) set of committee positions according to the choir’s new 2016 Constitution; also for the first time included all official helpers as defined in the Constitution (including the more minor roles that often get overlooked, such as Membership Officer) and labelled all members of the Music Committee as well as the main Executive Committee; Did some behind-the-scenes work on choir email addresses and forwarders, including the creation of a new address for Member(s) Without Portfolio and a rationalisation of the publicity-related roles.
5th May 2016	Lots of small changes to bring things up to date: Updated the poster and cover artwork for the Summer 2016 concert (forthcoming) to include Chris Mansfield’s name as KYM; Updated the opening Intro page to show the Summer 2016 concert (rather belatedly!) as the next concert; Since Alex is now approaching the end of his second year as our conductor, reduced the length of the text about him on the Intro page to make him sound less like a newcomer; Also reduced the length of the text about the downloadable PDF annual brochure as part of generally tidying up the Intro page; Added a new 2016 category to the Concert history section and put the Spring concert in it; Updated the repertoire summary to include the music from the Spring 2016 concert; Created a page with provisional details about the Spring 2017 concert for the Forthcoming concerts page; Updated the Forthcoming concerts page to again show the next three concerts, now to Spring 2017; Made a final small update to the Choir personnel page to reflect the current committee membership.
23rd March 2016	In the Private area, changed all the sound samples to play using Audio.JS; this should avoid annoying problems like having the sounds all load and play at the same time (thanks, Chrome).
7th January 2016	As a small cosmetic enhancement, added the following graphics: SVG pinned site icon for Safari 9 under Mac OS X; Touch icons for bookmarks etc. on Apple computers and devices; Tiles for Windows 10: pin the HS site to your Start menu from the new Edge browser! (Also supports Internet Explorer 11.)
2nd January 2016	Amended the opening page to show the Spring 2016 concert as the next event, and to remove the RIP box for Philip Honnor. Also updated the forthcoming concerts page with the Winter 2016 concert, though these details are still provisional. History section also updated, Winter 2015 programme booklet download added, and map added to St Paul’s Hall (for the first time) for the Winter 2016 concert. Repertoire summary brought up to date to end of 2015.
7th December 2015	No time for a full update today, but… added quotations from today’s very nice review in The Examiner, and improved the Press Clippings page to (a) include star-ratings where given and (b) link to the original articles where available. Also added a nice quotation about Philip Honnor from the review of his final concert in 2012, which hadn’t previously been quoted.
24th September 2015	Corrected the radio interview page again: Philip’s middle name was Esmond, not Edward! Amazing. I’ve ‘known’ it to be Edward for years. The misapprehension must have been based on a mishearing (which is poignantly ironic in relation to Philip, given his increasing deafness over many years). I’ve written his obituary today, for The Examiner (and to be added to this site a little later), so I’m pleased that Sylvia put me right. Apologies to Philip (even though he’s no longer here) for publishing the wrong name for him, albeit for only a short time.
22nd September 2015	Updated the radio interview page to make it a frameset that also displays, to the right of the interview, the concert summary page about the Fa-la-la! concert to which it refers.
15th September 2015	RIP Philip Esmond Honnor, 2nd July 1943 – 14th September 2015 Deeply sorry to learn of the death of Philip Honnor, the choir’s longest-serving conductor, who for 23 years shaped the group, upheld the highest standards possible with the forces available, and proved incomparably adept at innovative and interesting concert programming. The choir perhaps did not always appreciate quite what an outstanding musician it had in Philip, but he deserves huge credit for making the choir what it was in its post-G&M days. He will be sadly missed. Updated the interview page to note Philip’s passing and make it a permanent small tribute to him, and added a temporary notice to the opening page (just below the ‘Site updated’ line), as follows: RIP Philip Honnor, 2nd July 1943 – 14th September 2015 The choir has been extremely saddened to learn of the recent death of its longest-serving conductor, Philip Honnor. Philip’s commitment to the group was unparalleled, and his fine choice of interesting repertoire and his expert training shaped the choir into a distinctive and well-regarded ensemble over nearly a quarter of a century. He truly made the choir his own – and less than three years after his retirement as conductor, it is hard to relate to the fact that he has left us in an even more permanent sense. He will be greatly missed.
12th September 2015	A major update to the site, to coincide with the start of the new season: Posters and programme covers have been designed for no fewer than the next FOUR concerts, taking us to Winter 2016! That concert is, of course, not yet visible on the site, though its page and artwork exist, ready to be revealed after the Winter 2015 concert. Programme details have yet to be finalised for Winter 2016, and a few other details confirmed for the other coming concerts, but the basic design work is done for all four of the next concerts. The annual brochure has been made available as a PDF on the opening page. Online purchasing has been added! Now it’s possible to use PayPal to buy tickets for any of the three forthcoming concerts, and also to buy season tickets. A new PayPal shopping cart link has been added to the bottom of the side menu (actually, this was added – but left unused – with the first venture into the use of PayPal for the May 2015 Come & Sing… Gospel event). A PayPal button has been added to the opening page for the next concert, and each forthcoming concert page now has its own separate PayPal button. The ‘Booking tickets’ page has had a fairly major revamp to add support for online purchasing, and the ticket-buying buttons are all duplicated here. This is also the page where one can buy season tickets. Although I never expect the page to actually be seen(!), provision exists for PayPal to sell out of any of our tickets! Made various other small improvements, such as updated wording on the recruitment page, a couple of new programme cover photos on the ‘Further details’ page and (many years too late, considering the improvement it’s made!) a new PNG version of the tiled Huddersfield Singers logo background. This was previously a GIF, and I’ve converted its 1-bit mask to full alpha transparency in a PNG (direct conversion of the GIF file, not a recreation). The quality improvement against a coloured background is just unbelievable. Against a white background there’s no visible change, but the PNG is now used everywhere the GIF used to be used simply because it’s also a smaller file, and hence faster to load.
30th June 2015	A very nice review of Night & Day has appeared in The Examiner, courtesy of William Marshall, complete with a particularly useful quotation: “The Huddersfield Singers would appear to be the local choir for people who are ambitious to explore all sorts of repertoire…” So, not only added a longer extract from the review to the Press clippings, but also added that quotation as an ‘attractor’ to our opening page, right under the choir photo.
29th June 2015	Updated the site to reflect that the Summer 2015 concert is now history; brought repertoire summary up to date.
10th June 2015	Corrected venue for the Spring 2016 concert. Also changed the RISC OS button links on this page to have more modern tooltip text and relevant destinations.
7th June 2015	Updated the repertoire summary page with the details of the last concert (which, typically, I’d forgotten to do earlier) and corrected the Winter 2014 listing by adding a missing item (Willcocks).
17th May 2015	Today’s Come and Sing… Gospel event was a great success! We ended up with around 80 people in attendance, the whole event went extremely well, and everyone who expressed an opinion seemed to have enjoyed themselves enormously, so it felt like a really worthwhile day. Indeed, we ran out of music to hand out, having only catered for 70 people (based on ticket sales of around 55), and more copies had to be made on the spot. Now that it’s over, though, I’ve restored the usual opening page of the site and disabled the PayPal button so that people can no longer buy a ticket (though the Buy Now button does still work, and now leads to a ‘sold out’ page).
16th May 2015	Updated the details (rather belatedly) for the coming Summer 2015 concert, now with the latest version of the recently-finalised poster design. Also added all available details for the next two visible concerts, and in fact details for all concerts right up to Spring 2017 (most of them admittedly very provisional and sketchy).
29th March 2015	PayPal integration! I’ve created a new PayPal account for the choir to use (quite a lengthy process, in fact), including a sub-account for the current Treasurer, and have created a Buy Now button for use with the forthcoming Come and Sing event… complete with an option to allow people to accept or decline choir publicity, just as on the printed leaflet. So now it’s possible to buy tickets online for the first time, albeit only for this event. I intend to take this further (starting next season, probably), to allow us to sell regular concert and season tickets, so I’ve already added a View Cart button—but it’s currently hidden, as there isn’t yet a use for it with the single Buy Now button we have at present. I’ll reveal it when I first add buttons that use a shopping cart.
28th March 2015	Added ‘Come and Sing… Gospel’ to the ‘Other choir events’ page, along with a small, amusing ‘Gospel Music’ logo that I made from a funny photo of Alex—his mouth forms the ‘O’ in ‘Gospel’. Added a lengthy quotation from our excellent recent concert review in The Examiner. It’s the first review we’ve had in seven years(!), but they’ve done us proud this time, with a very positive review accompanying a large-size copy of the full official photo of the choir.
22nd March 2015	Made the Spring 2015 concert history and added a quickly-knocked-together page advertising the Come and Sing… Gospel event (a slightly modified transcription of the printed leaflet).
8th February 2015	Added poster and programme cover graphics for the next two concerts.
10th January 2015	Sadly, Mike Green has passed away. Removed his name from the list of Vice Presidents.
14th December 2014	Finally fixed the problems on the ‘Sounds’ page (“See and hear us now!”). This page has been increasingly problematic over time, as browsers have developed and their support for media files has changed. I’ve finally replaced the antediluvian EMBEDs with the nice, neat audiojs control (appropriately styled)… and I’ve also styled the videojs controls on the video clip for good measure. Added downloadable PDFs of all the programmes for which one is readily available. That is, all the ones I’ve designed myself since the introduction of the new music-bordered style in late 2004. In due course I will add PDFs of the older programmes I’ve designed (back to about 1991 – though not all from that period). The downloads appear on each concert’s page within the ‘Concert history’ section. Winter 2014 is now ‘history’ and its repertoire has been added to the summary. Various other small updates and corrections.
4th December 2014	Updated the concert listings for the Winter 2014 and Spring 2015 concerts and added the Winter 2014 programme cover.
11th November 2014	Added Winter 2014 poster to the opening Intro page. Forthcoming concerts pages will be updated a little later, when (a) I’ve time and (b) the other two posters are ready.
5th November 2014	Added link to the AYC on the opening Intro page.
28th September 2014	Following Alex’s appearance on Songs of Praise today, updated the opening page of the site with a couple of screenshots and a congratulatory message for reaching the final of Gospel Choir of the Year with his AINE ensemble. This is a good opportunity for us to show Alex in a positive light as a serious conductor of quality ensembles, and encourage new singers to join us as a choir on the rise. That’s certainly what we need right now: a few decent new singers so that Alex can really do good things with us. Also updated the ‘Further information’ page about the choir’s history to migrate some of the info that appeared until recently on the Intro page (about Philip’s long service and Jon’s brief tenure etc.) and to update various other aspects of the text. Some of its wording was still relevant to the year when that text was written: 1995! Thus, a references to ‘sixty-five years’ has been changed to refer to the change of millennium, and twenty-two choral directors has increased to twenty-four.
20th September 2014	Created a new Company page for the choir on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/company/the-huddersfield-singers and added a link to it in the social media section at the bottom-left of the menu. With regret, removed the Digits web counter from the Intro page, as it seems to have gone AWOL all of a sudden – after such a long time, too. Thanks for 15 years of great service, Digits. I only wish I remembered what the final figure had got to before it vanished… I’ve left the code in the page, commented out, so that it can be re-enabled if Digits ever comes back.
14th September 2014	Confirmed the final music details for the Spring 2015 concert and the organists for both Winter 2014 (Darius) and Spring 2015 (Alex Woodrow). We’re there at last!
11th September 2014	Music details for the Spring 2015 concert significantly revised.
24th August 2014	Added a new section about choir email addresses to the Choir personnel page, including a big table summarising all the role and group email addresses and what they’re for.
22nd August 2014	Spent a bit of time checking over the current (new) Facebook account and the Twitter account in order to rationalise the information presented there, bring everything up to date, use the current ‘official’ graphics, make the presentation as consistent as possible between sites and generally tie them together with this central official choir site in a more coherent way. (Better integration will come later, if and when I find time to give this site a major rewrite.) I’ve now removed the link to the original Facebook page from this site (though it remains on Facebook for historical/archival purposes), and I’ve given the new Facebook group its own direct, friendly URL: https://www.facebook.com/HuddersfieldSingers. Instead, we now have a link to our Twitter profile for the first time. (The Twitter profile also has a friendly address: https://twitter.com/HuddSingers.) On this official Huddersfield Singers site, I’ve now ‘promoted’ the social media links slightly by shifting them up into the main menu area (from the bottom-left corner of lesser items) under a new heading, Social media. Finally, I’ve added the fancy Facebook and Twitter URLs to the Choir personnel page, along with the other URLs.
15th July 2014	Added all available information about forthcoming concerts: the 2014–2015 season concerts plus (not yet visibly) the Winter 2015, Spring 2016 and Spring 2017 concerts.
30th June 2014	Created a new graphic for the opening page based on my new photo of the choir, taken after the afternoon rehearsal on 28th June 2014 at Armitage Bridge. A new publicity shot was badly needed (the last decent one dating from 2005), but unfortunately this new shot is less than ideal. Alexander Douglas could not attend this concert, so there’s no visible conductor, and many choir members are absent too. Nevertheless, it’ll do for the next year, until a more complete membership can be photographed. Rewrote some text on the opening Intro page to announce Alex Douglas, and replaced the picture of Jonathan Brigg with a face-shot of Alex. Made the Summer 2014 concert ‘history’. Updated the forthcoming concerts page with the next three concerts, for which we know dates and venues but, as yet, no further information. Added our guest Kirklees Young Musician, Tilly Tompkins, to the Winter concert as she’s a firm booking. Updated the ticket pricing information for the new season and added the info that Summer concerts will now be on Sundays. Added two car boot sales (one from last year, the other forthcoming) to the list of other choir events. Updated the choir officials table with a couple of personnel changes. Brought the repertoire summary page up to date (as I’d forgotten to update it for about a year!), adding details of the last three concerts; also added some alternative titles and translations to existing entries to make searching more reliable. Added several pieces from our recent concerts to our sample repertoire list on the ‘Further details’ page to flesh it out with further interesting items. (Also added a few missing accents here and tidied the list up generally.) Added the choir’s new Czech music from the Summer 2014 concert to the music hire library listing.
5th June 2014	Added venue (with map link) for Winter 2014 concert.
8th May 2014	Fiddled with the opening page of the Private area. Now we have a list of archived music for concerts gone by (and the conductor audition music has been included in this, rather than having its own section) as well as the forthcoming concert music list. Also replaced all the sample tracks with reprocessed versions. A couple of people had complained of problems in playing the tracks, and although that’s hard to explain (they worked fine on most systems and in all my own tests), I think the problem lay in the inclusion of certain id3v2+ tags in most tracks. I’ve reduced the tags to id3v1, which removes all cover graphics and has the benefit of minimising the file sizes, too, and I hope that this will cure the problem. Finally, at last I’ve corrected a problem that caused all audio files to start playing simultaneously in Chrome for Windows.
3rd May 2014	Made the Spring 2014 concert ‘history’ and the Summer 2014 event the next one. Minor changes to wording on the opening page.
22nd February 2014	Reverted the site to using the Intro page as the initial view, as the deadline for conductorship applications has now passed. Modified the wording of the application link on the Intro page.
20th February 2014	Added poster and cover graphics to the concert pages for both Spring and Summer 2014 concerts. Confirmed that the performance of the Jan Novák Missa Philadelphiæ will be a UK premiere. Added the Spring concert poster to the Intro page (which will return to being the opening page after tomorrow, as the deadline for applications will be up).
18th February 2014	Added a new pages to the Private area about the upcoming conductor auditions, with samples of the two pieces we’ll be rehearsing with the candidates.
10th February 2014	Finalised the music for the Summer 2014 (A Czech Bouquet) concert at last. Thus, was able to complete the music page in the Private area and announce the existence of the new resource to the choir.
14th January 2014	Added the missing two part-song tracks to the Spring 2014 page in the Private area. Now we have all the music for this concert, except for the Gardner (which hasn’t been recorded).
12th January 2014	Added more music to the Summer 2014 page in the Private area and changed the order to reflect my proposed ordering of the programme. (Also corrected a minor error on the repertoire summary page.)
10th January 2014	Added a new opening page about the conductor vacancy. This has been adapted from the PDF leaflet, which is also provided as a download at the foot of the page. This page will be removed again once the application deadline has passed. Modified the Introduction page to note Jonathan’s departure, mention Chris Pulleyn as choirmaster and credit Jonathan and Darius Battiwalla as the guest conductors of the Spring and Summer concerts respectively. Further changes to the frameset to remove Jonathan’s name as permanent conductor. Forthcoming concert listings updated with new information and provisional musical details added for the Summer concert.
8th January 2014	Corrected a tiny error in the frameset which truncated the bottom-centre credit graphic. Revamped the entire Private area to become actually useful. The previous contents (2006 Calendar-related files) have been retained on their own page, but the primary purpose is now for the area to act as a repository for music for choir members to listen to, to help them learn the repertoire in upcoming concerts.
9th December 2013	Added the first video to the site. Since this has now been put in the sounds section (‘Hear us now!’), the section name has been modified (‘See and hear us now!’). It’s a recording of the choir’s performance of the Borodin Polovtsian Dances, dating from 1997. Updated the concert history and forthcoming concert pages to reflect the fact that the Winter 2013 concert is now in the past. Updated the forthcoming concert listings and added a few new details (title for summer concert; date for Winter 2014 concert).
1st December 2013	Updated Winter 2013 concert details slightly, including an amended cover graphic that includes Darius Battiwalla’s name. (I didn’t know who the organist would be when originally designing the cover.) Added details of the Spring 2014 concert and the date and venue (but no title or music yet) for the Summer 2014 concert.
27th October 2013	OK, so there was still a disagreement about the ticket prices… updated the tickets page once again to revert to the one-price-per-concert approach and correct the student price. Also: added the new Winter Concert 2013 artwork on the opening Intro and concert-info pages. And: updated the Personnel page with some changed roles and people following the AGM. This involved the modification of one email address and addition of another. There are still some minor details to confirm, but it’s mostly complete.
21st October 2013	Brought the ticket prices up to date and rejigged the tickets page generally; now we have a price table, as the Summer concert is cheaper than the Winter and Easter ones.
13th October 2013	More details added about the Winter concert, Cantique de Noël.
30th September 2013	Since Bob Whiteley is sadly no longer with us, removed his name from the list of Vice Presidents.
23rd August 2013	A few small updates. Most importantly, added Philip Honnor, our recently-retired conductor, to the list of Vice Presidents. Added the note above this table to discourage visitors from wasting their time reading these notes! And removed (commented out) the sentence about the choir not being HCS on the opening ‘Introduction’ page. I was asked to simply remove the link from the text, but I thought it better to try removing the text altogether and see what happens. After all, that means that we’re not advertising HCS at all, then. If the old problem of people mistaking us for HCS returns, I’ll try reinstating the text without the link.
9th July 2013	Made the Summer 2013 concert ‘history’. NB From now on we’re going to (a) keep a record of posters as well as programme covers, and (b) make both graphics clickable so you can see a larger version.
27th June 2013	The musical plans for the Winter concert have completely changed, so the concert page has been redone. No longer Spiritual Simplicity, it is now Cantique de Noël. Also updated the page for Saturday’s An American Summer concert, giving more details about the choral items and adding the programme cover. Also added the info to the Repertoire Summary listing (and corrected an error: the omission of the Duke Ellington Suite from the 125th Anniversary Concert in Summer 2000).
7th June 2013	Added a new feature to the opening Intro page: the next concert poster alongside the choir photo-logo. This will be used as an additional way of promoting the next concert in future. It’ll be removed when there’s no imminent concert (i.e. it’ll largely coincide with the posters being up). Also slightly updated the concert details page.
21st May 2013	Added a Conductor email link to the Personnel page after setting up some personal email addresses for Jonathan.
17th May 2013	Checked all photos on the site to ensure that they contain a photographer credit (where known). Removed some file-size information relating to photos (irrelevant in today’s broadband age). Added a brief section about image credits, in small text, to the foot of the Personnel page, directing people to approach me with enquiries about reuse of images.
14th May 2013	Easter Concert is now history and the postponement announcement is gone from the opening page. Concert history and forthcoming concerts pages updated.
14th April 2013	Well, the original site is back, after an enforced absence of three-and-a-half years. Looking at, and working on, the site again after this period rams home to me how technologically behind the times it is, and how much I’ve learnt in the intervening period (HTML5, CSS3, PHP, MySQL, more JavaScript…). I now feel very strongly that the site requires a major ground-up rewrite, both to bring the presentation up to modern web standards (currently it’s a refugee from the 1990s) and to greatly increase the functionality and automation of the whole thing. But that will be a big job, and hopefully my project for the summer, given time. Until that happens, I’ve checked over the entire current site and brought everything up to date for the choir as it exists now in mid-2013. The site’s current minor refresh includes checking and correcting all existing pages, improving the typography (there’s no longer any reason not to use proper en-dashes, ellipses and smart quotation marks) and a move to a new hosting provider (which brings with it the ability to use an unlimited number of email addresses, so we now have more official ones and some private ones too). I’ve also added a bit of JavaScript so that all photos that used to open in new tabs/windows now pop up over the parent page, which adds a surprisingly large amount of professionalism to the feel of the site. I’ve also improved a few of the photos on the 125th Anniversary page (via shadows/highlights work in Photoshop). I’ve restored the old contents of the Private Area, including the Castle Hill movie. There are now two Facebook groups, and Facebook no longer allows itself to be opened in a frame, so I’ve rejigged the Facebook entry on the menu (two small links at the bottom, no longer a main entry). Finally, as one major new feature, I’ve added a Repertoire Summary page within the concert history section, which lists (virtually) all music performed by the choir since 1990 on a single page and is searchable.
13th September 2009	Completely changed the details for the Easter 2010 concert, whose music is now entirely different (Vaughan Williams’ Mass in G minor has been dropped), and added some guest details.
27th June 2009	Removed the ‘22nd June’ insertion from the opening Intro page. Aurin concert is now history. Added such details as currently exist for the Summer 2010 concert; page includes a graphical link to the Martinů Revisited project, which this concert supports.
19th June 2009	Added Tom Moore as organist for the forthcoming Winter 2009 concert.
5th June 2009	Yet more ‘fun’ relating to the Aurin event has required the following temporary insertion on our Intro page: IMPORTANT: Monday, 22nd June Please note that incorrect information has appeared on the Kirklees Web site and in The Examiner, to the effect that an open rehearsal will be conducted by Aurin Girls’ Choir’s choirmaster, László Durányik, on the evening of Monday, 22nd June, within the regular Huddersfield Singers rehearsal, following the two choirs’ joint concert on Saturday, 20th June. However, NO SUCH OPEN REHEARSAL HAS BEEN ARRANGED, and the Huddersfield Singers will not even be rehearsing on that evening.
31st May 2009	Created a new 2009 page for the concert history section and made it the default. Easter 2009 concert is now history. Added cover picture and several new and corrected details to the Aurin concert entry. Shifted the forthcoming concerts so that Aurin is next. Updated/added entries for the following two concerts.
19th March 2009	Programme cover and extended details added for the forthcoming Easter 2009 concert.
5th January 2009	A rather belated update! The Winter 2008 concert is now history. Placeholder for Winter 2009 added to the forthcoming concerts, though all we have at present is a (possibly provisional) date.
26th October 2008	The Winter 2008 concert now has a pretty programme cover image.
24th October 2008	I’ve just been visitor number 4000! :o)
30th September 2008	Open Rehearsal is now ‘history’.
1st September 2008	Added a new Open Rehearsal advert (with improved ‘poster-style’ page design) as our opening page for this month.
22nd August 2008	Corrected the ticket prices (which increased recently) on the ‘Booking tickets’ page.
22nd July 2008	A few minor updates: Expanded the music details for the Winter 2008 concert. Made the Summer 2008 concert ‘history’. Added a new Summer 2009 concert page. Tweaked the Spring 2008 concert in the history section to make it match the Summer one in height. Reduced the height of the guest artist sections of the three 2007 concerts to save a wasted line and make them match the 2008 concerts. Added Alan Rawsthorne’s Four Seasonal Songs to the Music Hire Library inventory. Site update slightly delayed by the need to move to a new machine following the death of my 2.5GHz PowerMac G5. Whoever had the brilliant idea of cooling computers by putting corrosive liquid inside them deserves to be sued. My G5 lived for a mere four years and I feel swindled; it’s not as though pro Macs are cheap.
4th July 2008	Corrected Elly Bosworth’s name in the Easter 2009 concert details.
31st May 2008	Finalised the choral music and guest soloist details for the Easter 2009 concert.
24th May 2008	Added Christine Stanton’s name to the Summer 2008 and Summer 2007 concert pages, from which I had inadvertently omitted it; added the Gardner Shakespeare Sequence to the Summer 2007 page; updated the Handel item in the Easter 2009 concert.
12th May 2008	Updated details for the Summer 2008 and Easter 2009 concerts, including the new programme cover for Summer 2008 (Ode to Music).
18th March 2008	Made a number of changes to the opening ‘Intro’ page and generally neatened the layout of its lower links section: We now have a much enhanced link with Gerontius.net. As well as including much fuller and more useful details on their site, links have been added to our site that show our concert information on Gerontius and also link to other concerts and choirs in the region. This is useful because our official site only shows the next three forthcoming concerts, and up to six future dates may actually be known to choir members. Including all known forthcoming concerts on Gerontius allows anyone to look up those future dates, even though it’s unlikely that there will be any useful information beyond the date itself and the (perhaps tentative) venue. The confusion-buster link to the Huddersfield Choral Society has been made as small as possible and moved to the foot of the intro/recruitment text. The Digits WebCounter credit has been reduced in size, moved to just below the counter itself, and had its graphic removed. ChoralNet’s text suffix has been removed and incorporated in a pop-up tooltip title. ChoralNet, My Yorkshire and iLike now all appear side by side in a row. All links (both text and image) that were missing pop-up tooltip titles have now been given them.
16th March 2008	Added a 2008 entry in the ‘Concert history’ section and made it the default opening page; it contains last night’s concert plus two improved ‘future concert’ placeholders, which can now be clicked in to jump to the ‘Forthcoming concerts’ page. Replaced the Easter 2008 concert programme cover graphic with an updated version, since the previous one was based on a late proof programme cover, and the final version had a small change. Updated the ‘Forthcoming concerts’ page with a new placeholder for the Easter 2009 concert on 4th April 2009.
26th February 2008	Winter 2008 concert details updated (title and organist added).
23rd February 2008	Now that PuzzleBee allows its puzzles to be embedded in pages outside Facebook, I couldn’t resist creating a new page to host the puzzles that I’d already generated from the calendar images. There are three copies of the same page to host the three available difficulty settings, and I’ve customised and colour-coded the completion message for each puzzle. Great fun! I feel that these photos make really good jigsaw puzzles. Added a new entry in the menu system to link to the puzzles page (Medium difficulty level selected by default, as I find that this is a good compromise, although I like playing them on Hard myself) and put up a ‘New!’ banner about the puzzles on the ‘Intro’ page to draw attention to the new addition. Changed the grey backgrounds in the month/location text boxes on the ‘2006 Calendar’ page to rainbow colours, (a) to match the backgrounds on the new jigsaws page and (b) because the rainbow-coloured text actually looks more legible on a lighter version of the same colour.
20th February 2008	To reclaim some disk space on our hosted domain, removed the 6MB video from the ‘Private area’ page. A lower-quality version of this video can now be found in the choir’s Facebook group, where it can be viewed (only) by group members.
10th February 2008	Updated the Easter 2008 concert with the new poster/cover design and changed the title of the Schütz to English, since that’s the language in which the work will be sung. Also added ‘The’ to the title and shuffled the order of the works to reflect the details on the new poster.
7th February 2008	Added the Clifton Handbell Ringers to the Winter 2008 concert details. On the ‘Intro’ page, reduced the length of the text credit for the Digits counter, and added a new link to the My Yorkshire site. Amended the image attributes of the ChoralNet and iLike links on the ‘Intro’ page to set their border widths to zero.
9th January 2008	Major and minor updates: New Music Hire Library section: We now have a new site page listing the full catalogue of music owned by the choir and available for hire by other organisations. New photos: Thanks to Peter Rice for supplying pictures of our Winter 2007 concert, which now appear on the opening ‘Introduction’ page and on the ‘Booking tickets’ page. Minor (largely invisible) improvements to the menu at the left, in addition to the insertion of the new ‘Music Hire Library’ entry. Added some initial music/performer details for the Winter 2008 concert. Removed the sentence containing three links to other pages from the foot of the ‘Press clippings’ page, since it really didn’t do anything useful. It dated back to the very first version of the site (when there was the choice of a frames-free version in which navigation was less straightforward), and one of the links was actually called the wrong thing (‘introduction’ actually referred to the ‘further details’ page; I don’t know how I missed that for nearly ten years!). Now, the ‘Press clippings’ page contains nothing more than press clippings, which seems logical. Added the new webmaster@huddersfieldsingers.com email address to the ‘Recordings’ page alongside my personal email address as an alternative means of contact.
9th December 2007	The choir now has a presence in iLike, and hence I’ve added an iLike button to the opening page, which can be clicked upon to ‘like’ us. iLike links in with Facebook, so members of Facebook now have an easy way of finding and expressing an interest in us (though iLike can also be used on its own). iLike lists our forthcoming concerts and provides a map, and thus gives us a little more publicity. Made the Winter 2007 concert ‘history’ and slightly decreased the vertical space requirement of all the 2007 concerts in the concert history page. 2007 is now the opener-year for the history pages. Added an initial details-free entry for the Winter 2008 concert, publicising its date and venue.
23rd November 2007	Added organ music details to Winter 2007 concert page.
11th November 2007	Updated Winter 2007 and Easter 2008 concert pages.
20th October 2007	Not that Facebook is really my kind of thing, you understand…   Having been invited onto a different Facebook group recently, it struck me that it might possibly be a good idea to set up a group for the Huddersfield Singers to use for the sorts of ‘matters arising’ that don’t make it onto the official site. Things like one-off events, notices, dates for madrigal evenings and the like. And having explored Facebook briefly after signing up, I realised that a handful of Singers were already members, so why not give them a new group to join to discuss choir matters?   So I’ve set up a The Huddersfield Singers group on Facebook and sent out invitations to those choir members whose email addresses I know. As for the official Huddersfield Singers site, I’ve added a link to the menu at the left which opens the Facebook group within the site’s overall structure, although one can of course find the group by going straight to the Facebook site.   (Also spotted and corrected a typo in the pop-up help text for The Tempest entry in the menu.)
28th September 2007	Improved the layout of the ‘A Century of Officials’ table at the end of the ‘G & M Centenary’ page.
22nd September 2007	The Open Rehearsal is now ‘history’.
11th September 2007	Added Mark Anyan to the Easter 2008 concert page.
7th September 2007	Reorganised the way in which non-concert events are publicised on the site: Added a new opening page for the forthcoming Open Rehearsal on 17th September, now complete with attractive ‘Calling all singers!’ graphic to make it more attention-grabbing (like the associated poster). Restructured the way such events are publicised and archived. Rather than being a ‘pre-site’ page to click through, they now open within the frames as the first page. Reorganised the previous event pages (and the latest one) in a new folder, which will make things much neater for organising in future. Updated the old event pages so that they now open within the main site, as the new one does. This is much neater for the case where they’re accessed from the history section of the ‘Other choir events’ page. Updated the ‘Other choir events’ page to link to the new event.
12th July 2007	A few small updates: Changed the Summer 2008 concert title from St Paul’s Waltz Songs to Ode to Music. Removed reference to the programme being provisional, since what we’ve got seems likely (more can be added later). Minor update to the Winter 2007 concert listing. Removed the strong emphasis from the composer names in the Easter 2006 and 2007 concert titles, to match other similar entries. Added an ellipsis to the Winter 2004 concert title (Monteverdi, Mozart and More…) to make it match the pictured front cover of the programme. Added a forthcoming event entry for our open rehearsal in September; this will gain a more prominent advert page nearer the time. Gave the ‘History of previous events’ heading on the ‘Other choir events’ page a red colour (like that of the top heading), to make it easier to see where the future stops and the past begins.
10th July 2007	Minor tweaks to the menu system at the left of the site: made the headings refuse to split over two lines; closed the section gaps so as to save space vertically; altered the pink/white backgrounds so that they continue to alternate between sections.
4th July 2007	Changed Philip Sykes’ committee title from Member Without Portfolio to Assistant Secretary.
27th June 2007	Added four recent press clippings; thanks to Elizabeth Jones for finding these.
24th June 2007	Small updates: Made references to the choir’s size consistent across multiple pages. We had 40 in a couple of places, ‘around 35’ in one place and ‘around 30’ in another. Settled on 30 (or ‘around 30’) everywhere. Updated details for the three forthcoming concerts (Winter 2007 to Summer 2008); the information is still provisional, though. Changed the instances of “Mr Chris Hartley” to “Christopher Hartley” on the ‘Choir personnel’ page. I’d used the Mr to clarify the fact that he’s male, but it did look rather odd given that other names have no associated titles; the full Sunday-best name seems preferable! For consistency, also made a similar change to our seasonal patron: “Mr J. G.” to “Gordon” Sykes.
23rd June 2007	Official launch date of the new site! Notified those choir members who are on email about the new site and domain, and updated various links on the Web to point to the new version. Took the old site down.
14th-23rd June 2007	Conducted a comprehensive redesign/revamp of the site’s appearance in time for its official relaunch in its own domain. This involved changes to virtually every major section of the site, so here first is a memory of what the opening page used to look like, followed by a summary of what was altered: Page border: Did away with the old double-red-pipe border and replaced it with a new ‘blank music staff’ surround. Unfortunately we can’t have any music on this because of the arbitrary size of the browser window in which it’s viewed, but having notes would probably look too fussy in this context anyway. The style is a red version of the grey border around the Calendar 2006 page, and matches the recently-established style for choir posters, programmes and other publicity. The Huddersfield Singers logo is now the centrepiece of the top border, and the charity number and conductor’s name now appear in the centre of the bottom border in very small type. Although the top border (with logo) is considerably deeper than the previous version, the remaining three borders are actually smaller, and the fact that the border now contains useful information makes the use of space more efficient overall. All pages: Replaced the Huddersfield Singers background pattern with a 50%-lighter version, as I felt that the old one was too dominant. When I first designed it, it was intended to show up well on computers that displayed a restricted number of colours on-screen, but now that nearly everyone uses true-colour displays, it’s better to lighten it off. The old, darker version had begun to look very heavy-handed. Top-left corner: The small Huddersfield Singers logo (and charity number) has been removed because it had become reduntant. All the information it contained is now incorporated in the border. Also, now that the unwanted banner advert across the top of the site is no longer a problem, it’s no longer necessary for the user to be able to click on the logo to reload the site without the advert. Most pages: The big Huddersfield Singers logo (and conductor credit) has been removed from most pages since the logo in the centre of the top border doubles as an overall heading, and renders this duplication largely unnecessary. The removal of the big graphic also makes the pages more space-efficient. Most pages have had this graphic replaced by a single red title line. The only pages that do not now have a red title are those that subdivide into other groups or have a specific style of their own (concert listings and the 2006 Calendar page). I have also streamlined the HTML of many pages, which may or may not make a visible difference (depending on your browser). Site menu: The contents of the menu at the left are almost the same as before, but the presentational style is quite different. The previous free-form text has been replaced by a superior table-based structure with clearer headings and alternating pink/white lines that make the entries easier to distinguish. Private area: Having our own private hosting opens up the possibility of some new site features, including a private area, so I’ve set one up. Yes, the private area does contain a number of interesting/amusing items, but one needs to know the appropriate username and password in order to access them… Forthcoming concerts: Updated with details of the next three concerts (Winter 2007 and the first two of 2008). Booking tickets: Small amendments to the text. Other choir events: Brought up to date (no other events listed at present). Introduction: Updated and corrected several aspects of this page, but kept the large logo in addition to the new red ‘Introduction’ heading, because it’s important to see the big logo on the opening page. Eradicated the credit for the V3 URL redirection (which gave us the old welcome.to/The.Huddersfield.Singers/ address) because we don’t expect people to use that address any more (though it’ll be updated to point to this new site once it’s officially gone live). Further details: Updated various aspects of this page (such as contact details), expanded the repertoire list, and amended the text about the longest-serving conductor. This was still crediting Richard Steinitz for his fourteen-year stint. However, Philip Honnor has comprehensively shattered this record now (seventeen years and counting). Congratulations, Philip! Join the choir!: Updated contact details. Interview with Philip Honnor: Generally tidied up the HTML; no visible changes other than the revised title. Press clippings: No significant changes. (I hope it may be possible to add some more up-to-date quotes before long.) Choir personnel: Completely revised this page’s layout; nothing much of the previous version remains. Now we have a much more visibly table-based layout, and a list of all the members who do things of importance for the choir, from comittee members to other smaller-scale assistants. Also added a new section devoted to contact details for the most important official positions and their incumbents, complete with our new set of …@huddersfieldsingers.com email addresses. Finally, for reference, added a summary about our new domain names. Hear us now!: A couple of major improvements! First of all, the sound clips are now embedded directly in the page so that you can see them all at once and control them individually from the same basic page. Previously, you had to open each in a new frame and control it from there, and then navigate back to the page. Secondly, changing the way the clips are embedded has meant that not only can clip 1 (which plays automatically as the background sound) be controlled by the user, but the user should hear the sound in all browsers, not just in Internet Explorer. (Internet Explorer still works, of course.) Finally, also added a clip from the choir’s Easter 2007 twinning concert with the Reigate choir and cross-referenced the choir’s contribution to The Tempest from its dedicated page. Recordings: No significant changes. Concert history: Improved the layout of a significant number of concert listings in this section. I intended also to revise and expand these pages further in future, when time permits. G & M Centenary: Created a new, much less strident background texture for this page: a paper-effect background with embossed G & M logo. Also added a nice little G & M logo at the top-right of the page and generally improved the HTML. 125th Anniversary: Updated to use the nice (less distracting) new background texture from the G & M Centenary page. Created an improved replacement heading for this page which displays the G & M logo alongside the Huddersfield Singers one. 2006 Calendar: There have been no changes to this page at all. However, it provided inspiration for the site’s new border, and also for contents of the private area! The Tempest: A brand-new page containing details about the Huddersfield Singers’ contribution to the production at the Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre, starring Pete Postlethwaite. Thanks to Peter Rice for providing the full recording (as used in the production) as an MP3 file, writing some covering text and gaining permission for the use of production photos from the play’s Web page. About this site: Revamped this page by deleting most of the boring and increasingly outdated technical credits at the top of the page, and changing the colour scheme of the site history (for new entries). I don’t know what made me pick the rather yucky blue and yellow colours that I was using before, but pink and white are easier on the eye and more in keeping with the style of the site.
14th June 2007	We have our own new domain! The site will shortly be updated and moved (again, and finally) to <http://www.huddersfieldsingers.com/>. The alternative URLs <http://huddersfieldsingers.com/> and <http://the.huddersfieldsingers.com/> also work. New email addresses of the form <…@huddersfieldsingers.com> have been set up. The old <http://welcome.to/The.Huddersfield.Singers/> will be redirected to the new site and will continue to work. However, its use is now discouraged, primarily because it causes an unwanted advertising banner to appear at the top of the site. Also, the new URL is shorter and easier to type.
28th May 2007	Updated the Summer Concert 2007 page with the programme cover and further details, and promoted it to being the next concert.
8th-16th March 2007	A significant rejuvenation of the ‘Forthcoming concerts’ and ‘Concert history’ pages: As of the Winter 2004 concert, to match our new presentational style from that event onwards, concert listings are now colour-coded, with appropriate pale background colours and a stronger equivalent colour for highlighted text. Our concert colours are seasonal: green for Spring/Easter (new life), blue for Summer (blue skies) and red for Winter/Christmas (holly and red noses!). Again starting with the Winter 2004 concert (which was when our new presentation style was initiated), each concert page now has an image of the front cover of the concert programme. Programme covers are now in full colour and are designed individually. Programme covers have also been inserted for the two special-event concerts in recent history: the 120th anniversary concert in Summer 1995, and the 125th anniversary concert in Summer 2000. The 125th anniversary concert details have also been updated to mention the new commission, Arthur Butterworth’s Haworth Moor. Plus other smaller changes: Updated details for Spring Rossini concerts and promoted them to the next event slot. Corrected date and changed venue for the Reigate concert; new Google Maps reference required. Corrected details for the Reigate concert on the ‘Other choir events’ page and brought the page up to date. Replaced old Making Music logo with new 2006 version on the ‘Personnel’ page. Replaced old Kirklees Metropolitan Council shield logo with new 2007 Kirklees Council turbine logo. Amended link text and URL to remove references to ‘Metropolitan’. Added Yorkshire Arts logo as a companion to the Arts Council England one (as both appear in our programmes). Amended list of patrons. Changed Wendy Brook’s contact details to Barbara Lockwood’s on the ‘Recruitment’ page and corrected a typo. Added 2007 to the dateline for the concert history (though the section will still default to 2006 for the rest of the year). Expanded number of META keywords in index page in an attempt to improve search site rankings.
1st November 2006	A banner advert has appeared above the site in recent months, which I find most irritating. This is the work of V3, which provides our free welcome.to/The.Huddersfield.Singers URL redirection. I was willing to consider paying the annual fee to get rid of this but, on enquiry, it seems that they’ve discontinued their paid service, so there’s no official way of getting rid of the banners. I’ve therefore taken steps to circumvent the advert myself, and browsers that support JavaScript should now reload the page immediately, without the advert. Unfortunately, this does have the effect of losing the nice ‘welcome.to’ address in the browser’s address bar; this now shows the site’s real location instead, which is a shame. Still, I think this is preferable to having obtrusive adverts. For browsers that don’t support JavaScript, users can also now click on the Huddersfield Singers logo at the top-left of the page to reload the site in the frame that previously contained the advert. This achieves the same effect, with the benefit that the ‘welcome.to’ URL may be retained. Updated the ‘Intro’ page to include a note about getting rid of the banner advert, and made the date of the last site update link to this ‘Credits/Site history’ page.
31st October 2006	Minor update and various small improvements: Moved site once again: now it’s hosted on my .Mac iDisk. As before, this will be transparent for anyone who has bookmarked the official welcome.to/The.Huddersfield.Singers URL. Updated the site with the latest concert details for ‘Forthcoming concerts’ and ‘Concert history’ pages. Rejigged the ‘Personnel’ page to reflect current details and make the table-based layout of names much more compact and neater. Improved the venue formatting in all concert details pages, right back to 1990. For all Google Maps URLs, updated the URL to make the map use ‘Hybrid’ view mode (drawn roads overlaid on photos). The view is also now centred on the venue location; unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be possible to move the place-markers themselves to be in precisely the right position without delving into JavaScript and the full-blown Google Maps API, which is overkill for this site (and I haven’t time to investigate it at present). Removed the 2006 Calendar ‘news flash’ (almost a year old!) from the ‘Introduction’ page, and reworded the choir details section slightly. Added Huddersfield Historical Society and Reigate concerts to the ‘Other choir events’ page.
4th December 2005	Minor maintenance update: Replaced old Yorkshire Arts logo with the newer Arts Council England logo on the ‘Choir personnel’ page (Sponsors area). Thanks to Roy Carr of Making Music for alerting me to the fact that this logo was years out of date. Updated the list of Seasonal Patrons on the same page. Updated the ‘Forthcoming concerts’ page. Updated the ‘Other choir events’ page.
31st August 2005	Lots and lots of small changes, and a new section: Added the new ‘2006 Calendar’ advertising page, complete with downloadable PDF year-plan and Mac OS X screensaver. This also entailed adding a new section (‘Choir products’) to the main menu. Added the latest concert details to the forthcoming concerts page and added 2005’s concerts to the concert history section. Amended the concert history section to have a two-row set of dates at the top, now that it has expanded to include quite a lot of years. We’ll have one decade per row in future. (Numeric decade rather than calendar decade, in fact!) Added a new event (Open Evening and Vocal Workshop) to the ‘Other choir events’ page. Created a new page about the forthcoming Vocal Workshop and made it (temporarily) become the opening page for the entire site. Amended the opening ‘Introduction’ page to link to the new calendar advert page. Also altered the animating Musical Ear graphic to have a solid white background, as I didn’t like the previous transparency over the page background. Added thick red (‘clickable’) borders around the cartoon and the calendar preview graphics. Amended various details on the ‘Booking tickets’ page, as the ticket prices have increased by 50p and the choir no longer performs all three annual concerts in St Paul’s Hall. Also, corrected June’s telephone number. Despite the fact that she’s been looking after tickets for several years, I had forgotten to update the phone number; it was still Rita Bailey’s! If nothing else, this proves that no-one ever books tickets as a result of reading this Web site… Why do I bother…?! With the arrival of the excellent new Google Maps service, I’ve added location links to various things on the Web site: choir rehearsal venue (recruitment, more info and open evening pages), St Paul’s Hall concert venue (tickets page) and, on the individual summer concert detail pages, links to the individual venues for our 2005 and 2006 concert venues. Assuming we continue traipsing around local churches for our summer concerts, I’ll have to add new addresses to each of these in the future, and presumably to other locations of special events, too. But Google Maps is great, so it’ll be fun and, hopefully, helpful to do that. On this credits page, changed the blue and yellow colours in this history table to nicer, paler shades, as my previous choices were pretty strong and revolting. Updated this page in recognition of the fact that I now use a PowerMac G5 (mainly) to create this particular site. Eradicated mention of my old 350MHz G3 Mac because (a) although I originally created the site on it, I haven’t used it for years, and (b) I don’t possess it any more, since some miserable sod stole it from me. I’m getting a bit personal now, but then I’m under no illusions that anyone other than myself ever reads this drivel. While I’m rambling, I was quite tickled to discover that there’s an entry for this choir in Wikipedia! (Yes, folks, we’re so famous that we’ve made it into an online encyclopaedia!) I’m not responsible for it, though I did update and extend it when I came across it, and I added the choir’s logo to the page. I’d feel even better about its existence if I didn’t suspect that its original creator was under the misapprehension that the Huddersfield Singers is really the Huddersfield Choral Society. But their loss is our gain, so I’m not complaining. A final important behind-the-scenes change is that I’ve moved the entire site from my Demon Web space to my FreeUK Web space, as there’s much more room in the latter location and my Demon space was virtually full. This shouldn’t affect anyone who has linked to the official bookmark location (welcome.to/The.Huddersfield.Singers); I just hope that not too many people have linked directly to the Demon address. If they have, they’ll have to find us again… It may upset some search engines, too, but it just can’t be helped. I don’t anticipate that the site will need to move again.
13th January 2005	Added details of our next open rehearsal and updated the ‘Other choir events’ page. Shifted the concerts on the ‘Forthcoming concerts’ page to bring us up to date and add a ‘TBA’ concert for Winter 2005.
13th October 2004	Following another email from someone who thought we were the Huddersfield Coral[sic!] Society, I discovered that the Choral does have a half-decent Web site of its own, rather than the very rudimentary page at http://www.users.totalise.co.uk/~hcs/hcs.htm to which I had been linking previously. So now the small link on our intro page points to the correct site, at http://www.huddersfieldchoral.com/.
9th September 2004	Several updates and a new section: Added the new ‘Join the choir!’ recruitment page; this is an online version of our new recruitment brochures and features my four Musical Ear cartoons. Added the latest concert details to the forthcoming concerts page and added 2004’s concerts to the concert history section. Added three new events to the ‘Other choir events’ page. Created a new page about the forthcoming Vocal Workshop and made it (temporarily) become the opening page for the entire site. Amended the opening ‘Introduction’ page to link to the new recruitment page, and to have an animating graphic showing the Musical Ear cartoons. Made corrections to this credits page and added a link to the recruitment page in the ‘Further details’ page.
21st April 2004	‘Intro’ and ‘Further details’ pages: changed rehearsal time back to 7:30pm after our relatively brief flirtation with a 7:45pm start.
18th March 2004	Minor updates. Corrected date of Spring 2004 concert and added soloists; updated concert history and forthcoming concerts; updated ‘Other choir events’ page.
31st August 2003	Various updates after another period of stagnation: Got rid of the initial opening page (which was rightly criticised for being too technical) and eradicated the entire non-frames version of the site. Maintaining both frames- and non-frames-based versions of the site doubled the amount of work involved in keeping it up to date, and it’s likely that no-one used the non-frames version anyway. It was provided for maximum browser compatibility, but hardly any modern browsers fail to offer good frames support, now, so it really wasn’t needed. Getting rid of the non-frames half of the site should hopefully allow me to update it more easily and regularly in future (fingers crossed). Revised the ‘Intro’ page to include the information we needed to keep from the scrapped opening page. Replaced the choir photograph on the ‘Intro’ page with my most recent effort. Added several missed events to the ‘Other choir events’ page and actually managed to include Patricia Hamilton’s Vocal Workshop a month before it happens… Went through the entire ‘Concert history’ pages, added categories for 2002 and 2003 to take the history up to the most recent concert, and corrected various minor errors in existing pages. Updated the ‘Forthcoming concerts’ pages. Made minor revisions and corrections to the text of the ‘Interview with Philip Honnor’ page. Amended various details on the ‘Booking tickets’, ‘Choir personnel’, ‘Choir 125th anniversary’ and ‘Further details’ pages.
4th May 2002	A few minor changes and updates: The site is now a member of the West Yorkshire Arts & Entertainment Web ring, set up recently by the Webmaster of Pennine Brass; Added December coffee morning to the ‘Other choir events’ page; Expanded the list of sample works on the ‘Further details’ page to include pieces performed after around 1995(!), including our 125th Anniversary Commission, Arthur Butterworth’s Haworth Moor; Changed telephone contact from M. Bailey to C. Hartley on the ‘Further details’ page; Corrected the title of audio clip 2 on the ‘Hear us now!’ page (previously this was referring to the wrong track).
1st January 2002	After a long period of neglect, made some significant changes to the site: Found a work-around for the ‘broken border’ bug in Mac Internet Explorer 5 Replaced the awful-quality WAVe files with MP3 versions on the ‘Hear us now!’ page, and rewrote the text slightly; Replaced MyComputer’s 123Counter Web counter, which suddenly became commercial, with a new free one (which, incidentally, is much superior!) from www.digits.com; The Web counter now appears on the opening pages of both versions (framed and unframed) of the site, though the initial entry page is still the one being tracked; Added a note to the intro page to explain that we are not the Huddersfield Choral Society! Reduced the size of the text in the menu area to make it less cramped on browsers that use large fonts by default, introduced another Mac IE5 fix, and performed other fine-tuning in this area; Recreated the personnel page virtually from scratch, with a better-designed table and new sponsor Web links and logos; Greatly improved the layout of the 125th anniversary page to make it look less cramped and generally work better in a wide range of browsers, and fixed a silly typo on this page; Updated the forthcoming concert and event details, and amended a few details in the concert history pages; Redesigned all the concert history (and forthcoming concert) pages to reduce the size of the text and headings in order to make them look better on more modern browsers, which mostly now use larger fonts by default; Established a new, more space-saving style for concert details from Summer 2001 onwards, allowing two concerts per column, to accommodate the choir’s intention to have six major concert-style events per year rather than the previous three (i.e. the usual three St Paul’s concerts plus three other concerts or services elsewhere); Rewrote parts of the site entry page; Updated this site credits/history page, added the ‘Revolutionary RISC OS’ Web button and changed the recommended RISC OS Web browser from Fresco to Oregano.
28th September 2000	Updated most of the main pages with new details. In particular, updated the next season’s concerts, the ticket prices and the choir’s rehearsal venue, replaced the old picture on the intro page with a recent digital photo, and added a photo of Philip Honnor to the interview page. Found and corrected several hundred mistyped &nbsp; entities! Two important site modifications: 1. Added a 125th anniversary page in celebration of the choir’s recent landmark event, complete with some of my digital photos; 2. Recreated the border (in the frames version of the site) using a new method. This is likely to make it look a lot better in a wide range of browsers. Netscape 4 still makes a bit of a pig’s ear of rendering the frames, but it’s a lot better than before.
5th December 1999	Added a gratuitously tacky animation in the main menu of the frame-based site (the note-bullets dance when you point at their associated links). Corrected a few more minor errors in the concert details (e.g. the date for the Spring 2000 concert was wrong) and updated the details of the Winter 1999 to Summer 2000 concerts. Updated the other choir events details.
26th July 1999	Corrected a few minor errors, made the Web counter work, and added a nice new colour Kirklees logo on the Personnel page. Also made the sponsors’ images link to the appropriate home pages.
25th July 1999	Finished off and uploaded the first version of this site, after several months of creating it in odd moments. It‘s complete and fully functional, but could do with a few extra trimmings, such as some more recent photos, and press clippings dating from 1996 to 1998. A few minor details also need to be checked.