A technical note.   We’ve been under a major spam attack recently.  While the spam tools are preventing it from being seen well enough, that hasn’t stopped them from trying.  In the last week alone, we were hit with about 60,000 spam post attempts.

To help combat this, we’ve temporarily turned off all commenting on the site, hoping that when they realize they can’t spam here anymore, they’ll go away.   Commenting will get turned back on after a time, but if you wish to get a comment to Bill, you can do so from this page.

There’s been a couple of updates today to Bill’s site, thought we’d take a moment and point them out. First of, the merchandise page is back online. The merch page was down for awhile, as the person who was handling this had some surgery and was unable to fill any orders. She’s OK now, and you can now order Bill’s merch again. Check out the merch page here for all of Bill’s items.

Second, the archive of songs that Bill played on the November 2010 edition of his Rock 50 show is now online. You can view the full playlist on the playlist page at the following link. There is also a song sampler widget you can view here, too. Check it out:

A reminder, if you can’t see the widget, turn off ad blocking for this website. We run no advertisements here, and things like AdBlocker for Firefox will prevent this website from working properly. Thank you.

Hello gang. A hearty welcome to the freshly overhauled Official Bill Ward Website!

As long time visitors of this site know, the previous “look and feel” had grown stagnant to the point of looking really old fashioned and behind the times. It needed to be thrown out and overhauled. That’s exactly what has happened. You’re looking at the all new site, with some new additions, some subtractions, and a fresh coat of paint thrown in for good measure. This message is to detail the changes.

• First off, we’ve lost the frames structure. That was great a decade ago, but over time, that concept of website design became cumbersome. Especially when people linked to direct pages, it made the site look bad.
• A few options from the old site menu are now gone. Sounds & Pictures have been combined into a new “Media” option. Links has been moved to the bottom of the page.
• The forums are gone. When originally instituted, it was thought that Bill would interact with the fans directly through the forums. However, as time went along, we realized that wouldn’t be happening, so it was decided to remove the forums from the new website. However, individual stories will have comments open, so you can now leave feedback to individual stories going forward.
• The Rock 50 page has been expanded somewhat to include some streaming versions of selected old shows.
• The Rock 50 archive pages starting in January 2009 are going to be more enhanced. If you look at one, you will see what I mean. You will now be able to click through to Amazon.com and buy individual mp3’s of the songs Bill plays. On top of that, there will be a widget which allows for sound samples of all the songs (when available). We think this will greatly increase the usefulness of the Rock 50 archives. We’ve included a widget in this news story to show you an example of what it will look like.
• There is also a streaming media player permanently on the website now. It will include selected songs of Bill’s. Right now it has some live tracks from Rock 50 performances, a track from the Beyond Aston sessions, as well as a single track from both Ward One & When the Bough Breaks. These streaming tracks will be rotated out over time so you can hear more of the music from Bill’s first two albums.

Oh, a quick note. If you run ad blocking software in your web browser, disable it for Bill’s site. There are no advertisements here anyway, and the ad blockers can prevent some of the new features from working right.

If you have any questions about the new website, it’s layout, or where content might have gone, drop Joe Siegler an email at siegler@billward.com. We’ll be glad to answer your questions.

Welcome back!

As you’ve already noticed by seeing this news entry, there’s been an update to Bill Ward’s website, and it’s this new news system. Folks who are familiar with my Black Sabbath website should be familiar with this, as it’s the same software I’m using over there. I’ve converted the news system to blog software, which has the benefit of making the news more flexible to you. You can now view old news entries by category, and best of all, you can now search through old news entries by using the search box.

If you’re reading this, then you’ve already seen the big news – a new site design has been placed online! The last update was ages ago, back in 1999 – it was most definitely time for an overhaul. The information on the site is the same, it just is now housed in a much prettier environment. 🙂

Let us know what you think of the new site layout in this thread on Bill’s forums.

As regular site visitors have noticed, not much has gone on lately. Beyond Aston is still not out, as Bill continues to tweak and work on it. At this point, I do not have a firm release date for it, but once I find out something, believe me, this will be the first place it’s posted.

The Merchandise page is now back in operation. On it, you can purchase Bill’s most recent CD, “When the Bough Breaks” (with the correct cover art) as well as a couple of posters. Bill hopes to have more merchandise up eventually, but for now, you can order these things now. You can also pay online with a credit card through Paypal – an option that wasn’t available before.

As you can see, the new look for Bill’s site is now online. Bill’s site has been online for some time now without an upgrade, and we felt it was high time for one. 🙂

Let us know what you think of the new look!

The picture shown here was taken from the article Bill was interviewed for in Modern Drummer magazine. This magazine is on the stands now!

Bill’s article is entitled “Bill Ward: From Iron Man to Gentle Giant”. Scroll down for a snapshot of the magazine cover.