Happy new year!

To start the year, I want to (re)introduce the disastersongs.ca website. I’ve been working with a new designer, Marc Musial, to update the site to make it even better than before! The original designer, Mike Targett, did an amazing job of setting up the “newspaper” look of the site, but he is moving on to other work. Although there is still work to do, there are many new features that can be explored already.

Search: the search function used to search titles only but now it searches the full text of the site so you can search for composers, place names, lyrics, or anything else that might appear in a song or in the information provided about a song or its associated disaster.

Comments: A comments feature has been enabled so that anyone can post a comment in response to virtually any part of the site, whether a disaster description, a particular song, or a blog entry. Please use the comments feature to let me know what you think about the site, to offer suggestions, to ask questions, or to provide missing information. You can also ask to be notified of any follow-up emails, as well as ask to be notified of any new posts.

Blog: the old forum has been converted into a blog. The old forum was not obvious and very few people took advantage of it. The new blog is easier to find (look for the link at the top of every page, but also the “recent blog posts” listed on most pages) and will feature information about the research project.

Sharing: Like what you see? Fascinated by a disaster or a song? Now you can easily like or share a song or blog post on Facebook or Twitter, or share via email, Google+, LinkedIn, or many other forms of social media.

Recently Added Songs: Up until now, it was difficult to know if any changes had been made to the site. Now you can easily see not just a list of recent blog posts, but also a list of recently added songs.

Categories: There’s now a listing of the major categories (Maritime disasters, Mining disasters, Airline disasters, Miscellaneous disasters, and News/Blog posts) on each page. You no longer have to go to the home page to choose a new category.

I hope you enjoy the site updates! Please drop me a note to let me know what you think of the site.