BLACK SABBATH drummer Bill Ward has relaunched his official website. A message reads as follows:

"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!"