Development progress log for this website

From Anthroposophy

This page keeps track of the origin and development of this site and mediawiki content database for future contributors.

Phase 1

This starts as a personal story in March 2020 (remember the 'covid lockdown'). A usual we take seven year periods. The period 2013 upto 2019 (both years included) was a first period of study. The period 2020 upto 2026 (both years included) is a period of publishing the fruits of that work.

As in every seven year period, the first three years 2020-21-22 were laying the foundation, to reach a point in 2023, from and on which the next three years can build.

before 2020: the intention

  • period March 2018-March 2020
    • The domain and first page was created in March 2018 (hosted by SiteGround). The initial intention was a pilot: to set up a site to support a learning process around the theme of the Christ Impulse and the Mystery of Golgotha. Besides some early prototyping and unfortunate disruptions end 2019 due to security holes and bots, nothing much happened until March 2020 (when it was moved to a dedicated server hosted by Contabo). The new techical environment had a new wiki version, framework and skin, also finally allowed the use of visualeditor.

2020

  • March 2020
    • creation of structure of the FMC project and three main study themes (with dedicated menus), and creation of placeholder pages - to be populated incrementally in due time.
    • initialization of schema repository and its implementation for consistent illustration references on this site; publication of V1 (22 schemas)
    • cleaning up existing pages of pre 2020
    • decision to move off blogger and include the relevant content on this site in a section 'early essays'. In 2013 I started a test with the site progressiveinsight.blogspot.com to write two posts per year, typically end december. However due to the length of these posts and the completely unreliable style and layout of the environment, this did not prove workable and I had given up. The idea was to post the essays in PDF format, which I never did.
    • contents topics worked: etheric formative forces (incl eg potentization, transmutation), worldviews, underlying topic pages for Modules 4 and 5 in 'Christ and MoG'
  • April-September 2020
    • April-May: two months of daily progress building the logical backbone structure with chapters and topics
    • June-September: hardly any work and very limited progress in this period (only five days)
    • => by 1 October 2020: 280 content pages or topics, enriched with approx. 300 images and 30 PDF files, schema numbering upto FMC00.235

2021

  • notes for this year
    • slow continuous work on refining contents (incl cross links, literature references) on existing pages, and adding topic pages and schemas
    • contributions by people via mail are added as Q&As, Discussion Notes
    • users: (huge surprise) .. In six months April to September 2021, the site was accessed from 109 different countries. Most users and visits come from the United States, followed by the UK, Australia and Canada.Then follow China, Netherlands, India, Germany, New Zealand and Brasil; followed by Italy, Spain, Norway and Taiwan.
  • April 2021
    • V2 of the FMC Schemes upto Schema FMC00.290
    • technical maintenance upgrade of all softwares (OS, PHP, Mediawiki, Chameleon skin), new backup and analytics monitoring tools, and addition of the URL for the project initiative name freemancreator.org
  • August-October 2021
    • good progress in the period June-September (three months effective)
    • the topic came up on whether to extend large Discussion notes or subtopics, or to split the scope of broader topics by creating more pages, and separating subtopics onto their own page. Eventually the latter was done: as the site extends it would create confusion to have very large pages with many subtopics. The whole point of mediawiki is to have topic pages with an outlined scope. Trade off: proliferation of more pages leads to dilution of contents and increase in work effort to provide sufficient coverage, and more links to navigate around, and hence integrative work in our soul again of all these granular pieces of the puzzle. Examples:
    • => by 1 October 2021: 420 content pages with approx. 485 images and 70 PDF files, schema numbering upto FMC00.390
  • end of 2021
    • 2021-11-09: User registration has been activated to make the site more interactive, including personal homepage
    • 2021-12-16: Version 2 (2021) of the FMC schema reference PDF file is now available on the FMC schemas download page, together with an inventory list of the 500+ schemas. Worked update of FMC Schemas download page (now with counter) - taking stock of what is there (cleanup with checks of consistency and completeness before publishing), up to Schema FMC00.400

2022

2023

  • enriching and polishing existing contents, slow continuous addition of Schemas
  • some important sections were added to the site with clean Schemas. Given the variety of topics, it takes revisiting and getting into the topic again to find back existing tables and drawings and update and select the materials for integration on the site. This includes updating, improving and redrawing schemas in digital format. By the end of the year a major step forward will have been taken vs the end 2021 version (then upto schema 400).
  • May 2023
    • such nice words coming in via mails from readers in 2021-22 that I put in online on a page to also Thank you ! I never expected this when I started the site during the covid lockdown three years ago as a personal initiative for myself.
  • end of 2023
    • focus this year, in terms of personal ambition, has shifted in trying to go one level up to Developing narratives (lessons, essays). So the goal is not to get many schemas or topics, or the most exhaustive coverage, but to build on the foundation what is there, and use it to deliver something new that adds to what is available. Feels like it may take years, quite fine to take decade. Like a next step along the journey. It feels embryonic, a seed that needs to develop still.

2024

  • technical maintenance upgrades, plus a functional improvement: whereas until now a Schema with text was copied onto multiple pages, making it difficult to maintain, the Schema ànd its text are now bundled so they can be inserted together on any topic page. This greatly facilitates maintenance.
  • Feb-Mar 2024
    • approaching and reaching Schema number 600, a sort of milestone after the Schema 400 mark end 2021. Not that there is any meaning to it, it's just a good point to reflect and look back before moving on again. At 400 a recap was held to inventorise and check the basis, resulting in the PPT/PDF pack and XLS inventory made downloadeable end 2021.
    • In these two years
      • between 400 and 600 many important Schemas that were missing were uploaded. Some not in their ideal or final state, but because they are needed as part of the basis
      • many new topic pages were added, existing pages were elaborated and some much improved, others were removed to optimize the structure. Examples of rather well worked out pages are eg Human races and Druidic and Trotten mysteries.
      • with some 530 content pages and 800 schemas, it has become clear it is the all about the quality that matters, not the number of pages. There is a foundational number of building blocks that makes up and suffices to study the whole of spiritual science, at least as an introduction. The connections are as important as the text, or put differently: the 500 topic pages have thousands of links, and that is more effective (use of the wiki) than eg10.000 pages of flat text (in a classical sequential document) with all those connections.
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