It’s difficult to believe, but it has now been six full months since I officially launched 21CR.INFO Beta! Although it has not been my only project, I have still made a great deal of progress on the 21CR.INFO network and, what’s more exciting, I have begun to use the 21CR.INFO network to blog!!

I have made a number of small improvements to the blog network which are individually too small to go into in any detail… and I would have to rack my brain to remember them. So, in this update, insofar as the backend and infrastructure of the 21CR.INFO network is concerned, I’m going to talk about the big developments, even though none of them are complete.

To begin, there is the 21CR.INFO Forums. If you click on the “Forums” link at the top of the page you will see that I have installed a bbPress forum as part of the 21CR.INFO network. bbPress is still in Beta, and, at the time I installed it, it had some bugs with regard to integration with WordPress MU (which is what the 21CR.INFO blog network is built on). As a result, I left the installation incomplete. However, I learned a lot about the way bbPress and WordPress MU work in the process, and, when the time is right, will complete the 21CR.INFO Forums installation.

Next is the 21CR.INFO Academy. If you click on the “Academy” link at the top of the page you will find the 21CR.INFO Academy. The current installation of the 21CR.INFO Academy is a MemberSpeed installation. While I like MemberSpeed, I’m not convinced that it is the membership software that I want to use for the 21CR.INFO Academy. However, I wanted to install it so that I could play with it to check it out in more detail. Registration is currently disabled as I am not ready to open up the Academy at this time (and may not be for quite some time). However, the 21CR.INFO Academy is ready to go when the time comes to open its doors.

The final big development is that of BuddyPress. BuddyPress is the set of WordPress MU plugins that turn WordPress MU into a social network. BuddyPress has been in development for some time and the Beta version of BuddyPress was just released a couple weeks ago. Although I have yet to install BuddyPress into the 21CR.INFO network, the release of the Beta version is big news because BuddyPress is the final major component of 21CR.INFO!

As I said at the top, what I’m most excited about at the six month mark is the fact that I have been using the 21CR.INFO blog network to blog! So, let’s get to the frontend of the 21CR.INFO network part of the update.

I reported the launch of P90X.21CR.INFO in the one month update. However, at the time, I had only made one post. I am happy to report that I have now made a total 86 posts to P90X.21CR.INFO! It takes me about 15 minutes to get up each of these posts, which chronicle my experience with Tony Horton’s P90X workout program. I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention that my workouts are going well and that I’m just 14 workouts away from completing my second round of P90X!

Although I am pleased with everything I have mentioned so far, and put in a fair amount of work on these things, the thing with which I am most pleased and the thing on which I have worked the most, is the new WakeUpProductive.21CR.INFO blog. Wake Up Productive is a productivity program designed by Internet business guru Eben Pagan and is geared towards Internet entrepreneurs. I have made a total of 72 posts to WakeUpProductive.21CR.INFO, which is a fair accomplishment in itself, but which is made all the greater when you consider that each of these posts includes recordings of a large chunk of my day and each post takes me an hour to complete!

Finally, I am happy to report that my cousin Dan has started a new blog with his Notre Dame sports-journalism buddies, The Casual Observer. Here’s what Dan says about The Casual Observer: “The Observer is an independent student-run newspaper that has been serving the Fighting Irish for over 40 years. For the first time ever, we are launching a blog for student writers to deliver Notre Dame news with a more personal touch. Get inside the action with a first hand account of all of Notre Dame’s biggest events.” Thus far, the focus of the blog has been Notre Dame football. However, especially now that college football season is over, I suspect they’ll start to branch out a little more.

That’s all for the 21CR.INFO Six Month Update. Remember that the development of 21CR.INFO is ongoing, so make sure you subscribe to the RSS feed (either by feedreader or email) to keep up-to-date.

Happy New Year!

James Francis
CRM (Chief Renaissance Man)

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Tags: 21CR.INFO, 21CR.INFO Academy, 21CR.INFO Forums, 21st Century Renaissance, BuddyPress, P90X.21CR.INFO, The Casual Observer, WakeUpProductive.21CR.INFO, WordPress MU

It’s been a month since I officially launched the 21CR.INFO blog, and, although I have been busy settling back into life in Santa Fe, I have made progress with regard to 21CR.INFO on a number of fronts, so I figured it was time to make another post.

(Sorry about the audio. I had the mic volume turned up a little too high.)

With regard to the backend and infrastructure of the 21CR.INFO network, I’ve made a number of improvements:

I’ve enlisted the services of Feedburner to syndicate the 21CR.INFO RSS feed. You can now subscribe to the 21CR.INFO blog my clicking on the “Subscribe to the RSS Feed” or the “Subscribe to the Feed Via E-Mail” links in the upper right hand corner of the page.

I’ve installed the “ShareThis” button on every page and post, thereby making it easy to share any and all permalinks on the 21CR.INFO network with a few clicks… whether you choose to share by posting to your favorite social network or your blog, bookmarking a page, or sending an email, ShareThis makes it easy. So, click the “ShareThis” link at the bottom of this post to see just how easy it is.

I’ve added and hacked the Video Embedder plugin to make it easy to post videos, whether they be recorded or streamed live, to every sub-domain on the 21CR.INFO network. If you want to see the first video posted to the 21CR.INFO network, check out this post: The P90X Prep & Fit Test… it’s a good one! If you want to see me live (you never know when I’ll be “on the air”), try looking here: LIVE.21CR.INFO.

Finally, I’ve updated the 21CR.INFO network to Wordpress MU 2.6. This was a large task, as it was only the second time I have updated the software underlying 21CR.INFO and it was the first time I have done so since I’ve hacked into the Wordpress MU code to make the 21CR.INFO network behave the way I want it to. (I actually took the update as an opportunity to hack into Wordpress MU even more… time consuming, but fun… for the most part.)

There have been some significant developments with regard to the frontend of the 21CR.INFO network as well:

I’ve launched P90X.21CR.INFO, on which I will chronicle my experiences with my second round of Tony Horton’s popular fitness program, P90X. I’ve just made one post to P90X.21CR.INFO thus far, but I have created a bunch of content, so I’ll be getting more posts up soon.

As I mentioned above, I’ve also launched LIVE.21CR.INFO, where my live video feed will be housed. I’ve yet to make a single post to this subdomain, but, as with P90X.21CR.INFO, I’ve been busy creating content. In this case, just getting the live feed on the site was a trick. Stop by and say “hi” sometime.

Finally, Dan added four more posts to DanMurphy.21CR.INFO. These relate his recent experiences in Thailand, Singapore, and New Zealand. I thought his elephant ride looked particularly interesting. You can find that post here: Phuket.

That’s all for now. The development of 21CR.INFO is ongoing, so make sure you subscribe to the RSS feed (either by feedreader or email) to keep up-to-date.

James Francis
CRM (Chief Renaissance Man)

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Tags: 21CR.INFO, 21st Century Renaissance, DanMurphy.21CR.INFO, Feedburner, LIVE.21CR.INFO, P90X.21CR.INFO, ShareThis, Ustream, WordPress MU

With this post, I hereby launch 21CR.INFO Beta 1.0!!!

Shhhhhh… just don’t tell anyone. Why? Well…

21CR.INFO is to be a blogging/social network that provides “The INFO You Need to Live the 21st Century Renaissance.” With 21CR.INFO, I intend to create of community of people who want to learn how to create content and blog about something about which they are passionate, promote the content that they create, and monetize that content if they so choose. I also intend to provide powerful blogs to people in the community to get them started and teach them how to create, promote, and monetize their content.

Which leads me to the reason for the “Shhhhhh” above… the blogging network isn’t quite ready for bloggers just yet, and I’m not quite ready to start teaching just yet.

First, I need to do a little blogging on it myself. If it a fairly sophisticated blogging network that I have set up here (if I do say so myself), and, although I have designed it to be simple to use, I need to make sure that I know how to use it, (and iron out all the kinks and squash all the bugs), before I start teaching others how to use it. (I actually have done a bit of blogging with it already: eBay.21CR.INFO.)

Second, I need to set up the Academy and the Forums. The Academy will serve as the community center of learning, and will provide video, interviews, and screen capture tutorials (amongst other forms of media) on how to do everything from publishing your first blog post, to doing research with Google, to using Facebook, to making your first sale. The Forums will serve as the community center of conversing, and will provide a place to ask and answer questions, share stories of success and failure, provide support and make friends, etc.

Finally, I need to get a few beta testers blogging on the network to test out the usability of the network, and for whom I can produce the first Academy lessons. (My cousin Dan has done some pre-Beta 1.0 testing for me and you can learn all about his semester in Australia here: DanMurphy.21CR.INFO.)

After all this is done, then I will be opening up 21CR.INFO to a larger scale and accepting new members. (That is, unless I decide to get the social network side of 21CR.INFO set up as well before I do so.)

Now, you may be reading this thinking, “That sounds like an awful lot to do before 21CR.INFO is truly launched… So, what is it that you are launching today exactly?” A fair question.

The answer: This Blog!

Yes, this is the first post to the central 21CR.INFO blog. I intend to have many blogs on the 21CR.INFO network, but the one you are reading right now is the central blog. It is the one to which I will be posting all the info that relates specifically to the 21CR.INFO network. Thus, now that this blog has been launched, I will be posting about all the work I am doing on the network as I progress through the steps that I have outlined above.

I launched the first incarnation of the 21CR.INFO network on New Years Day 2008. I launched it in the birthplace of the American Revolution, Concord, MA, at the domain 21stCenturyRenaissance.INFO. I put that network together pretty quickly, I didn’t build it for scale, and it crashed in less time that I even took to build it.

I am launching this incarnation of the 21CR.INFO network on Independence Day 2008. I am launching it in Santa Fe, NM, nestled in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the valley behind St. John’s College, with Los Alamos sparkling in the distance. I have taken my time putting this network together, and I have build it for scale.

It is in part by fortune that I have launched in these two places on these two dates. However, it is also by choice. I will find plenty of occasion to right about this fortune and choice in the future… and I have fireworks to go see in the bit… so, for now, let me end this post here.

Happy Independence Day!

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Tags: 21CR.INFO, 21CR.INFO Academy, 21CR.INFO Forums, 21st Century Renaissance