Done: We'll be taking down the site on Thursday starting at 4:00pm EST for about 20 minutes for planned upgrades.

Thanks!

Dan

Today we started experimenting with the "Top Blogs" module on Xanga's frontpage to see if we can drive more traffic to your Xanga sites with it.

First, we moved the module higher on the page - this move doesn't really require formal experimentation... the new placement should drive more clicks - woohoo!

Now, we're experimenting with four different versions of that module:

1. Top 10 "Top Blogs", in order - this is the version of the module we've been using for a while
2. Top 50 "Top Blogs", randomized - greater variety of posts, gives more people a chance to make it to the frontpage
3. Top 10 "Most Rec'd", in order - there's a lot of overlap between "Top Blogs" and "Most Rec'd", but there seem to be some breakout (and interesting) posts in Most Rec'd that don't always make it to Top Blogs
4. Top 50 "Most Rec'd", randomized - just like #2, above - offers greater variety and gives more people a chance
   

This one is a more formal experiment: we are randomly choosing one of the four to show each visitor (for the next week, you should be seeing only one of these four) and we are collecting careful click-through data.

We're going to run the experiment for about a week, crunch the data and then share the results with all of you to help us all make a decision on how best to use that module to drive traffic.

In the meantime, we'd love to hear from people seeing each of the four different versions - do you like the version you're seeing or do you think you'd prefer a different one? Again, we're agnostic on the four versions... we just want to find the most effective way to drive traffic. The data will help inform the ultimate decisions here, but your comments are definitely helpful as well.

Thanks!

All of the site maintenance we've done recently (and some of the subsequent site funkiness) has stemmed from two big efforts that have been keeping us busy over here at Xanga HQ:

1) We've been massively upgrading the hardware that powers Xanga.

Some of the hardware was almost six years old - which is Methuselah-old for this type of stuff. The new stuff is faster and more reliable. It's also a lot smaller and more energy efficient - which means it costs Xanga (and the environment ) a lot less to run than the old hardware.

2) We've been upgrading the software that powers Xanga too

Along with replacing the hardware, we've also been overhauling the software architecture of Xanga. The ultimate goal, of course, is to help make things more reliable and maintainable. But this type of upgrade brings inevitable hiccups as well...

Now we're focused on stamping out bugs!

We know the recent changes have introduced some new bugs. And we know there are some long-standing bugs from the old system. With your help, we'd like to focus on fixing them!

• Known issues that we're currently working to fix:
  • Anonymous footprints aren't showing the location of the visitor.
  • Some emails aren't being delivered - particularly to yahoo and att.net, which includes bellsouth.net and other domains  (this one is primarily because different ISPs are rate-limiting the amount of email we can send to them). Please let us know if you aren't receiving email.
  • Usertag counts in the feedback log module are stuck at 0.

• Intermittent issues for which we need more information:
  • We've seen some reports about specific Xanga sites not always rendering properly.  It sounds like the css for the site isn't loading, which causes weird display issues.
  • If you're having a problem like this, please leave a comment.

• Recently Fixed Issues (woohoo!):
  •  Comment reply emails weren't being sent.
  •  View counts were updating slowly.
  •  Footprint feedback counts were updating slowly.

Just wanted to let you all know what we're currently doing to fix up the site. If you've been having any other big problems with the site (old or new) please let us know in the comments and we'll add them into this effort.

Thanks so much.