January 17, 2008

  • Themes Thursday

    Ever wondered who the designers behind your favorite themes are? Each week, we’ll be interviewing Xangans like you who create popular themes; for our first installment, we held a Q&A session over email with rayray714a, whose themes are some of the most frequently saved designs this month!

    X: How long have you been a Xangan?

    RR: Since May of 2005.

    X: Do you have a design background or any previous experience in making layouts?

    RR: No formal training at all. When I joined Xanga I saw cute
    layouts on other sites and decided I wanted to learn how to do that….I got
    Paint Shop Pro, Frontpage, and learned basic HTML. All of this was
    completely foreign to me so I dove in and didn’t come up for air for about 6
    months. When themes started, I decided to figure out those and now I love it because
    there is no more coding! yay!

    X: What do you like most about themes?

    RR: No need for HTML codes! Also, I think it’s fun how users can
    just “try them on” so easily and save it to their site.

    X: How do you come up with your themes? What’s your inspiration?

    RR: Usually one graphic will strike my interest. Then I’ll open
    a blank canvas in my Paint Shop Pro and just see what happens.

    X: Do you have any upcoming ideas in mind for theme designs?

    RR: I plan on converting all my existing layouts into themes. Also I love working with flowers, foliage, jewelry,
    and gems. So we’ll see how God inspires me for what will be coming up next.

    Check back next week for our next Q&A!

Comments (23)

  • What a cool idea.

  • That was such a great idea and she makes wonderful themes.

  • she is such a sweet person also!

  • Xanga you really do know how to push the boat out

    To keep Xanga fresh and somehow different from all the other social sites/networks in the world

  • How interesting..I just saw some of them and they are fantastic..* great job..* I wish you could click on them and ‘see’ them up close before you have to use them…I haven’t tried them because I have not idea if my old one can come back if I change my mind or something…not sure how it works…but great work rayray** take care all..Lee

  • Yeah!  RayRay!  You made the first theme I ever had on Xanga and my friend said she really liked it! :)

  • Awesome idea to feature RayRay and let everyone get to know her more.  She’s such a sweetheart and has quite gift for designing!

  • This makes Xanga different from many other blogs and social networking sites.
    It’s been a while since I made a theme. *makes more themes*

  • So glad you began this feature. RayRay is a great first choice. Her layouts are always beautiful.

  • man, you guys are really gettin’ down with the xanga community, aren’t ya?

  • much great thanks to the xanga team! since the new subs page, i have become even more addicted to xanga than ever. it shows me everything all at once, and therefore, i don’t miss anything. i’m commenting all dang day on blogs, pulses, videos, photos! email! everything! it’s AWESOME!

  • the theme of rayray714a is nice,
    how wonderful is it?=]

  • I always use a theme by Rayray- they are usually the prettiest on xanga.  Snaps to her!

  • Looking forward to reading the next one

  • Have you guys ever thought of having a feature that helped individuals with deterioting eye sight? I was thinking if on the public feed section the reader could have a tab that would allow the Blog to be increased in font size-a sort of magnifying glass function.

    thanks

    FG

  • I am RayRay’s fan of her themes, especially her designs dedicated to Someone above.  I can sense that she’s such a great person. When I search for new themes, it’s her theme designs that I look for first. There are others that are good also, but RayRay’s design ideas are very unique in my eyes. I’m so glad that we have this Themes option, because I was running out of ideas, aside from they are time consuming to do them on my own.

    Congrats RayRay for being recognized– you deserve it!!

  • Love, love, love rayray!!!!!!

    Thanks for spotlighting here!

  • @Aubrey - yah I agree, it’s tough to make themes on your own.  Thank goodness for the Themes directory!

  • Is there any way that a user that doesn’t want themes (i just opened a sub-blog and i’m frustrated that i can’t get it the way I want) to be able to go back to the “look and feel” pick-and-choose option for their site and make the changes public? my main blog still works on look and feel but the other one only keeps the changes there private.

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