June 20, 2013
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Update on Relaunch Xanga fundraiser, and Xanga Archives news
Hey guys, we’re almost halfway there to reaching our fundraiser!!
Thanks so much to everyone ($28,874!!) for your support. We’re beyond excited, and hard at work preparing for the relaunch of Xanga!!
I also wanted to share a bunch of news on the Xanga Archives feature… including these two announcements:
1) We’ve built XML archives and they are now available!
We just built an XML archive generator for everyone’s blog posts. You can generate the XML archive (and then download from our servers) here… just go here to “Update your Archives”, and then download the second file:
The XML archive is WordPress-compatible, and you can convert it from there into any number of formats. We’d love for you to stick with Xanga (and hope that you do!), but wanted to make sure you guys have your data.
2) Please make sure to also download your photo archives!!
We wanted to make sure that everyone gets a copy of all of your photos, so we have had a complete download of your photos for a while now. The third file in on our archives page is a photos.zip file that contains all of your photos!
Please make sure to download all of your photos (along with all of your other archives, while you’re at it).
One note: if you view your archives (either in HTML or XML), the photos should all appear nicely. But we wanted to give a heads up that your images are still being served off of Xanga’s servers! So you definitely want to download your photos, so you have a copy of them.
Please note: we definitely are aiming to raise our full fundraising goal, and keep Xanga up for everyone! In that case, we plan to use the same URLs for all of your photos and they should all just keep on working. This is just a heads up to download all of your archives, just in case.
While we’re talking archives, we fixed three issues in our HTML archives that were flagged by a few users.
A. Titles in the HTML archives
JulieMillerFan asked: “I have downloaded and saved my archive…. opened it up… and found that every single Blog-post title no longer exists.”
We fixed that right up… blog post titles now appear in the HTML archives!
B. Full archives
JulieMillerFan also asked: “[My] “Archive” download ended with May of 2012 – Where’s the last full year’s worth of my blogging?”
This is fixed for you now too!
C. Time Zones
We got an email asking if the HTML archives could make sure to respect time zones (especially important for our users in Hong Kong). So while we were at it, we fixed that up too!
You can generate and download a fresh copy of your archives here:
* http://www.xanga.com/private/archives.aspx
And please check out and support our Relaunch Xanga fundraiser here!! We’re almost halfway there… I’ll be posting more info on the fundraiser soon!
John
Comments (70)
Thanks for the update John, please keep them coming.
Thank you, Xanga Team!
hi good job on everything so what day would the new website be open
Just a question, will you be charging us for blogging here once this place is revamped?
Thank you for the update! I have so much confidence in you, I have not created a backup blog on another site. (But I did download my archives – just in case.) I you guys!
Thanks for the update. Nice to see the blog titles. I’ve been asking (for over 3 years) to have those in there! Question: All my photos (personal photos) aren’t showing up in my archives. Is there a fix for this? (They don’t show up inside the blog posts which is what i want. I’ll never remember which pics go with which posts. Someone on xanga has written a program that will let me download the archives and keep the photos with the posts (yay!!!!)…but it would be helpful if all of my photos show up in my archives! Thanks for working behind the scenes!!
Thanks for the update!
Two updates in one week, me likely. Keep on, keep on!
Out of curiosity, if I have lithium98.wordpress.com set up already and we make the move over how will the transition work? Will it just merge the account I have now with my Xanga? I don’t wanna start setting things up on WordPress if it’s just gonna be overridden by the transfer.
Thanks for the update. Know that you are appreciated!
Stepping up your game!
Thanks for the update and good news! We appreciate the hard work you guys are putting in!
Still waiting on an alpha, which you guys should have already done before you tried to raise cash.
Thank you for fixing the archives!
Thanks for all you’ve been through over the years and all you’re going through right now and what you’re going to be going through soon.. ok it sounds depressing, but the truth is that what you have here is of huge intrinsic value and monetarily may not have been wildly successful but i’m sure you’ve saved some lives, some sanity and some people from getting into trouble on the streets – so thanks very much!
You are all awesome. I appreciate the work you are putting into this.
OK let me be real direct- IF you meet your goal does that mean that those who have free sites will be able to keep them free or are you gonna charge everyone? AND if you don’t meet the goal will you shut down or just charge everyone?It would be helpful to know before July!
If and when the Xanga Team moves the premium blogs to wordpress will we retain our Custom Module entries?, or are they not included in the archived files? If not, should we attempt to copy/paste all those CM entries to a folder on our computers for re-posting on our blogs once they have been migrated to WP?
Thanks for the effort you guys are still putting forth on making this transfer painless. I greatly appreciate that you have actually made sure certain issues are being addressed…. and making sure to alert people that they need to BACK-UP their archives on their hard-drives, since right now it’s still using the Xanga Servers to do so. (It should be no more than a simple cut and paste to a Word file or other similar word processing program. Just make sure you do so… before July 15th.I still do have a few questions. I will keep them short this time. (BTW: I ask because I know others are thinking the same thing…. we all need to understand better how this is going to work when it happens.)(A) My user name “JulieMillerFan” is already in use at WordPress. (It’s my account) When you shift over from here to there…. how will that now present itself? Will I be XangaJulieMillerFan? JulieMillerFan2? What’s the plan on this?(B) when you transfer from Xanga to WordPress…. will our Xanga Email / Password be the same?(C) Are PRIVATE or PROTECTED posts here on Xanga still going to be PRIVATE…. on WordPress?(D) Lastly — I already did the WordPress.xml transfer from my Xanga archive here to WordPress…. is that going to mess things up for my PAID account pledges to Xanga’s support? Just how is that going to work for those of us who had pre-existing WordPress accounts?Again… thanks for tackling these issues… and even for singling me out for my persistence in getting answers (I pray I wasn’t too much of a pest) — and moreso, thank you for addressing the answers to these questions publicly so that all of Xanga can breath easier during this time of transition.May things go very smoothly for you guys during the next few weeks…. and may we surpass our goal of $60,000 in our show of support for what has definitely been one of the greatest Blog-sites on the web. I say that unreservedly. My WordPress account had 3 blogs on it… I had nearly 1000 here at Xanga. I really will miss this site and you guys.
Thank you guys for all your hard work these last few weeks.
John and the team, really happy to hear the update. I have donated and hope you will be successful with the “relaunch”. After we moved to the new ‘village’, i look forward to more update, or survey to the member to hear our suggestions or gauge our preference before you start spending a lot of tme on it. We are here for you as much as you are there for us. Let us work together and make this a social media we are all proud of. Keep up the good work, and look forward to more updates when appropriate.
Thank you for the update.
I too appreciate the update and for the record, i did donate. I am concerned and have a question about my photos on my archives. MANY are not showing up in my posts. Now, when i go back and look back in my posts, they seem to be gone as well. The thing is, different archives on different days are missing different pictures. (The next archive, those pictures may be there, but others missing.) Is anyone else having this problem and can it be fixed? I would like a “clean archive” b/f/if the site goes down. I have a LOT of photos over the years in my posts. Would never be able to duplicate it.THANK YOU!
@JulieMillerFan - Julie, i have a question. :) Did your posts transfer nicely? Did your pictures stay inside the posts when you transferred to wordpress? Keep your original dates? Just wondering how that all worked out?
Dear Team, I cannot get my photos out of the archive. I’ve tried multiple times on multiple computers using multiple browsers. If the 4MB file gets downloaded at all, it usually has only 8K and upon attempting extraction, I see the ”zip folder is either invalid or corrupted.” popup.Just now I updated the archives and attempted again, and got the Xanga Sorry the page you requested cannot be found.”I’ve stored lots of photos on Xanga over my nine year “lifetime” tenure here, and the old bald guy is susceptible to panic attacks.So PLEASE HELP.Michael F. Nyiri, poet,philosopher, fool
Yeah! please make it as easy as possible for us Senior Citizens! thanks I’m excited but scared about change.
see what I mean in the hello from baldmike2004
Good Morning, I am still receiving the size mismatch file error when attempting to download my photo archive. ”The “File size mismatch” error happens when the length of the last block of the file being downloaded does not match what the server says it should be. It’s usually a problem on the server end”Also, I unable to download the XML file for WordPress. It just laughs at me when I click on it and does nothing. There is no filesize showing or created date for the WP zip.
I am so grateful for all your hard work for so long. Thank you for making Xanga a community.
@Superbuds - From what I have seen, yes they did… but I am wondering what “Link” they are using for the pictures to be there. If they are linked to the Xanga Servers, once they go down, the pictures will then vanish and show “Link unavailable.” Thus, what the Xanga Team recommended here (SAVE YOUR PICTURES EVEN AFTER YOU DOWNLOAD THE ARCHIVE….) is of great importance.For me… the surprise was that my comments all shifted over to WordPress. All 3,000 of them. Thus nothing was “lost” and since comments give me the opportunity to flesh out my thoughts better, or answer important questions… having them shift over to WordPress was definitely a benefit. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve written a comment… that turned into an actual post shortly thereafter. Nice to have that done.
Great news! I can’t download my archives, though. When I click on the download link, it says, “We’re sorry, this page does not exist.” Thoughts?
@tracy - Mine did the same thing at first. Everytime I clicked it, it turned out to be simply a link back to my own Archive page. Nothing more.I RE-requested a fresh copy of my Blog archives… and when it was ready, the WordPress.xml file was perfect.Try that. See if it helps.
Hey I was wondering about all the private messages we have – is there a way to have those archived as well?
@JulieMillerFan - Thanks, but no dice. I’ve rebuilt the archive trying to get the photos five or six times over the last two weeks and the same problem each time. I’ve rebuilt three times in the last two days trying to get the word press archive and the same result each time.
@JulieMillerFan - thanks for the info. Yeah, the pictures concern me. I was hoping the xml file would be different??? My picture archives from xanga is corrupted. I need to try that again. Glad to know the posts carry over nicely… For me, i’d like to know my posts AND my photos inside the posts do.
I can not download the wordpress document.
Several of us are having a hard time downloading the photo archive (which we are very grateful to have now as part of the archive). The problem may be the large size of the photo.zip file. Here is a link to the discussion topic under the help/support section, in which there is a suggestion of offering the download via an FTP site which might work better.http://help.xanga.com/topic/cant-download-archive-1?post_id=15467&replies=23#post-15467“…I’m having the same problem. My size of the photo archive listed on the site says it’s supposed to be 14.5 GB (yes, that’s Gigabytes, not Megabytes)! However, after the attempted download, the photo.zip file stops prematurely & is only 103 MB (Megabytes) on my hard drive. When the download initially starts, it says it will take 8 hours to complete, but after about 20 minutes, it stops & acts like it finished).When I try to open the photo.zip file, the operating system says the file is corrupt & won’t open.I hope they fix this. Your FTP option sound like a good idea.By the way, to get your good suggestions heard, you might want to post your suggestions under the section of the Xanga site about the relaunch announcement, because the Xanga support staff is more likely to see it there than here in the help section….”
thank you… unfortunately i can’t help financially as of late…
praying things will work out great for everyone 
When will archives be available for our Reviews and Events? I would like to back those up before they are gone, or be able to transfer them to the new interface.
can anyone tell em why my archives download as a wma file
I was wondering, once you click the create archives button, do I wait for it to be in my email or will it be available on that same page later?
@Ellieserenity - it will show up on the same page, usually the next morning.
thanks Xanga team!
Dear Team, I notice others are having the same problem I am, specifically attempting to download our photos file zip.Perhaps you can split the files? I didn’t realize, since the downloaded file never matches the amount of photos I actually have on Xanga that I had so many. (over 4GB worth, a LOT) As the target date for shutdown arrives, I am getting nervous. I have the archives zip file extracted, and the pages show up from my computer, but the images in those files simply link to Xanga’s servers.I would hate to have to take a week off of work to manually copy/paste possibly millions of images into my home computer.As stated, this seems to be a problem for others and not specifically me, so I’m sure the Xanga community would appreciate at least some kind of response!Thanks. Michael F.Nyiri, poet, philosopher, fool
Just a bit of information for you and others. If you are having problems with your current archive, click on the [UPDATE YOUR ARCHIVE] button, give it a few hours to update, and see if the sizes of all area files change.When I first attempted to download my archive, it too was corrupt. Since I did an additional update I have managed to download all of it exceeding 224mb with no problems.BTW, if you need to convert your archive over so the images will appear even with Xanga shutdown (cause they won’t after July 15th), I wrote a HTM Conversion and you can find that HERE.@baldmike2004 - @Superbuds - @Zeal4living - @tracy - @lily_scarlet - @Texasjillcarmel
When I try to download the archives, I get a message saying Error 503-no servers available.
i tried to open the files listed, but when i did i got the message 503 – serivce unavailable. whats going on? can someone please help me with this matter?i have been posting pictures since 2006 & will be heartbroken if this cant be fixed.
There’s an error in downloading archives. It shows 503 Service UnavailableNo server is available to handle this request.
Same error message as listed by others. Tried several times this morning. Have tried 10 attempts (previous to this one) to download photo archives. File been corrupted each time so don’t have those downloaded. (I think the photo file is too large???) Was trying again… I need those to do @dw817 htm conversion. Thanks for any help with this. :)
@dw817 - still trying to get my photos downloaded so i can do your conversion. Today i can’t get any archives (just like others can’t). Hopefully i can get them all downloaded b/f it’s too late. Glad to see you shared this with others. Pretty sure i’m not the only one that wants this!
@Superbuds - They must really be swamped with traffic is all I can figure. I just posted an article on how to download a post from Xanga no matter what including all accompanied media, entirely bypassing their archive method.You can find that HERE.
hi my archieves arent working!!! help!!!it said: “503 Service UnavailableNo server is available to handle this request.”:( please help! thanks~
Why is this not plastered all over the front page? Why is there not a 5 dollar, 10 dollar, 20 dollar option? I don’t have money to contribute, but I think if this site is going to actually die on July 15 and you have more than 30,000 dollars to go, there would be more of a ‘big deal’ made on the website about “millions of bloggers” who are about to lose the site that they “call home.” What gives?
Hmmm… When I uploaded to WP, archives only went back to 2007 instead of 2005.Any ideas? Maybe I will try another archive download…[Never mind. It's there now. Not sure why it took extra time to show up.]
Supports!!!!!
Tried to donate. Kept getting “invalid user id” — just sayin’. I gave up. Kind of busy … so … tweet it when you’re fixed! <3
Is there no way to archive comments?
Can we get another update on the re-launch?
I noticed the donations seemed to increase when this update was posted. It’s crunch time and much money is still needed. You might want to consider posting another update!!!
@reginasikora - Apparently the holiday weekend found them taking vacation in the Miami sun… or some such thing.Seriously XangaTeam… it’s been 3 weeks since the last update and there are still unanswered questions (Not just my own!!!) here at this and at the last update.You guys really need to let us know what’s going on…
Dear team,I followed the instruction and updated my archives. HOwever, the most updated post in the archive was in May. HOw about the posts in June? I thought the archives would be updated to the most recent post.
I am a bit fuzzy as to why entire months of blogs are missing in the archive? Just barely started checking, and seriously, entire months are missing.
I’ve updated a couple of times. Not sure what else I need to do. ??
Hi April. Hope you like those gifts. See you soon?
Whenever I try to download my archives, I keep getting a 503 error that says the service is unavailable. Since this is now a time-sensitive issue, is the Xanga Team working on making sure their servers can handle everyone trying to download their archives before the July 15th closing date?
@TheXangaTeam HELP! Just how do I transfer ALL of my Xanga blog entries from Xanga to WordPress? I’m new to WordPress, and I just made a blog there right now. Is there any step by step instructions, because I’m lost…? And can I tranfer two seperate Xanga blogs into one WordPress Blog…?Sincerely,Deeply Confused
HELP! Xanga team. May I know that which encoding Xanga engine used for Traditional Chinese words before the time of using unicode? I have to fix the language for every single entry and it is definitely a nightmare because I reli have a lot of entries in my blog.I have downloaded the archive.zip and unzipped it. I tried to openxxxxx_2005_Sep.htm in Safari and it shows Mars language. I have tried 1. Traditional Chinese (Big5), 2. Traditional Chinese (Big5 HKSCS) and 3. Traditional Chinese (Windows, DOS) but it fails to fix them.
Resistance is futile. Surrender immediately.
@YourFavoriteCynic - HA. They’ll be gone in 6 days. Don’t expect a reply from them anyway.
@JulieMillerFan - Is it really any wonder they’re shutting down?
I have a question. Is the XML file compatible with blogger. I know they also import XML files but since the other ones says wordpress all over the place I’m unsure. Is it hard to make an XML file for blogger? I just found the option on blogger and I would love to put my posts up that I worked hard here since 2004. I know it’s very short notice, i appreciate it if you can and understand if you can’t.