We've gotten a lot of requests for what we're calling Xanga Network sites (like Mancouch or Momaroo).
A bunch of ideas for Network sites have been submitted to the Ideas forum:
At the same time, we've also been getting emails from various users asking us if they could launch their own Network sites using their own URL's. A few users have even started turning their Xanga sites into collaborative blogs .
Then it hit us: we could solve both problems, and create the ability for anyone to create and manage your own blogging community! You could not only manage your own blog, but you could host blogs by members of your community.
Here's how it would work:
- You pick an audience or topic you'd like to build a blogging community around.
- You buy a URL and point it at Xanga's servers.
- You customize the look of your site, using something ideally like Themes
That's pretty much it actually.
It's actually a lot of work to run a collaborative group blog - so we've built software which people to submit posts, and editors to edit and schedule them. It really streamlines the whole process of running a collaborative group blog.
The software would be free to you (well, we might charge a small fee for the URL hosting). You would put in your own Google AdSense codes, and keep most of the ad revenue; to cover our hosting costs, we would run our own ads about 1/3 of the time.
Naturally, any sites in the Xanga Network would fully interoperate with Xanga.
And you could use these tools to build sites about artists, atheists, book lovers, dads, or whatever else floats your boat!
But before we build this, we wanted to get your feedback. Would you be interested in something like this? What kind of collaborative Network sites would you like to see us (or other Xangans) launch?
Thanks!
Comments (181)
This would be awesome!!!! I would start a blogging community about marriage and the struggles and joys of being married!
Dear Team,
This is a great idea. I often wondered why these satellite sites couldn't be run by any blogger who wanted to invest the time and money to set one up.
Bravo.
Michael F. Nyiri, poet, philosopher, fool
I like the idea...particularly for art centered topics such as writing and photography.
doesn't interest me
I didn't understand half of the words in this post... I'm so internet unsavvy! Lol. But I really hope people do this!
Artists for the win. Let me know when we can buy ours!
@repressedwriter - writing, ftw.
I wouldn't do this probably but I think it's an awesome idea for others!
Both "atheists" and "nonChristians" seem awfully narrow as ish sites. Properly speaking, there should be a monotheist -ish for all the Abrahamic faiths, a polytheistic -ish, and an atheist/agnostic -ish. Then you would also have to do something about worldviews such as Taoism or Buddhism, which might technically be considered polytheistic but don't necessarily center on deities.
Also, I note that in your mention of collectives you neglected catpooish.
Hmm, interesting. Sounds good. But you've kind of totally removed the need for blogrings now. Because you *know* it's not going to stay a select list, even with making people pay for it.
If there was a way to moderate it before starting the thing, just to save people spending money on a group that already existed, would be ideal, even if it means hiring someone to read every single freakin' proposal.
Not saying that I think it's a bad idea by a long shot - I'd love to see more communities, especially as arty ones are all I'm interested in, but at the same time, my two worries about it are sort of niggling. Blogrings have already been almost completely sidelined in my time here... Now no one's ever going to want to join another except for as a cheap club or something between friends.. I can bet every other interest will be quickly covered, making even the oddest redundant pretty quickly.
I wouldn't do it, but it sounds like a great idea for other users. It's good that you're charging to keep out the riff raff.
I sound 90 years old.
Hi
From a third world country like India I can only wish I had such a manna from Heaven!The central bank does not allow any online payments now--not because of he Recession--and I do not know much about designing a website of my own too!
So let me pray my kids may be lucky enough to make use of your gracious offer.
If I could i would have my blogsite with its focus on INDIA mainly!!Ha ha!!.
sadaboy india@xanga
@moritheil - Just sharing ideas that Xangans had suggested.
The nice thing is that if we did this, you could create a site as narrow or as broad as you saw fit!
@john - I understand. I realized it days ago when I was browsing through the Ideas and "nonChristian ish" kept popping up, but there was nowhere to leave this comment at the time
who wants to collab with me????
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
I've tried this past month to start up a successful social-issues related blog (and may also add a feminist blog), but I would love to know how to take it to the next level (i.e., with a bona fide community URL). My site has been successful (somewhat) thus far, but this would be a great opportunity. Thanks Xanga!
Hmmm, I see it getting a bit ridiculous, with way too many, and multiples of the same type. You know how there's already a ton of ideas that get submitted multiple times? Kinda like that. But with this, there's a chance to make money. So people are going to be discouraged that someone else is running the site that they wanted to, so they might start their own of the same to give it competition. Or someone will want to get a monopoly on the popular topics, and so someone will go through and get urls or politicish, abortionish, atheish, sexish, etc, until there's like 20,000 ish sites and nobody cares anymore. Just like blogrings. And since it won't be driving traffic to people's actual page, just the ish page, and nobody will read the ish page anyways because there's too many to keep track of, they will die off.
That sounds great. Do our google ad sense codes work on multiple sites? As in could I use the one I use for my personal page on this one as well?
Simply due to my interest in the sports realm.....i think this idea is full of win...charging a small fee helps cut down on spammed sites....
Often when I hear complaints about what Xanga isn't, I normally point to what it is, and the advantages many don't appreciate...traffic, servers, and giving people a launching pad to create something themselves.
While many people may not have the ability, the interest or the time, giving the ones who do the platform in which to try things with a very minimal risk factor is great.
I know we see a lot of things opposite, but I have never sweat that. I appreciate the platform, and the ability you are giving people to launch their own creativity to make it a even more unique community. This seems to make a lot more sense than investing in a bunch of new revelifes, etc...
This may get people back into utilizing blogrings in different manners that they have not previously used them. Thanks for making the new software available.
BTW, do you have code available for us "old siters" to add edit to our comments box?
hm... sounds like ning.com
Dang skippy....the sports site dave and I are working on, along with the autisable site...PLUS the BFN....dude...that'd ROCK!
Sounds like a good idea. Sounds like the way it should have gone in the first place, but your plan makes both blogging and business sense. It still seems a little obscure, though, how much these are going to be "Xanga sites" versus a private site built around Xanga and functional with the "Xanga-scape". For instance, is it essentially going to be a personal blog with upgraded features for managing a community that has its own URL or is it going to be more open to manipulation by the host user to really edit and control the structure through their own html, javascript, etc.? I imagine it would be something like a modified user account that acts like a CMS "user portal" to their blogging community content with a lot of features just like users or premium users have available with their themes and modules. But I'm not even premium so I don't know what all that extra "stuff" actually is, nor how it would differ to being a community host.
This is an awesome idea