Today's entry comes from giohh . . . check it out and don't forget to submit your own! (p.s. see you tomorrow at Office Hours - 5-6 p.m. EST!)

"i xanga because it's a place where i can express myself
i xanga because i can organize my thoughts and feelings
i xanga because i like to show the world my pictures and videos
i xanga because i want my friends to know what i'm up to lately
i xanga because i like getting comments
i xanga because i want to run away from reality sometimes
i xanga because it is embedded into my everyday routine
but most importantly
i xanga because it's part of who i am.

obviously i have no guts to get a xanga tattoo
but i still love xanga"

This week's Themes Thursday featured designer is SapphireTranquility55.

Here are some popular themes:

X: How long have you been a Xanga user?

I created my first Xanga about 3 years ago. After a while, I
closed that down and made a new one (Mystic_Xingjing - check it out!). I've had
that for a little over a year now.

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

Well, I've always loved art
(painting and photography especially), so making themes appeals to that side of
me. I've attempted to make those fancy layouts that you need an encyclopedia of
HTML knowledge to create, but to no avail. I actually tried sitting at the
computer for about 3 hours one night and nearly blew my brains out it was so
frustrating. Then of course, you'd have the mess on the computer monitor, and
well...we'll just stop there I suppose.

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

Music is a big one. I love pretty much anything that's not
on the Top 40 radio right now. I love anything from heavy metal to classical music.
Sometimes I'll be listening to a song and I'll get pulverized by the fist of
inspiration. It happens at the weirdest times, too. Also, other artist's
photography. I check out deviantART all the time and I love a lot of the stuff
that's on there. Very inspiring to me.

X: What do you like most about themes?

I don't have to memorize a bunch of HTML mumbo-jumbo to get
the look I want. The simplicity of it is nice.

X: What’s your favorite xanga feature?

 That's a tough one. Does Dan count? No, just kidding. I
really like the new private page! At first I wasn't too keen on it, because it
was such a radical change. After using it, I've decided that change is good.

X: What do you like most about xanga?

The people. I'm glad that, even with Myspace and sites like
that, there are still so many intelligent (for the most part people on
Xanga. Xanga is, without a doubt, the best. However, it wouldn't be that way if
you didn't have so many awesome people backing it up. My Xanga friends are
probably the major reason I update often; without them, there just isn't a
purpose.

X: What do you like to do in your spare time?

Besides making Xanga themes, I really love going out and
taking photos and making music videos (a lot of my work is at
youtube.com/mysticxingjing16 if you're interested).

Thanks to SapphireTranquility55 for being this week's featured themes designer! If you have recommendations for future featured designers, please let us know.

Tune in for the Xanga Team Office Hours show live today on Xanga TV from 5-6 p.m.  

Everyone's been telling us we should sell some Xanga Gear... so we just set up a store!

• Xanga Gear

We printed some tees in the past for college fairs, and dang... it was a lot of work.  But now all orders are processed through our partner Printfection, so it's less work for us - plus we're able to offer a wider variety of products beyond just tees.

A few examples: tees, mousepad, camisole, hoodie, spaghetti straps, and tote bags!  They come in lots of colors (not just the ones shown here).

Please have a look around and let us know what you think.  You can check out the full selection of shwag here!

• Xanga Gear

Why do you Xanga? Could you put it into words?

Some amazing Xangans have already contributed their reasons for being members of the site, and we'd love to hear your ideas, too. To share your story, take a look at the site and follow the submission instructions - starting next Wednesday, we'll be selecting one of our favorites and featuring it on our Xanga site. Can't wait to hear from you.

Suggest your own Featured Content entries

Have you ever read an epic entry that you think needs to be featured? Maybe you haven't known who to tell about it . . .

Thanks to Ayca, we've added a site where you can peruse past FC posts and suggest worthwhile content for future frontpagery. Check it out here - take a second to reread a favorite post or two and leave us some recommendations.

Come hang with us tomorrow

We'll be doing our twice-weekly Office Hours tomorrow from 5-6 p.m. EST, so if you've got any questions or comments for us, drop by and say hi! If you can't make it tomorrow evening, remember that we also broadcast on Tuesdays from 10-11 a.m. EST especially for our international users.

Catch you tomorrow!

During our Office Hours Xanga TV webcast this morning, we asked viewers to send in postcards from their hometowns to help us decorate our office. We'd love to see where all of you are from and need some help decorating our office walls

We were inspired by Sarina and Jasmine of tendervoid, who both sent us postcards from their vacation to Hawaii.

If you'd like to snail mail us a postcard, please send them to us:
                                  Xanga.com
                                  P.O. Box 500
                                  Midtown Station
                                  New York, NY 10018

We'll be taking photos as we amass a collection, so keep checking back to see if we've gotten yours! Hope to hear from you soon.

Many of you had one word for the most recent private page: cluttered.

We heard you, and tried to clean house a bit:

• We took out some ads, got rid of the third column, and moved stuff to the left side
• Tried to make it clearer where to "add weblogs" (and other stuff)
• Added links to "your stuff" and "settings"

We also streamlined the colors, in a way that'll also make it easier for us to allow customization in the near future .  Check out the de-cluttered version:

• De-cluttered private page

And while we were at it, we took the ad and third column out of the subs page!

• De-cluttered subs page

Please tell us how we are doing? We are working around the clock on tweaking this page based on your feedback, and would love to hear what you think!!

- John

Hey this is John with some Xanga updates for ya.

First off, the new Xanga Subs page seems to be really popular.  We listened to everyone's feedback to the beta and made a number of tweaks earlier this week that got rave reviews.  So thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts!  We're really listening and making changes based on your feedback.

Now, onto the new (and optional!) private home page.  A little over half of those of you who have tried it out have kept it.  What's amazing is that your collective usage of the new page is way higher than on the old one!  The new page is definitely more fun and addictive - it may be getting 5-10x more usage!  Now we'd love to get more of you to stick with it.

So... it's time for us to listen to the rest of you who tried it and switched back.  We're going through your feedback, and making tweaks.  I wanted to highlight one big issue that's been coming up a lot.

A bunch of you emphasized that the new private page felt "impersonal".  After reading tons of comments, it became very clear that some of you want to customize your private interface.  What's interesting is that very few web applications out there let you personalize your private interface.  Gmail... Blogger... Facebook... their private interfaces are all "take it or leave it".  The only site besides Xanga that lets you customize your interface a bit is iGoogle, and that's pretty new.

However, you guys have spoken and told us that you'd like the new private page to be more "Xanga-y" and customizable - so we are looking into our options.  It's tricky stuff... we can't just slap your public Theme on the new private page; we tried that and a lot of pages broke.  However, that doesn't mean we can't offer some more personalization/customization options!  So we'll be doing our research and reporting back soon.

What do you think of more personalization options on the new private page?  We'd love to hear your thoughts!

Today’s featured themes designer is country_sunshine. Country_sunshine's themes are among the most popular themes this past month.

X: How long have you been a
Xanga user?

I love the ease of learning the ins and outs of blogging and uploading photos.
Xanga has many cool features, but without it being so easy, people (my age)
would shy away from trying and would never have the experience of meeting so
many cool people. It's great to see people of all ages on Xanga but I was
delighted to see people over 50 blogging.

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

Having a cup of coffee is high on that list, but my favorite things to do in my
spare time is taking photos of people, animals and nature and being with my
granddaughters. I spend a lot of time playing with my two weimaraners who keep
me young just keeping up with them. Holding hands with my husband while walking
on a beach - or in the woods - or just sitting on the couch is always a treat!
Traveling the USA is always a favorite adventure of mine.

Check back next week for our next Q&A! You can check out more themes here.

Also be sure to check out the Xanga Team Office Hours live today on Xanga TV from 5-6p.m.

Good news for all of you who use Xanga in languages other than English! From now on, you'll be able to enter content without worrying about encoding; just open your editor and write.

If you've updated your language setting but some of your posts or comments still aren't showing correctly, we've added a link to fix those individual entries. By clicking "fix language" on an unthemed entry, you'll be able to edit those posts' encoding easily and efficiently.

If you're still having trouble fixing your site after you edit your language setting, you can go here to speak with your friendly neighborhood language encoding expert.

Those of you who only post in English may notice a few extra links on your page, mainly the "fix language" option, so please ignore that new content; it's for our international users' benefit, and just think - if you learn another language and decide to blog in Portuguese or Chinese, we'll have you covered.

Major props go out to Justin and Mary for this improvement.

A bunch of you loved how we show images on the subs page now... but a few of you had some feedback for us.  To summarize the 70 or so comments we got on our last post:

• Some of you felt the page was getting a bit cluttered
• Some of you just wanted to hide images, so the page was simpler and more Old Skool
• Others were on a dialup and wanted the subs page to load faster

So we decluttered the page a bit, and also created an option to show or hide images.  If you want to hide or show the images, you can just click "Hide/Show Images" link to the right of the subs page (see screenshot).

Some of you also pointed out that some images get "cut off" by the subs interface.  We'll look into using JavaScript to resize those images for you (the real issue is that people are posting huge images to their sites).  For now, you can always click over to the users' pages!

Just wanted to let you guys know that we're listening, and that your feedback is helping us make the site better.  Hope you feel the love - let us know what you think!  Here's the link:

• http://www.xanga.com/Private/subsmain.aspx