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:

• Artists - submitted by xxbabyjen_babybrittxx
• Atheists and non-Christians - submitted by LiLbabeSwT and LadyLibellule
• Book lovers - submitted by deposed_queen
• Dads - submitted by Romans_837

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 .

• Vanedave started a collaborative sports site at http://bfnsports2debate.xanga.com/
• Edlives is creating a collaborative site about autism http://autisable.xanga.com/

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. Continue reading →

We need to take down the site for some unplanned maintenance to repair a faulty server today.

The site will be down starting at 1:30PM EST and will be back up before 2:30PM EST.

Thanks,

Dan

Moniet suggested we add a no vote to Idea voting:

So we went ahead and did just that!  You can check out all the top ideas here, and vote no on all the ideas you dislike:

• http://www.xanga.com/ideas/?f=0

This is especially cool because now you can't just buy Yes votes with a plug.  If you plug your Idea, you're risking that other people will say No.  That really helps even the playing field.

Let us know what you think!

Thanks to everyone for your feedback on video transcoding!  A lot of you voted for us to fix up the transcoder, so we went ahead and did just that.  We're transcoding the backlog of video files, and should be able to turn video uploads back on on Friday!

We looked into what was clogging our video transcoders, and a few people were uploading huuuge files.  We're going to look into adding upload caps on video, like we have on photos.  Also, we'll probably have to add some sort of cap on how long videos can be for Classic members - something like 5 or 10 minutes.  The vast majority of videos fall under that, so it shouldn't impact most people.

Thanks again to everyone for your feedback!  By this weekend, video uploads will be enabled again!

We temporarily disabled video uploads this week, because we were having some issues with our video transcoder (the thingy that turns your MPEG/AVI's into nifty little flash video files).

We started to fix it up, and discovered that we actually don't get a huge number of video uploads a day. 

Here are our options:

a) Video?!  Xanga is about blogging... disable video upload and just focus on blogging.  People can always upload to Youtube.
b) Have a team fix up the video  transcoder.  It's super convenient to upload videos from inside of Xanga, and we don't want to lose that.
c) Fix up the video transcoder, but make it available premium only (so premium members would get faster transcoding)

What do you think... a, b or c?

We've gotten a lot of requests from Xangans to find ways to help drive traffic to your Xanga sites! So we used the Facebook API to provide an easy way for you to update your Facebook News Feed when you post a blog.

At the same time, we know a lot of you like to keep your Xanga separate from RL, so there's a complete and utter opt-out here:

• http://edit.xanga.com/editeditorsetting.aspx

Let us know how it works for you and have a great weekend!

Within the next week, Xanga is going start offering subdomains like yourusername.xanga.com as your site URL!

We're the only major blogging service that doesn't use subdomains. We've always wanted to do it, but technically it wasn't easy.  But Dan put it into the idea system, and it quickly jumped to the #2 idea!  So we took another look at the technical problems... and were able to solve a lot of them.

So starting sometime later this week or next week:

• We will change your site URL's to yourusername.xanga.com, and
• forward any and all links to current urls (e.g. xanga.com/john) to the new URL (john.xanga.com)

You don't need to do anything, and your URL will work just fine.  It will be a completely seamless change.

What makes this exciting is that it comes with a host of advantages:

• Google search - Google says that subdomains like john.xanga.com do better in search than subfolders like xanga.com/john... so this tweak should help drive more traffic to your site!
• Reintroduction of Personal URL's - It would allow us to eventually offer full URL's.  For example, you might change the URL of your site to yourusername.com.
• Security Flexibility - Subdomains make it easier to increase cookie security.

But before we do any of this, we wanted to give a heads up!  All old links will be forwarded to the new URLs, so you won't have to do anything on your end.  But we wanted to give a heads up anyway...

If you prefer the old way - www.xanga.com/username - don't worry you can keep using it! That url will still work fine when you type it into a browser or send it to friends.

It's exciting to crank out the top features in the Ideas system... hope you guys will enjoy this one!  We'll post more details when we're closer to rolling out the feature.

We launched Stars almost two years ago.  At first they were a big hit, and helped find those hidden jewels of content on Xanga!  But then people started to game the stars system... de-starring popular posts, and creating fake accounts to star their own posts.

Ugh... what a mess.

So we created Recommends a year later... and it's really been night and day.  Posts with a lot of recommends tend to be interesting, and recommends is a lot harder to game (since you can't give a negative rec).  Plus there's a cost to recommending something - it appears in the inbox of your friends and subscribers.

All in all, recs are just better.  So... we're killing stars.  We've been steadily trimming features that aren't working on Xanga, to refocus on being a blogging community.  Actually we already killed Stars this morning but nobody has noticed!  We haven't gotten a single email about it... amazing.

How do you like life on Xanga without Stars?

We're looking into whether or not we should offer instant sub alerts.  We've added them for comments, replies, and PM's... and they've been a big hit.  And for technical reasons (see below), the non-instant daily digest is getting increasingly hard to pull off.

But before we made any decisions, we wanted to get your input on the pros and cons of instant alerts!

PROS:

• Instant alerts make it a lot easier for you to find out about updates.
• You can read Xanga while at work, school, or cafes without getting blocked by a firewall.
• We'd name the email "Subject:" lines so that Gmail knows how to thread them together into a conversation.
• It would tee us up to eventually offer updates over IM.
• It would be a lot easier to generate instant alerts than building customized daily digests for everyone.

Continue reading →

We just launched a new "Explore" area focused on weblogs! It's got the "Top Blogs" list plus a couple more ways to find cool posts:

• Most Rec'd - now you can see the most recommended posts on Xanga! This one is particularly neat - we've been using it ourselves to help find blogs to feature, and it's a lot of fun.
  

• Recent Updates - we've brought back Recent Updates! It's useful for finding new Xangans to welcome to our little community or just to find random stuff to read - hot off the presses. Tip of the hat to xanga.com/explosive and the 260 other Xanga who voted for the Idea.

Let us know what you think!