September 23, 2013

  • Sharing 2.0 Tips - and Gathering Concerns

    Many Xangans have been stepping up to the plate in how to work this upgraded platform.

    From the initial launch of 2.0 - The Xanga Team has already added 'Xanga Photo's' - an easy way to link our photos to our accounts.

    Expect more improvements/enhancements as things move forward.

    This is a HUGE move, and there's still many Xangans who are realizing that Xanga has just upgraded.

    Sad, but true that people are still finding out about this upgrade.

     

    Personally, this past month I've been slammed with a lot of real life and personal demands - keeping me away from my usual blogging efforts.   I'm just getting back into the swing of things.

    I'm incredibly encouraged by fellow Xangans stepping up to the plate by sharing tips and ideas on how to operate Xanga 2.0.

    These were submitted by @PrincessPowers from my last post:

    http://princesspowers.xanga.com/2013/09/12/2-0-help-with-pics/

    Help with the comment moderation, as I indicated earlier in this comment feed:

    Step one: Hover as indicated in this pic (link) http://princesspowers.xanga.com/?attachment_id=294

    Step two: If you don’t want to have to moderate all comments from your friends, uncheck this box (link) http://princesspowers.xanga.com/?attachment_id=359
    I've been helping where I can through Xanga's facebook page - but am very encouraged that fellow Xangans are also helping each other out.

    Besides various Tips being shared, there's also a few concerns:

    One concern comes from @slmret (and a few others) - who asked about the e-mails being displayed in the comment moderation tab.  I've forwarded some compiled concerns to my contacts on the Team and am awaiting a response.

    Another concern some folks have had is why I'm promoting the Xanga Facebook page - well, to put it simply - I have access to that page - and that page is community managed.   We want to help drive traffic from that page to individual Xangan blogs.    As the main page will eventually be modified to something new (with our input) - so Xanga's facebook page will highlight Xanga's main page - and will continue to highlight Xangans and their individual blogs.  Think of the facebook page as an extension of Xanga's reach - like most social media outlets are for large corporations.

    In over 20 years of my working career, I've seen my share of transitions.   There's always a valley of despair during transitions.    These are those moments where many people are tired, frustrated - or just simply 'over it.'     But it's always darkest before dawn in these situations.   We're all in this together - and it will get better.

    Feel free to share links of posts you find and/or have shared that provide tips and concerns.   I'll be happy to share them here as well as passing along the information through the facebook page.

Comments (29)

  • On your last post, I thanked Xanga for fixing the bug on my site which was not allowing people with older squarish monitors, plus those with tablets and phones, to view my site without cut-in-half photos, etc. They fixed that and I am so grateful. But NOW, several fellow Xangans cannot read my posts from the reading page at all ~ they must click on the comments and go there to be able to see my posts as they should be. Hopefully, this problem is not linked to the fix they did ~ but is just something that needs to be stabilized. The poor people trying to correct all these problems! Must be overwhelming ~ I'm still hopeful it will all get sorted out soon, but it sure is frustrating. There are other issues that need attention too, but they can wait ~ sigh ~

  • One question about the photos ~ HOW does one link old photos to new posts? I see no way to do so ~ I must be blind ~ ??

    • For now, at least until I figure out an easier way (unless someone else has some input) - find the URL of the image through the photo tab - and 'insert media' and 'from URL' to insert into your post.

      That's what I have for the moment.

  • So is one supposed to find new sites to read through the facebook page now? That seems kind of backwards. Since almost everyone I knew/read left with 2.0 I feel like my xanga has turned into a journal..and I have very VERY few sites left to read. IT would be nice to be able to expand that a bit..

    • Actually, the facebook page is just another avenue to find new sites to follow. By all means, take a look at the comments of people's posts, check out their sites and subscribe/friend. The options are limitless on finding fellow xangans. :)

  • How did this post retroactively in the feed? It wasn't here all day yesterday and suddenly here you are, two pages back in my feed.

  • I mean I assume it has to do with a timestamp, but if this gets lost, that is why. I wonder what your time is formatted to.

  • Thanks again for your help with this transition, Joel. How did this miss my Readings page yesterday, yet show up today? I actually saw it first on twitter! Is that a new normal?

    • it appears that I had it scheduled out yesterday - but it didn't go 'live' on time. Even I'm learning something new about this platform. :)

  • "This is a HUGE move, and there’s still many Xangans who are realizing that Xanga has just upgraded.

    Sad, but true that people are still finding out about this upgrade."

    Of course this should come as no surprise to anyone since Xanga never sent out a global private message to users, nor did they use a main login bulletin page like they are doing now to inform people- though they said that would be done.

    As a result everyone who didn't frequent the front page or had taken a few months off the system was never informed.

    So this extra "burden" put on them is the direct result of the lack of properly communicating to people up front.

    Sadly, the trend continues...

    • We can do one of two things, Soulfire.

      A - focus on the 'woulda' - 'coulda' or 'shoulda' - or
      B - move forward into the 'what we can and will do now.

      What's past is past - let's move forward.

  • Yes, Joel, that method of inserting the URL for the photo works ~ thank you!

  • The problem is, the "coulda-shoulda-wouldas" are things Soulfire, NotforProphet, myself, and many others have warned Xanga repeatedly about during their ill-conceived plan. It was their choice to either ignore us or they did not bother to pay attention to what's been going on in their own site for months. And it was their choice to promise a whole bunch of actions which they failed to deliver on, and that's after they pocketed people's money.

    So here we are, with Xanga averaging just 300 unique daily visitors FOR THE WHOLE SITE. For a public site, that is just...beneath pathetic. My average blog posts got more views than that. Forget restoring Xanga 2 to its predecessor's levels, what is Xanga's plan to bump it up to even 1,000 views?

    • I'm not denying your input - in fact we all know what your input has been. My challenge to you and many others is to see what WE can do as a community together. Not to focus on the problems, but rather to promote solutions.

      There are some solutions we can do NOW to help the community, while other solutions can and will be implemented later.

      The launch has happened, we are here now. The question is - what can we do now?

  • Unfortunately, Joel, there doesn't appear to be much that we can do. As much as you and the Xanga Team try to market this as a "community driven" site, in the end, they are the ones that control all the levers. The individual members of Xanga have almost no access or power to do anything on this site except blog. It's also very apparent that they have no interest in our input at all. Out of all of us, you seem to have the most pull with the Xanga Team, and even then, they have kept you in the dark and pulled fast ones over you time and time again. So in the end, what can we do?

    • Actually, there is a lot we can do now:

      - make note of what is working, and what isn't. The team is doing all they can to make sure everyone's accounts is taken care of appropriately - to at least bring people to the basics of where many of us are currently at. They may have a short list of priorities already, but making note of what is needs to be done will help.

      - since 2.0 is wordpress based, find wordpress plugins and make note of which ones would work well for 2.0. This is part of the next phase that the team is going into - and if they have a list of plugins to research ASAP - implementation will be a LOT faster.

      - take a look at various theme's and theme plugins as well.

      Any other enhancements and or notations that can be passed along to the team.

      Feel free to start a 'how to' series on your blog. How to navigate this basic upgrade - from setting up your profile, to embedding photo's in a post. Explore the adding of pages and how to post on those pages....

      These 'how to's' can help other xangans adapt to 2.0 much easier.

      We're community driven - and while we're still waiting on the xanga team to do certain things, we already have some options.

      Find opportunities on what is possible. The above are just a few - I'm sure there are many more that can be explored.

  • My only real issue I have remaining is the personal domain name I have, which was working find before the changeover. I new it would probably have to be mapped differently with the change to the WordPress servers. I'm just sad its taking so long. I've written the Xanga Team for help, but to no avail so far.

    Other than that issue, I'm just waiting to see how the new platform develops. I do miss not being able to connect to people within Xanga easily though.

    Take care,
    Patrick

    • I received your message via the facebook page and forwarded the information to the team. Sorry for my slow response. If you're still having a challenge on it in a couple of days, let me know and I'll follow up with them.

  • I just wanted to thank you, again, Joel, for always being helpful and keeping us up to date on the transition.
    I sure appreciate you and your willingness to do this!
    HUGS!!! :-)

  • I just posted up a blog regarding how horrid Xanga 2.0 has become and some of the things that are either STILL messed up or NOW messed up, such as:

    My archive no longer has any structure whatsoever. Posts from 2010 are randomly showing up in 2011, posts that should be on one date are nowhere to be found....

    SPAMMERS.... omgosh they are annoying the crap out of me, and I never use the word "Crap". I have gotten at least 1-2 PER DAY.

    HTML BLOGGING..... nothing makes me grind my teeth and get frustrated faster than having to type out HTML coding because they don't have the Font app I want to use. Simple underlining? Nope... no button, I have to HTML it every time.

    Xanga 2.0 has been nothing but a pain in the backside --- I am honestly hoping that they fix this.

    • It is slowly improving.

      Spam always happens, now we're just noticing it more because of stronger comment control.

      Odd about your posts showing up randomly. Suggest e-mailing help@xanga.net and let them know about that one.

  • Humorously ---- I typed in the HTML code for Underlining around the "HTML" in my comment.... and it didn't accept the HTML for my comment. This place sucks.

  • Rah rah rah ha ha ha!

  • Ja-Rule! Viva-la X power!!!

Comments are closed.

Post a Comment