April 3, 2008
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Quick Thoughts on Xanga
I think Xanga is an awesome blogging site and online community. I love that I can have my audio, thoughts and photos on one page, and that they're all hosted securely at the same place. I love that I can design my site how I want and that there are relatively few aesthetic limitations to what can be done here. And for the most part I really like the new inbox. I also love that Xanga listens and responds to people who use the site here. But to make Xanga even better I think a couple things could be done..
When Xanga first released the universal inbox, its default setting was on feedback rather than all items. About a week or so later they changed that to all items but I really miss the original way they released it. For me I greatly appreciate the people who comment on my site and I enjoyed being reminded of their comments when logging in. This often increased the likelihood of me returning their words with a comment or a mini to their site. In general I just think that being able to set the default settings in the universal inbox would be pretty darn rad. Anyone with me?
Second, star.xanga.com is a cool concept because certain photos can win star awards. I've even won a couple myself but when I went looking for other awarded photos I couldn't seem to find em'. This is probably the only aspect I miss about Xanga boost - the newspaper layout made finding boosted items fairly easy. I'd love to see "awarded photos/weblogs/videos" sections at star.xanga.com.
hope you all have a safe and enjoyable weekend ~ Pedro
Comments (16)
Oh jeez.. you must be the only person on the planet who liked that newspaper layout!
But yeah, Inbox needs more personalization settings.. I'd love to see just comments, messages, blogs, and pulse.. nothing else. I swear right now, if I never see another crappy recommendation, I could die a happy man.
@sean -
Well the only thing I liked about the newspaper was that I could find awarded content but I agree it was cluttered. But now there are a ton of awarded pics that I've never seen - mainly because I don't know where to find em.
And as far as the recs go I agree! I have a lot of "friends" here on Xanga but I mainly trust the people I'm subscribed to. A bit more personalization would indeed be great!
Xanga is the best blogging community on the net,it has a lot more interaction than other blog sites and the xangateam works hard to keep it running efficiently.
they just disappeared ,Xanga reissued them,some stuck and some did not.I wish too that there was a better system for that.
I lost several of my star awards
I'm with you!
I love Xanga and all they do to make blogging enjoyable, but I wish when I opened up my universal inbox that it wouldn't automatically have "All Items" on the page, I think it should be the last tab. I don't want to see it ALL together because I end up missing the things that are more important (my subscribers and their feedback to me). I like the recommend feature (that's how I came here after all) but I'd rather just hit the recommended tab to see all that.
I think being able to set the default tab would be nice too.
i liked the newspaper idea too, a place where you can see some of the best content on xanga.
I don't receive a lot of comments so my universal inbox is quite tamed.
Hi! Just blog hoppin'
I actually like the new look and features of Xanga =D
I came because of a recommendation! I'd like that universal inbox and all it's contents sorted into tabs. I get annoyed trying to find where I left off in the mess of recommendations, messages to go see the latest posts that I would go see if I could find them in the mass of messages about them, and all the rest of that stuff that could actually make sense if it was just filtered into tabs. Universal inbox is not great...a presorted inbox would be pretty useful.
@moniet - what do you mean by a presorted inbox? There are tabs in the universal inbox already. Is there something that you don't like about those? Please let me know what you think. Thanks!
@ayca - Yes, there are tabs, but ultimately it all shows up together, which is not as useful as it might have been. It'd be so much handier if it all just sorted into some tabs...a tab for recs, a tab for messages, a tab for comments, and not have the entire site's info and feedback and posts all dumped into a 'universal' anything...because things are 'lost' that way, if you have a busy site, or a lot of writers.
And honestly, I don't 'get' why there is yet another list of new posts or added photos, videos, and all those items there, because we already have the subs reading list, that DOES sort into tabs, so all that being dumped on another page is a redundant feature that is not that helpful for actually finding things, but does make it difficult to keep track of what it offers.
There are multiple redundancies...there are two places to 'see' new photos added, two places to see comments, ect. Instead of all of that going into the universal box, putting the new posts and photos and such from your subs added on the subs page, just as it was before the universal page and still is on the subs page, and taking all that out of the universal page, and the rest that is left on that universal inbox page sort into tabs such as recs, messages, comments made by others and by you, replies, posts by friends, things like that...would make it much simpler to keep track. My .02.
@moniet - Thanks for taking the time to write this down!
@ayca - No problem! It's not a big thing, it's just an annoyance that probably could be fixed. If the universal page worked like the subs online page, that'd be great...easy to find or ignore whatever you chose! LOL
I've never been to star.blabla
I'll have to go.
i really only pay attention to my comments......didnt' know that xanga had so much to offer.
hope you have a wonderful weekend!!!!!!!
Thanks for the heads up on star.xanga.com
Hello. Great job. I did not anticipate this. This is a impressive story. Thanks!