January 11, 2003
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LOOKING AND FEELING UP YOUR XANGA
Thanks to everyone for your feedback on the new Look and Feel settings. I thought I’d answer your questions in a new post:
I CAN’T SEE THE NEW SETTINGS?
A few people mentioned that they couldn’t see the new settings on the Look and Feel page. I realized I didn’t write up instructions in my last post – sorry about that!
MAKING YOUR LEFT MODULES TRANSPARENT
Look under the Left Side Modules section (it’s the fifth one). See the Interior option in there? Set that to Transparent.
If you’d like to make your border disappear, you can do so in the same Left Side Modules section. Just set the Border option to Transparent.
TEXT ALIGNING YOUR LEFT MODULES
In the same Left Side Modules section should be two options: one says Title Text Alignment and the other says Module Text Alignment.
You can set either one to Left, Center, or Right.
HIDING YOUR SEARCH BAR
You can hide your search bar under the section called Search Bar (it’s the fourth section on the page). To hide it, just set the Show Search Bar to No.
If you do have these displayed, you can make the Interior and Border to Transparent, just as with your Left Modules.
ADDING BACKGROUND IMAGES (OR MUSIC) WITHOUT KNOWING HTML
This is the second-to-last section on the Look and Feel page. Hopefully they should both be self-explanatory.
IS THIS FREE?
Some people asked if these new Look and Feel features are Premium-only. They’re all available to everyone, including our Classic members.
WHY MAKE THIS FREE?
Why did we make this free – especially the Background Images/Music wizards, which used to be part of Xanga Premium? We just felt it made the user experience substantially better, without really costing us anything.
We also haven’t heard feedback that these two features were the main reason people upgrade to Xanga Premium (my personal guess is Premium xTools, Image Hosting, and Skins). We’ll know better soon though, when we run an upcoming survey on why people have upgraded to Premium.
MY MUSIC/BACKGROUND IMAGES ARE NOT WORKING?
I visited a few of the sites that mentioned this, and they seem to be working now. Perhaps you’re using an external host which was down at the time?
HOW DO I HIDE THE BANNER?
We get a lot of email about this too, which kind of amazes me. The only way to hide the banner that I know if is to upgrade…
THIS IS NICE BUT WHAT ABOUT ________ FEATURE?
We’ve added all your ideas to the list, thanks!
Comments (25)
THIS IS NICE BUT WHAT ABOUT thankyou FEATURE?
oh and Mac blah blah blah mac, blah.
wow =)
sugar~
very cool.
any word on the code for the new calendar feature?
i don’t see the options. my bravenet counter won’t show up
fun fun!
still waiting to be able to backup my whole archive…
If I had premium, I’d upgrade only for the image hosting. I wish I could image host from classic, but such is the life…
Thank you for all the work guys!
The one thing that made premium attractive to me was Archiving. It’s nice to be able to save all my posts and the comments. Image hosting is a nice plus, but I don’t do images enough to warrant it. xTools doesn’t work in Netscape, and I realize I might be in a minority here but I like it that way
The only thing I don’t like about the Netscape Xanga editor is that the editing window is only 11 lines by 33 charactors. I would love it if you could make it bigger.
I’ll just keep telling you about any funkiness I see so you can make things even better
hi i sort of copied ur layout… tell me if ur comfortable
Feeling up my xanga, John?
getting a little risque, aren’t we?
(I love it!)
gotta problem..wen i change stuff..and den click preview…it doesnt work. my internet juss shuts off..helps – -+
That’s odd – I’ve never seen “background music”, “user experience”, and “better” all used in the same sentence before.
ha! @ Sean! I would have to agree with him! tee hee
Great new features…. can’t wait to see how you rework the calendar.
Now all we need is a ”Re-organize your Closet Space” feature and I’ll be all set! ;o)
I have, Sean! But, there is always a negative operand (i.e. “not”) somewhere in the sentence!
As for reasons to upgrade, I think you hit the nail no the head. The skins is what really drew me in, but image hosting on Xanga was better than hosting from an outside site, and the premium xTools comes in handy, on occassion (i.e. when I am really lazy).
The archive was a hidden bonus that I really think should be advertised more…
This is probably the wrong place to ask but I’m lost and confused — is the Search broken? Yes, I’m Premium. If you go to Liz_A’s site and search for ‘sleepfucker’ which is a word in her today’s entry, and say ‘Search this site’, Search does not find it. What’s up?
Further to comments on why people upgrade,for me it was getting Premium X-tools,as decorating my posts had become an addiction,and having a custom module - being able to use that for stuff I think my readers would be interested in reading and other things I want to keep visible is a big attraction.
I’d love it if you could consider making it possible to hide the list of blogrings you’re in on your public site;I’d like to be able to do so for the same reasons that some people like being able to hide their SIR list.
when’s the next time you are going to offer premium for life? i want to pay for it the next time it comes around…
-SK8ER
Woo-hoo! No more search bar! Hmmm… my background image isn’t working though. When I preview it it does not show and it seems to be not working. Could you please help? Thanks!
I don’t like it, why does it automatically give 0 eprops if you don’t check one now? I don’t like that, also myself and a few others noticed that our tagline went AWOL. please change it back so that the default is comment only.
“FEELING UP YOUR XANGA” hmm sounds erotic
Ho Boy!!! Some new toys to play with!!! Thanks!
Thanks, John! I do like the changes (except the calander thingy, but that’s not THAT important to me, anyway).
But I’m curious… Last night I revamped my site and changed the font. I usually use a font that Xanga doesn’t offer. Anyway…the custom module WAS showing the font I used, which was Papyrus, then last night when I switched to Tempus Sans ITC, it stopped and is now only shows one of the fonts you offer. This changed in 5 minutes time. Am I doing something wrong? Unfortunately, the box that offers the Xanga fonts won’t allow us to “choose none”. Is there a way to do that??? Thanks.
Wow,my search bar appeared in my private site today;that’s gonna come in handy as I don’t remember it being visible in the private site before,and I know I haven’t changed any settings for that.
Congrats to the Xanga Crew! Another job well done!
Tina
Just thought I’d be the first to let you know, in the comments page, the background and music still doesn’t show (on Premium it does).
Was this purposely left unchanged?
Thanks,
silver.