Xanga Tips and Tricks

I’ll bet you know something I don’t.  So I want you to ‘fess up and make my life easier.  What are the sparkling gem-secrets about Xanga that you’ve discovered along the way that have made your blogging experience a whole load lighter??  What experientially- or intuitively-divined method have you stumbled upon to make blogging for you a zen-like non-ordeal?? 

Okay…okay…so you protest that time’s still a prick and the non-instantaneity of the world generally sucks, but surely you must have one tip, know at least one trick, that could salvage for all of us one additional sliver of time from our life online to let us but smell one more rose before we croak??

I do not ask but as I give.  So below are some items of proffered froth that I have churned up from the bottom of my own procedural blogging bucket.  For many of you, all of what I’m about to offer may seem mundanely matter-of-fact: “I already knew that,” will be your response.  Very well.  Then teach me: tell me something you know that I don’t.  I am the grasshopper.  You are the master.  Teach!

Thought to self: *I think perhaps that tender newbie Xangaroonies might benefit the most by our “insider” (translate: Xangalescent, Xangarelic) insights.  So let us here nurture such  new-blogs lest someday in our moment of blogging senility they stomp us out mercilessly in an act of ungrateful ascension.*   *hahahahaha* … … …

If you find it hard to read someone’s blog because the background color and text do not contrast much, yet you still want to read it, try holding down the left mouse button and selecting the text using your mouse.  The text and background should then contrast more vividly.  If you find it hard to read someone’s blog because it doesn’t make much sense, try reading it backwards.  If it makes more sense then, look for the mark of 666 and then get the hell out of there.

Composing in Word and copying/pasting to Xanga works fine when viewed by Internet Explorer but often leaves a nasty random residue of trash code (something like <xml:o namespace……etc, etc., :font> ) if viewed by Netscape.  To avoid the trash code for Netscape viewers, first copy your finished, spell-checked Word composition to the Notebook applet and then copy and paste from that applet to the posting applet.  You may lose some of the formatting features of Word along the way (Word hyperlinks, etc.), but will have had the convenience and benefit, nonetheless, of a more powerful composition application for your draft.  But if you hate Netscape and Netscape users with a passion, just cut-n-paste directly from Word--Bill G. would be proud of you!

If your’e using Internet Explorer and the Xanga applet to write poetry, you’ll notice that at the end of every line, if you hit the “Enter” key, it will skip a line between lines.  Like this:

I hate the yearning white gap

Of unfilled unpoetry.

To avoid the “skipped” line above , hold down the “Shift” key and then hit “Enter” :

The claustrophobia of existence
Seizes my verse too tersely.

You can take back eProps that you’ve awarded.  Just go back to the post and downsize.  But why the hell would you ever want to do that???  Please…no..don’t try it here!!

Your opportunity to appear on the Featured Content list starts and runs for 24 hours from the time of a post’s first submission.  Updating the timestamp doesn’t buy you any more time on the list (it once did!).  Also, the last I checked, if you privatize a post and then make it public, the 24-hour Featured Content clock started from the first timestamp  of the Private post.  So if you want the full 24-hour Featured Content exposure of a Private post going Public, the best thing to do is copy (cut-n-paste) the whole post into a new xTools submit window and submit it afresh.  Get ready, get set, go!

If you’re using AOL and the built-in AOL browser and your connection terminates, you’ll lose everything in your xTools entry window since the built-in browser closes with AOL.  However, if you use AOL and launch a browser, either Internet Explorer or Netscape, that is not built in, losing your connection will not close the submit entry window and you can always cut-n-paste and save your work to another application (Notepad, Word, etc.).  If your not using AOL and its built-in browser but like torture, you should use it.  There are so many more limitations the AOL built-in browser places on blogging that it’s a scream!

If you have Premium, Xanga offers a download archive service for all your blogs as a backup.  If you lack Premium and want to back up your work, you can: 1) copy it into a Word document, for instance, and save it; 2) email the post to yourself and retain the email; 3) use the “Add to Favorites”, “Make Available Offline” feature of Internet Explorer to store a cached copy of your current posted page on your PC; 4) take a picture of your monitor while its displaying your post and save that!!!

If you’re posting pictures (.jpg’s), first decreasing their color depth from 16.7 million to 256 colors will greatly reduce the size (hence storage space needed and time-in-loading) of the images without noticeably hampering their quality at all in almost all cases.  There are a lot of free graphics programs that can accomplish this routine task.  When posting pictures of beautiful nekkid women, however, never do this!!  Losing even a single hue of beauty, however imperceptible, to me, is mentally cruel!! 

…I’m sure I have another tip or too, and If I remember any more, I’ll post them as a comment here. 

Okay, now it’s time to hear from you!