November 7, 2001

  • monsur left as a comment on my last post a reference to a post of his own which I here reprint as a community service:


    Its days like this that really make me love what I'm doing here at Xanga. Recently many of you have noticed network problems with Xanga; in order to alleviate the issue, Dan and I implemented the following:



    • Lowering the number of posts displayed per page
    • Changing the way the archive calendar is implemented
    • Making the pages "tighter", ie removing extra white spaces in HTML, etc...

    Though they sound innocuous, these changes actually lead to a 40% reduction in page size (mostly due to the number of posts per page), making for faster downloads for you and less bandwidth constraints for us. Woo hoo!


    And though they sound innocuous, these changes weren't easy. I spent almost six hours today perusing our most heavily trafficked pages, line by line, and reformatted the HTML to remove any extraneous characters and refactor some code; its a very looooooong and tedious process.


    This is indicative of the work that goes on here every day, though it isn't always apparent to you guys. Personally, I prefer to keep this work behind the scenes, quietly improving Xanga while using my own Xanga site as a personal creative outlet. Xanga is all about community, and I enjoy participating in the community as just another user, rather than as one of the "gods". But with all the recent negativity directed towards us, its really hard to keep quiet.


    We are a few people with a DSL; we're trying really hard to make do with our resources. If you take the time to peruse the site, you'll discover we've built an enormous number of features, to create what we believe is the best blog community on the web. Sure we have our problems, everyone does. But with your patience and support, we are committed to growing this site and quietly eliminating these issues. A little support goes a long way towards letting us know that what we are doing is appreciated.


    And personally, I'll try to keep you updated about what's going on here; I really don't blog as much as I should anyway I'm really excited about what we are doing here at Xanga; I hope you are too.


    Actually, before reading this, I saw lcsaph today who told me about the shortened pages (5 posts) she had noticed and I suggested to her that it was likely an effort to reduce bandwidth usage.  So you see, monsur, john, and dan, some of us are aware and sensitive to such matters!

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