Have you ever posted content in Chinese (or another language) and gotten a bunch of strange symbols instead

To fix such language display problems, we're making changes to the way Xanga displays content in your browser (thanks Justin!). If this applies to you, we need your help! We've put the changes on a *test* site here:

• http://wwwuni.xanga.com

All you need to do is use the above link to browse Xanga like you normally do. If you notice any language display problems, please leave a comment or let us know on the Languages forum at:

• http://help.xanga.com/forums

Thanks!

Recently we launched User Tags for weblog posts, which allowed Xangans to tag Friends mentioned in their posts.  Thanks to Patrick, now you can tag Friends on your photos as well - just go to your Photo Manager, select the photo you wish to edit, and add User Tags of yourself or your Friends!

Here are a couple of ways that I might use User Tags:

• Write a post about my friend's New Year's party, and tag him so that he knows I had a great time
• Post photos of the baby shower I went to last week, and tag the mother-to-be

What I love most about User Tags is that the Friends you tag receive email alerts so that they can check out the items you've tagged (but if they prefer, email alerts can be turned off here).  It's the easiest way to let them know that you've posted photos of them on your Xanga site!

If you're my Friend, you can check out all the items where I've been tagged (if we're not Friends yet, you can invite me to be your Friend ):

• http://www.xanga.com/usertags/all/Mary/

Have fun tagging your posts and photos, and... Happy New Year!

Have you ever mentioned a friend in a post and then called them to say "Hey, check out my Xanga!"? Or had a friend mention you in a post, but you didn't see it until weeks later??

With User Tags, it just got a lot easier to find posts that mention you! A User Tag is a special type of tag that allows you to link your posts to your Friends on Xanga. For example, on this post, I've tagged myself and Patrick for programming this new feature .

We've added some safeguards to protect your privacy. For now, you can only tag yourself and your Friends, and only your Friends can view the page that lists all the items where you've been tagged (click on the username in the User Tags module). In addition, if you're tagged on another Xanga site, you can still remove that User Tag by visiting the page and clicking on "remove" next to your username (of course, you need to be signed in first).

To add User Tags to your weblog, just open up a New Weblog Entry or edit an existing post:

• http://www.xanga.com/private/editorx.aspx

Please check it out - we'd love to hear what you think!

Introducing Xanga Networks, a more private way to keep in touch with groups of friends!

A lot of people join Xanga to keep in touch with their friends at school, at church, at work... Wouldn't it be great if there was an easy way to find and connect with each group of friends?  Some people have been using blogrings to do just that, but of course that can be less than private.  So we've created Xanga Networks, a more private/exclusive way to keep in touch.

You can create a network for your high school, college, company, organization, or military group.  Best of all, *only* network members can access pages within the network.  In fact, you need a special key to join
a
network, such as a confirmed email address from that network – for
example, name@somecollege.edu could be used to join the
“Some College” network (note: this is not a real school ).  And if your
network isn't listed yet, you can simply create it and be the first to
join!

Thanks to Patrick, Xanga Networks is officially in beta
testing - please check it out, and let us know what you
think:

• http://network.xanga.com/networkmanager.aspx

Update: You can now check out the new Networks module on my site to see which networks I've joined!

Patrick just launched global Weblog Tags!  Here's how it works: if you tag a public post, it'll be shared with the Xanga community.  For example, here are all the posts tagged "xangatags":

• http://www.xanga.com/tags/xangatags

If you'd like your post to appear on this global tags page, just 1) write a new public post about tags and how you plan on using them on Xanga, 2) tag it with "xangatags" and 3) submit it.  Just don't forget to tag your post - thanks!

• CREATE A NEW POST NOW!

Now you can tag your weblog posts!  Many of you have asked for an easy way to categorize your posts, so Patrick and Janet added Weblog Tags to help you do just that .

A few examples of how I might use Weblog Tags (check out all my tags here):

• Write a post about my friend's wedding and tag it with "wedding" and "beautiful"
• Make a photo collage of my last vacation and tag the post with all the sights I saw
• Post an announcement about the new Weblog Tags and tag it with "tags"

Soon we'll be launching global Weblog Tags, and you'll be able to search for interesting public posts by tags.  But for now, check out the changes to our Editor and try adding tags to your posts - both old and new!

• http://www.xanga.com/private/editorx.aspx
  

As promised, Patrick just launched
global Video Tags!

For example, check out this (now
famous!) video of Gromit:

you want to see more videos like it, you can just click on the global

tag icons in the Tags module and see all public videos tagged with
dog, video or xanga!

With this feature
launch, we now support tags for both Photos and Videos... and we've
already started working on Weblog Tags .
Don't forget to check out Video Top Tags to find cool ideas for your
own videos!

Ever
wish it was easier to share and find cool photos on
Xanga?  Patrick just made it easier with global
Photo Tags!  To view all public photos tagged with a certain
word or phrase, click on the colorful "X" icon next to the individual
tag on your photoblog.

Your photos will only appear on the global taglists if: 1) they are "public" and 2) you have tagged them.  If you prefer not to share your photos, you can mark them "private" or remove their tags here.

We'll
soon be launching an All-Time Top Tags list, so if you haven't been
doing so already, start adding tags to your photos!  First,
global Photo Tags... next we'll be working on Video Tags and even
Weblog Tags .

A quick example of Xanga Photo Tags:
here at Xanga HQ, we like to play office pranks on each other from time
to time .  With Photo
Tags, I love how easy it was to group all the photo evidence
together:

    http://photo.xanga.com/tags/prank

We'd love to hear what you think!

Now you can hide your Xanga site from outside search engines!

We've noticed that many of you prefer not to be indexed by outside search engines, such as Google and Yahoo. Earlier this year, we introduced the Xanga Lock, which blocked all unsigned in visitors (including search engines ). But some of you pointed out that while you didn't want to be indexed by search engines, you still wanted to allow non-Xangan friends to read your site. That made a lot of sense, so Monsur added a Search Engine privacy setting that lets *you* decide whether or not to allow outside search engines to index your site.

• http://edit.xanga.com/editaccountprivacy.aspx

Please note that this works for all search engines that support the Robots Meta Tag, including Google, Yahoo, and MSN. We hope this helps!

For Premium users - If you are using a Xanga Skin to design your frontpage, please add the following Skin tag to the HEAD section of your Skin code: <$No_Search$>. All other pages on your site support the new Search Engine privacy setting, including your posts, photos, profile, etc.