How to Make a Cool Xanga

From LoveToKnow SocialNetworking

Many people new to the social networking craze are learning how to make a cool Xanga. Though it started, back in 1999 as a movie and music review site, Xanga has fully integrated into the field of personalized web 2.0 sites.

As with any personalized site, the best way to really set up your Xanga to reflect your own personality is to start with what the site provides, and then adjust it to reflect your own taste and desires.

Starting With Yourself

The signup process for Xanga is incredibly easy – a simple email form and confirmation and you're set with a fairly basic template. In fact, it's downright boring, simply because it has yet to be populated with your own profile, personal information (as much as you choose to share) and your pictures.

This is a very important thing to know about how to make a cool Xanga: it's only as cool as you make it. Before using all the nifty colors and backgrounds you need to provide the content yourself.

This doesn't have to be personally identifying information – in fact, it shouldn't be. Instead, take a look along the top of your Xanga page. You'll see several different places you can enter information:

weblog – The blogging craze is one of the biggest to hit the web, and your Xanga page has its own blog that incorporates RSS feeds for people to subscribe.
photos – Xanga includes not only web interfaces for adding pictures via your browser, but also integrated upload programs for Windows based computers.
videos – While sites such as YouTube have made video very easy to get to, having a page of your videos on Xanga along with the rest of your content is a convenient part of how to make a cool Xanga.
albums – It may seem a bit confusing to have "albums" as its own category as opposed to "photos", but this is just another way that Xanga makes the site uniquely customizable to every user. Albums and contents can also be "tagged" with various categories and words that allow them to be shared with other Xanga users.
audio – Going back to its roots, Xanga includes a way to upload audio just like you uploaded the video. Copyright violations are something to be aware of, but it's a great place for your personal podcasts or latest creation on Garageband.
pulse – This is a kind of "microblog", similar to MySpace's "status update" or Twitter. It's a way to simply say what you're doing at the moment, and then your pulse is mixed in with that of all the other users, creating an ongoing stream of messages.
profile – Your profile is how people get to know you, and you can make it as descriptive or not as you like. You may want too be as specific as including your last name and location, or just may want to list the books and food and other things you enjoy. The more you fill out on your profile, the more likely it is that cool people like you will find you and contact you via Xanga.

How to Make a Cool Xanga Theme of Your Own

Once you have filled the page with all the amazing content that is the interesting person that is you, it's time to really personalize the page. The quickest way to do this is first to click on the "browse themes" icon on the left side of the page, near the subheading of "Your Site." This will take you to a huge gallery of themes created both by the Xanga team and by users like you.

Selecting a theme is as easy as clicking on it – all of your content, videos, pictures, etc. will be fitted into the theme with the colors and layout that are provided. However, the real magic lies after you have selected a layout that is close but not quite what you had in mind. Click on the "Edit Themes" button and suddenly you are presented with a brand new interface:

As you can see it contains the tools to completely remake the entire theme: layout, modules, background pictures, text colors, the works. Some of it does require some coding skills such as HTML, but for the most part it is a very straightforward drag-and-click kind of interface.

Using these techniques you will quickly learn how to make a cool Xanga to share with the rest of the web community, keeping it alive and vital with shared information and experiences.

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