Since we've been adding a lot more photo servers, upgrading our equipment, and making tweaks to our photo features, we're finally able to upgrade everyone's storage and upload limits.  Also this will help the Xangans that are taking many more pictures and using crazy complex cameras that take higher quality pictures.   Thanks to Janet, we'll start with our Premium members first - here's how it will improve:

dan: unlimited.
chris: you're crazy.

But it makes sense.  I just bought a Nikon D50 SLR camera and was surprised on how quickly I would hit limits when uploading.  Now with these new limits, people like me don't have to worry so much!  We'll eventually bump our classic users too, but thought our premium users could enjoy their new and much greater limits first. 

Sooo, everybody go nuts.  Feel free to upload photos with more storage and more uploads! 

It's finally here - Xanga supports photo albums!  We're still tweaking this feature, but most of the functionality is in place so we wanted to let everyone try it out right away. Here are some of the key features for albums:

• Make as many albums as you want
  
• "List" or "Unlist" albums to control who views them
  
• Custom ordering of photos inside an album - with cool new drag & drop controls (now live!)

We also added two big updates:

• Batch Privacy controls - make a whole page of photos public or private with one click
  
• Filmstrip style navigation when viewing photos in an photoblog or an album

Thanks to Janet, Dan, Matt and Marc, the photo page is really coming together - next, we're looking into finding ways that you can feature your photoblogs and albums from your main xanga site.

In the meantime, for all of you that uploaded a bunch of photos into your manager, try it out - make an album, share an album, and let us know what you think! 

You can create new albums here:
  http://photo.xanga.com/photomanager.aspx
  http://upload.xanga.com/uploadphotos.aspx

Some people have asked me why we have to be Friends for them to sign my Chatboard (or leave a Memory). Good question!  We set it up that way to prevent people spamming Chatboards and Memories.  But so many people have asked us to open it up, we thought we'd do just that.

Now, any Xangan will be able to post to your Chatboard or leave Memories.  It's a great low key way to say hello and just meet other cool Xangans.  But if you'd prefer to keep your Chatboard and Memories "Friends only", no problem - Joel programmed it so that you can easily change your Privacy Preferences:

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

You can also invite all your subs to be friends! 

http://profile.xanga.com/edit/inviteSubs.aspx

I'm looking forward to chatting with ya!

Ever since we launched photoblogs and profiles, we've been getting questions about how to find them:

How exactly are you supposed to find [photoblogs] on someone's site? Because, correct me if I'm wrong, there isn't a direct link.
Posted 5/19/2006 at 4:00 PM by Rachel

Thanks to Dave and Janet, now they're easier to find - we just added direct links to photos and profile! Also - as we were developing this, we noticed that very few Xangans used the reviews and events links.  To minimize clutter, we decided to hide those; if you'd like to show them, just check out the FAQ here.

We've put the new headers on the Photoblogs and Profile pages, so you can get a preview of what the new links look like (or just check out that pic to the right):

•  http://photo.xanga.com/chris


•  http://profile.xanga.com/chris

If you're down with it, tomorrow we'll add these links to the weblog page as well .  Let us know what you think!

[UPDATE]   The new links are now live!  Thanks for all the great feedback!

Today, we're officially launching syndication feeds!  Now you can easily share or syndicate your posts, so others can read them outside of Xanga.  You can view mine here:

http://www.xanga.com/chris/rss 

This was actually a hidden feature that janet and joel worked on a while ago. But we're finally announcing official support because, thanks to dave, we now have privacy controls.  If you prefer to turn off your feed, you can do so here:

http://www.xanga.com/private/editaccountprivacy.aspx

Let us know what you think.

Our new 2 gig photo manager has been a big hit!   Almost too big of a hit - we've been stunned that some Premium users hit our storage limit of 2 gb and uploads limit of 100mb a month?!

So Dave made a Power-up, so our Premium users can upgrade to more storage/uploads if they wish.  We're calling it Premium Plus!, since it's basically just like Premium but with extra storage/uploads.  The optional Premium Plus! plan gives you UNLIMITED storage and 1GB of monthly uploads, in exchange for an extra ~$2 a month.  Other than that, it's is exactly like Premium (so unless your heavily upload pictures and use a ton of storage, then don't worry about upgrading!).

While we were working on this, we discovered that almost nobody's using our two-year and lifetime options.  Also, Lifetime has generated a lot of fraud for us - people will steal a credit card, and then buy Lifetime for 5 friends .  Since each option is a lot of work for us, we decided to eliminate the two-year and lifetime plans.  But we know that some people have been saving up for the Lifetime Premium - so through the end of November 2005,  end of December 2005 ,we'll be accepting checks or money orders for lifetime memberships through the mail.  Instructions on that can be found here.  And of course, we will honor all past lifetime memberships.

In the meantime, I hope this Premium Plus! power-up comes in handy for our heavy photo users!  Just to think, a few months ago, our old Premium plan only offered 20mb of total storage... and now, our Premium Plus plan offers unlimited total storage, and a 1,000mb of monthly uploads.  Technology is just amazing... hope you enjoy!

• Learn more about Premium Plus!
  
• Upgrade to Premium Plus!

Email Posting now supports Photos and Moblogging!

Ever want to post from your mobile phone?  Thanks to Dave, now you can with our new and improved Email Posting page!

I personally use a LG VX8100 camera phone from Verizon and love it.  Now, I can take a photo of my dog and post it straight to my site! This feature works through email (so make sure your mobile phone has email support.)

Also, if you're feeling lazy about uploading multiple pictures, you can now attach them to an email.  We also decided to simplify the Email Posting page so it uses point-and-click settings. 

So if you've got Xanga Premium or a Free Trial - can you try this feature out for us, and let us know how it goes?   If you could also let us know which phone/carrier you use, that's be awesome!

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

PREMIUM ACCOUNTS

Ever try to make changes to your Xanga premium subscription? You had to find the right FAQ, fill out the contact form, build a robot, send an email and then wait for a reply.    All in all, it was quite a long process! So we decided to shorten it dramatically, by making a page where you can edit it all yourself! 

Wanna cancel your premium subscription?   Check out any old payments?  See when your free trial is gonna expire?  Thanks to Janet and John, we have a new page that should do the trick!  Please take a look and let us know what you think!

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