So today I went back-tracking through my Archives on Xanga….. only to find it so badly screwed up that posts from 2010 are logged in 2011, a post I know for a fact that I wrote on June 5th, 2011 (my birthday, so there’s no question on when it was posted) is missing entirely from that month, and other posts which were posted a month earlier… are found later. In short, my whole Archive system has been botched, hacked to shreds in the move from Xanga 1.0 to Xanga 2.0….. and there’s really no way to fix it, nor is there any way for me to figure out what’s where any more. It’s all randomly oblivionized.

From having to deal with SPAM comments (oh they’re sly now…. leaving you comments that ALMOST sound applicable to the post…. but always including their JUNK WEBSITES as the link for their name.) on an almost daily level, to the fact that blogging here has become so painful as to actually make me NOT want to blog (I HATE HTML CODING!!!!!)—- I am honestly considering asking for my money back and pulling entirely out of Xanga 2.0. They’ve lost everything that made Xanga 1.0 so special.

Let me hasten to add this – What real posts I have made recently, I have likewise copied over to my Word Press account…. and guess what…. I’m actually getting REAL responses from REAL people and not spammers. Go figure. WordPress, which is based on the same format as the new Xanga 2.0, somehow garners me more people dropping in to randomly comment and subscribe THAN THE NEW XANGA 2.0 DOES!!!!

One more thing that has me upset now — whenever I post a link to a former blog I’ve written….. whoever made the last comment at that blog, THAT’S WHO’S PICTURE SHOWS UP AS THE THUMBNAIL!!!!! Not my picture, but someone else’s!!! What gives?

and I paid $48 for this?

John, you need to address what you’ve done to Xanga, because at the moment…. Xanga sucks. This coming from a former Life-time supporter.

So what happens if you pull the plug on your Xanga 2.0 account? One really has to wonder now. In any case… how many others out there are dissatisfied and why? Leave your comments (but not your spam) and let’s see if we can push this into someone’s face to get this problem fixed. it’s been 27 days now…. why does Xanga feel so….. lonely…. now.

This was something I wrote out to a brother from Ebay who was struggling who asked me to pray for him. He said he was often discouraged in his walk with Christ and felt like giving up. Here’s my comment which might help several people along the way of their own Christian walk:

1 Corinthians 10:13 — No temptation has come upon you except that which is common to man, and God is faithful, he will provide a way out.

• 1st) way out = prayer for strength, guidance or help. Keep praying until help comes. Remember Elijah prayed 3 times… Daniel prayed for several WEEKS…

• 2nd) way = Turn to a brother in Christ — that’s what we’re there for. Galatians 6:1-3, 1 John 5:16 — hold yourself accountable to someone nearby…. that’s what the Church is there for.

• 3rd) way out = Grace for when we fall. 1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, God is Faithful and Just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That is a promise. Every time you see the word “WILL” in scripture, it’s a promise you can bank on. God’s grace is new every morning, His compassions never fail. (Lamentations 3:22) —- WE —- may beat ourselves up for our failures, but God knows we are but flesh, he knows our struggles, and he understands. All he is looking for from you is to build in you the ability to keep turning back to him, to keep coming back to him and to remember that HE IS OUR STRENGTH…. that we have none of our own.

This is my current status update on Facebook — worth sharing and taking note of here.

At the moment — and hopefully it won’t stay this way — but at the moment, Xanga 2.0 sucks.

(A) There is no interaction with random sites.
(B) there is no front page for which to meet, greet or read random bloggers who have (had) something to say.
(C) They’ve eliminated the whole “community” feeling of Xanga 1.0.
(D) Reviewing my own posts is painstakingly slow, unutterably frustrating, and tends more often than not to drop you into EDIT mode rather than review.
(E) Speaking of edit — since when did I have to have an HTML coding degree to blog?
(F) actually accessing my site cost me 3 straight days of headache, as they are now Cap sensitive and one of my blogs wound up as bethelAbba when it should have been BethelAbba. (never did figure out what happened to JulieMillerFan… I finally gave up trying to figure out the password and demanded a new one.)
(G) Sooooooo it’s supposed to be SPAM free…. so why are there 5 SPAM comments waiting for me when I finally access my website? I thought the changeover was supposed to eliminate that headache.

Now that I am attempting to post this as a blog I have to add the following

(H) My blogging now lacks the customary color coding that was unique to my posts. That is to say there is no longer a quick simple way to highlight thoughts by offsetting them through highlights or changing the font colors. That sucks.
(I) There’s no longer a simple, quick, easy way to indent thoughts so as to make them stand out and make for simple, easy review.
(J) The whole inclusion of HTML coding into my blogging makes my thoughts look foreign to me as I type them. Makes it extremely difficult to back track and edit as I go. Makes it painful in fact. Now there’s all this HTML to sort through —- in order to figure out where my thoughts are, and where the coding ends, uses a lot of unnecessary time I’d rather put to something else.

It seems that Xanga 2.0 has a lot of kinks to work out… and as a PAY TO PLAY blogging service now…. they’d better start working if they want to keep my money in the future.

Afterthought:

What gave Xanga it’s initial greatness years back was word of mouth advertising….. talking about your blogging with friends, sharing the weblink with them, encouraging them to join along and blog too…. we talk about what’s important to us. Now…. with this paid format…. who’s gonna be recommending their friends to plop down $48 in order to blog and join the community? I’m just asking the one question Xanga should have been thinking about when they started down this path.

Seems to me that Xanga 2.0 just fell flat on it’s face and will probably self-implode by this time next year. I’m just saying.