February 17, 2008

• Tutorial number 1: Video Clips

  Well, I hope you’ve been enjoying my world music playlist for
  the past week or two. I did it for YOU,
  you know, to give you a little taste of what I play on my weekly radio
  show.  I can’t even access it from my private Xanga
  page. To listen to my own songs, I have
  to open a separate browser and leave it open to my Xanga public home page. You, incidentally, can do the same thing
  should you wish to listen to my music while reading other blogs or performing other
  computer functions.

  When I sent out my little SOS to all of my subscribers and
  Xanga friends, only AngryFlower was able to explain the process in sufficient
  detail that I was able to figure out how to do it. Quite a number of you, on the other hand,
  replied, “I have no idea how to create a playlist, but if you find out how to
  do it, please explain it to ME!” So I
  promised some of you that I would indeed write a little tutorial explaining how
  to create a playlist which you can add to your Xanga (or to your MySpace or
  Facebook, if you have such a thing). A
  couple of you have also asked me how to post videos on your Xanga, so I’m going
  to explain that to you also. Actually, I’ll
  do that first since it’s the easiest.

  Before I begin, I’d like to thank the anonymous person who
  bought me lifetime Xanga Premium. I don’t
  know how much I’ll use the Premium features – I don’t like a lot of visual
  clutter, and prefer to let my content speak for itself – but I expect to live
  for at least six more months, and who knows what I might dream up in that
  length of time? So thank you, Anonymous
  Benefactor.

  Now…posting a video link in a Xanga blog entry is the
  easiest thing in the world. Here’s what
  you do:

  1) Open a web browser and find the video clip you want to
  link to. I’ll assume that you’re going
  to use YouTube. It’s the only site I’m
  familiar with, though I’m sure other sites and other videos work similarly.
  2) To the right of the actual video screen on YouTube there’s
  a light grey box that says, “About This Video”.
  At the bottom of THAT box there’s a smaller box with some HTML code in
  it, and above it the word “Embed”.
  Highlight the HTML code in the small box, and click “Copy”. Or you can do it later. In any case, leave the browser open.
  3) Open another browser and use it to go to your Xanga
  site. Click on “New Weblog Entry”.
  4) Enter as much text as you want. When you get ready to insert the video link, check
  the little box in the upper right hand corner that says “Edit HTML”. You’ll get a box delineated by dotted lines.
  5) Inside the dotted-line box, paste the HTML code that you
  copied to your clipboard on the YouTube site.
  Or, if you haven’t copied it yet, go back to the YouTube window,
  highlight the HTML code under “Embed”, click “Copy”, then come back to your
  Xanga window and click “Paste”.
  6) If you want to add more text below the video, uncheck the
  “Edit HTML” box. The dotted lines will
  disappear, and you’ll be back to the regular text entry screen.
  7) When you’re finished with your new Xanga entry, click “Save
  Changes” at the bottom in the usual manner.
  It should display on your home page, with the graphic of the video
  screen where you inserted it. And that’s
  it.

  Well, shit. I can’t
  seem to figure out how to insert a video link in the MIDDLE of text. It’s more complicated than I thought. You’ll just have to play around with it. Meanwhile I’ll leave you with some farting
  elves. And I’ll save the playlist
  instructions, which are a bit more complex but not much, for another day. Meanwhile you can enjoy inserting links to
  video clips in your Xanga blog entries.

  • 7:21 pm
  • 21 Comments