We've just launched a new premium membership program called XIHA Gold Member! This exciting program is targeted to people who are serious about our community. It's free to be a Gold Member, but you first need to pass a test to qualify. If interested, you can take the test here: www.xihalife.com/gold/

Gold Members will have various benefits and privileges. They will have a lot more control over XIHA, with abilities to participate in organizing content and translating XIHA to their native languages. The will also be special offers for Gold Members, and obviously a lot of other cool features will be added over time!

We've very excited to add Hungarian and Hebrew to the ever-increasing number of languages XIHA Life is localized into! Special thanks to go Anna for the Hungarian translation and Tiina for the Hebrew. We still have a little bit of work left with the Hebrew version to fully support the right-to-left reading direction but the navigation is fully functional.

To counter the recent increase in attempted spamming, we've introduced a new simple rule to messages: you can't include email address in a message if the recipient is not your friend. Makes sense, right? If you don't know the person, don't get directly into personal details. The reason we're doing this is because what spammers and scammers do, is they try to get you to contact them directly outside of XIHA Life - using email.

Here's a piece of advice to everyone: if a stranger approaches you and asks you to get in touch via email - don't do it. Often these messages give the impression the sender is an attractive girl looking for true love, and sometimes they hint about chances of getting rich. But let's face it - if you don't know the sender, the sender doesn't know you either.

So if she talks about love (or money) without knowing you, chances are it's not real! First get to know people in the safety of XIHA Life, and only share your email address with someone if you end up developing a closer relationship and learn to trust the person. So from now on the attempts to share an email address with strangers will automatically be marked spam!

We updated the bonus system today with the introduction of XIHA Coins! The old points system ceases to exist, with all the points converted to XIHA Coins at a ratio of 100 points = 1 coin.

The purchasing power of the coins stays the same as with the old points - if you had exactly enough points to buy a game, you will now have exactly the required number of coins!

We greatly enhanced the bonus rates! Most of the things you do at XIHA Life is now collecting you XIHA Coins much faster than before. For example, inviting friends now gives you 5 times bigger bonus than before!


The XIHA Coins are displayed as coin symbols on the left side panel.

We've been busy with new features lately! The language selection has now been enhanced such that you can choose not only the user interface language, but any number of content languages, even when you're not signed in. The multilingual aspect is unique to XIHA Life and we wanted to give visitors a better chance to try it out.

The new language selector adds something for the members too, as you can now set languages on and off any time with on need to visit the profile. This is convenient if you sometimes want to focus on a single language, or if you want to check out a new language but don't want to add it to your profile. Just click on the globe in the top right cornet of every page!

Another new feature which may not be very obvious, is that we are now automatically detecting the language in which comments are posted on blogs and user home pages. Using the language detection we have a lot more control on which messages to show you; we will only show you public messages we think you can understand! The language detection doesn't affect private messages.

We will be expanding the use of language detection to other areas of XIHA Life to make it easier and more convenient to post content in multiple languages.

Finally, we've added a new "quick search" for local friends. On the main page there's now a display of a few people living in the area where you currently are, speaking the languages you speak. By a single click you will see more search results and have an option to refine the search options. This makes it very easy and convenient to connect to people even if you are new to the area.

We continue to add new languages to XIHA Life. The user interface is now fully localized to 23 languages and content can be generated in 31 languages! And we're just getting started...

The "facelift" of XIHA Life is almost finished and today we reached an important milestone by launching the new logo. The logo utilizes colors from two of our main categories, "living" and "games". It also features a pair of palm trees symbolizing our quest for the "Good Life!"

XIHA Life keeps getting more and more international. With the addition of Korean (kr.xihalife.com), Hindi (hi.xihalife.com) and Vietnamese (vi.xihalife.com) we now have the user interface translated to 19 languages! Coming soon will be Japanese and Polish, with even more to follow in the coming months.

While it's very nice to have the website translated to even more languages, the coolest part of XIHA still remains the truly multi-lingual system - once you sign up you can choose multiple languages and will get a simultaneous access to content and people written in all of those!

We'd like to say thanks to everyone who has sent feedback on our new design. One of the first comments we received was that the design is more clear and organized, but it lacks color! Well, we listen to our members and so the design has been modified a little bit to make it more colorful. What do you think?

The new design is now available on the main page, games, blogs and the user home pages. None of it is fully finalized yet as this is a work in progress - this means any and all comments are welcome! We are creating this site for you!

Exciting news! We've started rolling out the new design for XIHA Life... currently only the main page is using the new layout but over the next couple weeks we will gradually extend the design to cover the entire site. Please report any problems by sending a message to me (webmaster.xihalife.com) and obviously let us know how you feel about the new look!

We have just updated XIHA Life servers so the site is now running on brand new, much more powerful hardware. We had short scheduled maintenance breaks today and last Friday to prepare for the upgrade and now we're happy to tell you that the work has been completed! While this means we can now handle a lot more users without compromising performance, it also means something may be broken. We will fix things as they show up, though as of this moment things appear normal.

Next up in the exciting updates is the brand new look! In the coming days we will start gradually doing a "face lift", which should be completed by the end of the month. We've worked together with a top web design company to come up with a new design that is easier to use and looks great! Hold on tight...

XIHA has a new exciting feature - activity logs. We've had your personal activity log on your own space for a while now, which shows what you have done and what other members have done in relation to your property... commented on your blogs, replied to your topics, joined on your referral... and so on.

Now the feature has been enhanced with two new selections - the activity of your friends and selected activity on the entire website. This way you will immediately know when you friends update their blogs or post on the forum. Best of all, your friends will also see what you are up to! All you need to do is write something or upload photos and your friends will know about it.

This also means it really makes sense to build up those friend networks! The more friends you have, the bigger your audience. To make things even more exciting we're giving a special bonus until the end of the year: you'll get bonus points for all the points achieved by the members you invite (including those you have invited in the past!) More about this promotion right here: www.xihalife.com/bbs/home/xihalife/6058.htm

As many of you have already noticed, we've made some improvements to the member homes (that's the page you get to when you click on you own face photo, for example!) The improvements are not stopping here, it's an on-going process and part of our overall design / face lift. Here's a summary of what has happened so far:

- Large face photos. The face photos are now stored in the photo album and can be as large as you want. At this point we display a 200 pixels wide version on the home page but there will be more freedom for that soon. The shape is also free now, so the face doesn't need to be square anymore (though it will still be displayed as square in many places).

- New layout. The home page layout is now in three columns - left has some quick links, middle is a wide column where you can find comments, blogs, forum, etc. and the right side has some info about you and your friends. More of there "applications" will be added soon to help you make your space even more your own.

- XIHA logo banner removed from the member homes. We felt having a big graphical banner at the top of the page made it harder for people to design their pages so we decided to remove it.

- Status box... this is a cool little way to tell everyone what you're doing and how you're feeling right at the moment.

- History log... this box in the middle column on your space tells what has happened in your XIHA world lately. It tells what you have done, comments made on your blogs or forum topics, friends joined, etc.

Coming up soon... you will be able to move the "applications", the boxes with information, around your home. The history log will give you a view on your friends lives too so you will immediately know when any of your friends posts something new. You will be able to choose what to show, who can see it, and how they are laid out! The same will apply to your photos and blogs - you will soon have a full control on who can read your blog, view your blog and visit your XIHA home.

We welcome all feedback on the changes, and encourage you give ideas and suggestions on how you would like to improve XIHA Life! Stay tuned... lots of exciting stuff happening in XIHA world!

We made a big change to the face photos. Earlier the face photos were limited to 100x100 pixel square but now the old face photo system has been completely removed and the face photos are just like any other photos in your album! This gives a lot more freedom - the size is no longer limited to square and you can easily change the face photos without having to upload. Just go to your photo album, click edit on any photo and check the box that says "Face photo".

We still obviously use the square-cut version of the face photos in places like the forum where the layout requires somewhat predictable sizes. The real shape and the larger size is visible in your own space and will later be shown in the member listing.

In the past few days we finally rolled out our eagerly awaited newsletters. In the first phase we're sending out weekly notifications of new game releases to those members who have expressed interest in games. Currently the posting are made only in English and Finnish, more languages to be added soon.

The emails include the latest game releases but also a cool new feature - personalized recommendations. Based on the games you've played in the past we're creating a list of games you didn't try yet but which might be of interest to you. With more than 1000 games in our catalog it can be a lot of work to find what you like so this should be a great help!

If you haven't received the newsletter, go to your "My info" and check the account info settings (www.xihalife.com/home/accountinfo.php) to make sure your email is valid and that you have selected the "new games" newsletter. You can unsubscribe at any time so we suggest you try it out! If you have subscribed but still didn't receive it, check your spam folder. The best bet is to add support@xihalife.com to your email reader's address book.

We've been working to get XIHA Life on new languages and I'm happy to report that the progress is excellent! Once the latest translations are completed this site is available in 13 languages! And unlike many other sites who build separate websites for each language, our unique multi-cultural approach puts everyone in the same space. Basically, you can switch the user interface language at any time by clicking a flag at the bottom of the page.

The content you see is determined in your settings, so you might use Swedish as your user interface language, but if you can also speak French and English you will still see all messages and blogs written in all of those languages.

Here's the current language selection: English, French, Italian, Spanish, Finnish, Swedish, Portugese, Dutch, Romanian, Russian, Tagalog, Mandarin Chinese, and Cantonese

Some of the translations are not yet completed, so some of the text may be displayed in English.

If you find any "bugs" in the text or feel something could be said in a different way to make better sense, please let us know!

Also, if you would like to help out on translations to these or any other language, get in touch! We're eager to see XIHA Life in your language! Our translation process has been tuned to be very easy with our own in-house built tools, so it's fun and rewarding... just think of all the people who get to enjoy their favorite website in their own language!

Special thanks go to Cami, memoryrose, micah anne, Sebastien, brasilandesa, meyerink, dima and Ricky who've been helping us make this site a much nicer place to visit for a lot of people!

We've done some changes which should greatly improve the performance of this site. We know last week the site was quite painfully slow but things should be much better now! The source of the problem has been identified and fixed, and we're working to make sure it won't happen again.

The slowness of the site was mostly due to certain search engine bots finding their way to a few very large, unoptimized (and unpublished) sections of the site and then pounding them pretty hard and frequently over a course of several days. Live and learn! We need to be sure to keep stuff out of the live server when it's not meant to be accessed and only make it available when it's ready for the light of the day... in any case the problem should be solved now and the site back to its regular speed...

We often see people wondering whether it's ok to post a link pointing to another website on our forums or blogs. Some have posted links, some have just mentioned the site's name while others have just wondered out loud.

Here's the official word: Yes, you can post links.

After all, sharing links is fun! If you see something fun, go ahead and tell the others. If you're writing an article about a subject and used other websites as a reference, it's pretty reasonable to name your sources.

We've made it easy to include links in your blogs and forum posts: just write the web address. This is automatically converted into a link, so there's nothing else you need to do. If you wish to control the text of the link (instead of showing the url), you can use the [url] tags, which may or may not be familiar to you from some other sites. Here's how to use them:

If you type: [url=http://www.xihalife.com]XIHA Life[/url], you will get: XIHA Life

But like I said, if you just want to include a web address, you can type www.xihalife.com and it is automatically converted into a clickable link. Nice and easy! We're later going to feature a "My links" section on everyone's home page which will list all the links you posted... not much info to share about that just yet, other than that it will be completely automated so you don't need to worry about it...

Hey, guess what - here's some small print! If you're like most of us who just likes to relax and enjoy visiting a friendly website community... you can't skip the next. We just need to say it:



Small print: We won't accept links to sites that are not suitable for teens, promote violence or otherwise are of extremely bad taste. We also won't accept links that are purely for promotional purposes. Any such links will be removed so you'd be wasting your time posting them in the first place. Please note that all links pointing to domains other than xihalife.com are automatically equipped with nofollow.

Welcome to the XIHA Life blog! I am the XIHA Life webmaster and I'll be using this blog to keep you up to date on changes and improvements to the site. Please feel free to post comments and questions, suggestions or anything you'd like! I'm here to help!



-- Webmaster, XIHA Life