Friday, October 03, 2008

The Deathrows of AOL Journals....

Yes, yes, yes... I know I promised stories from my great adventure, but I seem to have returned to find something of a disaster happening in J-land. It seems that AOL has decided that the Journal product, along with all of the Hometown stuff, is to be discontinued. In other words they are kicking us out. I can't say that this is totally unexpected. I have been pessimistically mirroring all of my entries on a Blogger Blog for a long time now, every since the Banner fiasco. After the way AOL handled that, I wasn't sure I trusted them to stick around and support the Journals product. It seems that unfortunately my paranoia was not so unfounded after all.

At first glance this seemed to be a pain, but I have been playing around with moving away from AOL for a while now and this is just the push I needed. I tend to go with the established (read easy) path unless pushed. With Journals and FTP space gone -- and I am sure AOL Pictures soon to follow-- the only thing left that I really use on AOL is my e-mail account. I will probably continue to always have that e-mail addy as long as AOL continues to support e-mail because it is the one I've had since like 1995 and everyone has it, but I see it becoming the account I check like once every couple of weeks to be sure that nothing ended up there.  Why? Because:

  • I have a g-mail account, which I plan to migrate all my e-mail traffic over to
  • Blogger will now be my main Blogging platform -- at least for now and until I decide to do the whole domain/host thingy -- again, I've always preferred the customization over at Blogger anyway
  • I have a free Flickr account, which I will take Pro tomorrow. It's a better platform than AOL Pictures anyway and the only reason I haven't been using it is just pure laziness of habit. Plus I have been wanting to do more with my pictures over at Flickr anyway and maybe this will be the push I need to do so
  • I was only using AOL FTP to host my animated graphics. I will now move those over to Photobucket
  • AOL alerts were always lousy, so I have a Bloglines account up and running and have been using it for years already. Now it is just a matter of getting everyone's new Blog accounts into Bloglines and deleting out the old AOL Journal ones
  • AND Live Writer is integrated with Blogger and it was always a pain having to copy and paste the entry into AOL anyway. With Blogger all I have to do is hit the publish button

So... I'm thinking maybe I should THANK AOL for being butts and kicking us out. My only fear is that some of the people I enjoy will either not continue to blog or I will miss finding where they have gone. Otherwise I think this may actually turn out to be a good move, at least for me.

If anyone who is making the move needs any help with getting their new Blogs set up, or have questions about Bloglines, Flickr, or Photobucket feel free to ask.

Another place to get help is here. Rachel has set up a bulletin board for people to help each other, ask questions, and post their forwarding links. You have to sign up for an account to post, but it is free.

This will most likely be my last post that I 'mirror' over at AOL Journals. From now on I will only be posting here. I will put one last entry up over at J-land directing all my friends over to my Blogger Blog. Eh, and an era ends.

8 comments:

Monica said...

I was just telling my husband that I really have no use for AOL now. However, I've had my e-mail address for many years and not all have migrated to my other e-mail address.

I'm with you, this is a good thing! Now if we can find all our AOL friends and where they locate themselves or if they even open another blog.

Monica

Chris/cacklinrosie101 said...

I know I will whine for quite a while but actually think this will be a good thing. I also plan to change to gmail. Thanks for all the tips you've provided and the links. I'm going to check into blog lines.
Chris

D said...

you are well prepared my friend... I may do a gmail account to but I will most likely keep aol software... more out of habit I guess and it's free. LOL

Kathy said...

Oh, I initially wanated to go kicking and screaming, but I'm finding this isn't such a bad thing.

I'm finding folks through readers lists in side bars adn through the followers area. There are a few have abandoned blogging ... but maybe after a bit they'll come back.

We can hope.

Sage Ravenwood said...

Strange as it may seem the petty bickering is no longer on this side of the blogsphere. In a united front the community has strived to remain in touch with one another, much to my relief. Friends - like yourself would of been greatly missed! (Hugs)Indigo

Becky said...

Maybe now all my former readers who decided to boycott me when I left J-Land over the ad banner fiasco will now come and check me out again. LOL Yeah, I am an optimistic sort. A long time UK blogger has set up a forum for AOL Journalers, just as a public service. Check out Kafkasworld.com and click the Forums button. There is a special area just for AOL folks.

Sandisan said...

Oh Hi there...I was checking up on my old journal "I Just Had to Laugh" don't want to lose that one either..and you had left a comment with your link here - so here I am and glad to be - I opened up a blog the other day...we'll have to see if AOL does move everything over here I hope so. I'm so non geek I couldn't follow the instructions to save stuff. Just have to learn how this place works. You have a great page and filled with so many folks that I had forgotten about...this week has been a week from hades so I don't think I'll be writing too much..Ebay is driving me nuts and I'm listing and listing like a crazy person, they like AOL keep changing the rules. Glad I found you again...love, Sandi

Slapinions said...

Glad to see another familar AOL face around here. (Here There and Everywhere pointed the way here). Nice background and layout, I'm jealous :)

Dan