All About the New AOL Blogs Main Page

Hi everybody. As I mentioned yesterday, we launched the People Connection redesign, which includes a revamped Blogs main page:

What I'm going to do today is talk about the new features on the Blogs main page. Then, tomorrow, I'll discuss some of the new editorial blogs that the team is programming.

First off, you'll note that the page is wider than it was previously -- hope this doesn't inconvenience anyone.

Next, starting at the very top, you'll see the new header that's on all the new People Connection pages:

Change the look of the page by clicking a skin.

On the right side, you'll see your AIM Pages profile photo (if you have one).

Also of note, you can reskin the People Connection pages by clicking one of the little Skins buttons in the top right corner.

There are two skins available right now -- we'll be adding more choices. (Incidentally, this demonstrates why Cascading Style Sheets are so neat -- you can radically change the look of the page without affecting any of the content, just by clicking a button and switching to a new CSS.)

Immediately below the Skins chooser, you'll find an orange feed icon -- you can subscribe to an update of new content throughout the People Connection area (it's not specific to the Blogs page).

Moving down the page a bit, we have the AOL Blogs search (I think we need to adjust this a bit), as well as an updated version of the Face Wall (now called The Lobby) -- it highlights people's AIM Pages profiles, and can also be seen through People Connection.

Below the Search box, you'll find the Journals display module that shows you the Journals that belongto your Screen Name -- it works the same as previously, though the look has been updated a bit. (It's also where you can create a new Journal.)

Below the Journals widget are some editorial promo spots, and below that is a feed module that displays current entry headlines from a selection of other blogs.

Now, to the right is the most interesting new part of the page:

Most Commented and Recently Updated Blogs

As you can see, we've got modules (finally) showing the Most Commented Blogs from the past day, as well as Recently Updated Blogs.

(FYI: AOL News' The Cooler and Daily Pulse blogs will probably stay in the #1 and #2 spots until they move off of the AOL Journals platform, just because they get so much comment traffic.)

On the other hand, Recently Updated Blogs will show blogs and entries that have been, um, Recently Updated. This includes new blog and entry creations and edits.

It'll probably be a little hit or miss (you'll see public test blogs, new blogs with no entries, etc), but it's a great way to see activity from Journalers who may not be part of the usual crowd.

Of course, both of these modules will only show public Journals.

Now, I asked if the feeds that power those modules could be used in a regular feedreader, and they can't (right now) -- John Panzer says:

"These are not feeds.  They are XML documents that leverage some standard elements but are basically our proprietary format."

The good news is, we could probably turn those into feeds with a little development effort, but we would first need to think this through.

Now, we'll be adding new features to the page as we go along, and there are few things I want to add back on the page (like some getting started and help resources, and a link to the blogging message boards), but it's a pretty good start and we're all pretty happy with the way it's going so far.

Anyway, if you have any feedback, feel free to leave a comment, and if you like, you can also post on the redesign feedback message board.

Thanks -- Joe 

Tags: aol, aol blogs, aol journals, people connection, redesign