Hey
folks,
We’ve got
some great news (at least we think so). AOL Journals will be updated to our 15th release (R15)! It will be
installed this evening, adding new features and a couple back-end
optimizations for Journalers. These features were the result of your helpful
feedback that everyone provided in our comments or in our team’s
mailbox.
Updated Comment and Entry Alerts
We’ve
improved
the Alerts feature on Journals so you can subscribe both to a Journal's
Entry Alerts and/or
Comment Alerts. This allows you to receive notification (via e-mail or
service pop-up on AOL or AIM) when an entry is posted or when
someone comments on an entry.
We’d like to let you know that users who have already subscribed for Entry Alerts
on a Journal will continue to receive their Alerts. The same holds true for Owners
who subscribed to their Comment Alerts will continue to receive Comment Alerts.
Alerts are especially useful for Shared Journals where you have multiple
writers to a Journal. So when one writer adds an entry, the other writers or
readers can subscribe to get an Entry Alert. In addition, for popular Journals that
you read, you can now also subscribe to Comment Alerts. Take for example if I
write an entry on Magic Smoke, fellow J-Landers comment on it, you can get an alert
for those comments!
You can subscribe to these alerts by clicking on the Alerts link located along the top of the Journal. It displays links for Entry Alerts and Comment Alerts.
To manage
your individual Alerts (or remove them), you can set your preferences at AOL Alerts.
Commenter E-Mail Addresses
Many of you
have asked for the ability to e-mail the people who add comments to your blog. You
will be able to quickly send an e-mail to your Buddies regarding their comment. You
will notice a link next to the commenter’s screen name. Justclick it and send them
an e-mail.
We added
a link to our blog on the top of Journals so you can keep track of
announcements and other Journals related news. The link is on US, UK, Canada and Latino Journals.
Enhanced Site Map
Lastly, we
improved our site map, which helps search engines figure out which blogs to index
first. This means that your Journal entries may be indexed into popular search
engines (like Google or Yahoo) quicker with these recent enhancements. The only side affect
from this change is you might notice more people visit your Journal. ;-)
Please let us know if you see any issues or have any feedback in the comments
below or write to JournalsEditor@aol.com. Thanks, everyone!
---Malika (and the Journals team)
32 comments:
Thanks for the info :)
Kathi
Sounds like Aol Journals is moving on up! -Missy
I and I know many of us would like to see more moods added. Are there any plans for adding more moods?
HeavenlyBama,
Wish you had mentioned this a few days earlier. We could have added that in easily. What moods would you like to see ?
Vish
great news i hope it works:) i agree about the moods we need more options
Deb
Check out the moods on facebook. Those would be great
Hi Malika :)
Thanks for the changes! One thought though.
As far as the Site Map and the increased visits to our journal goes. That's great that we will get more hits. I have a tracker and know I get hits from Google, Yahoo, MSN, mybloglog, etc. I also know that 99% of these bloggers cannot comment in my journal. Not unless they jump through great hoops, b/c AOL blogs are not interactive with the larger blogosphere. For these other bloggers to comment, they need to get an AIM screename, which technically they can do, but it is quite a complicated process. Therefore they are not willing to do it. I have heard of almost none who will. The only ones I have ever heard do it were family members of those who have started an AOL blog. Those who have blogs out in the greater nonAOL blogsphere will not get an AIM screename just to comment in our blogs. We can comment in theirs most of the time pretty easily, but they cannot comment in ours.
I find this very sad. When is this going to change? I would like to be part of the larger blogosphere.
I am now beginning to read and comment in other blogs out there (and I am not talking merely about blogger and blogspot - there are millions of journals out there - writer's journals, photography journals, political journals, fun journals). I comment in them, and they visit me yet cannot comment.
When will AOL journals change this?
I have asked this before and never gotten an answer.
Could you PLEASE reply.
Krissy :)
http://journals.aol.com/fisherkristina/SometimesIThink
Krissy,
Whenever one of my friends complains about having to get an AOL screen name in order to comment on my blog, I remind them that I went out and got a blogger screen name, and a Type Key ID, and Google account, etc., in order to comment on theirs. I also remind them that if they have something to say, and don't want to "jump through the hoops" as you say, they can always just send me an email directly. I ensure them that I would always love to hear their thoughts. I never hear from them.
I have concluded that those who complain are simply making an excuse for not commenting. If AOL allowed anonymous commenting, they still wouldn't bother...but you'd start getting dozens of pornographic spam comments each and every day. I think the commenting system is just fine the way it is.
-Paul
http://journals.aol.ca/plittle/AuroraWalkingVacation/
Hi Krissy,
Paul is right about the downside of anonymous comments. Hence we have stayed away from it. Just to set the record straight, you are no longer restricted to AIM or AOL screen names. You can use your email address as your screen name. So, for instance if your email address is krissy@yahoo.com, you can use that as your AIM screen name.
You can see that option on the sign-in page where it says "Screen Name or E-mail" and also when you go to get an Account.
Another user authentication system that is garnering attention is OpenID. With this you can use your blog url as your ID and sign in to any of the sites that support OpenID. AOL supports OpenID, but the experience is less than optimal right now. Hence we have not implemented it on Journals. But it is something that we will addressing down the road.
Hope that helps,
Vish
I'd like to know if it's possible to block certain people from reading my blog? I don't want it to be private and I don't just want to block certain people's comments. Can I block some chosen few from accessing it?
Nancy
I think it will be very nice to be able to e-mail commentors quickly. Paula
I'd like to know when the 12 pt font will work. I don't think it has for over 3 years.
Thanks.
h
I would love to see an easy way to add music and any background we want-then I would be a happy camper.
Please=please=please
;-)
connie
I agree with Connie, music would be great.
Lisa
http://journals.aol.com/wwfbison/life-on-a-bison-farm
One other thing that I would Greatly like to see, is the ability to screen comments before they are posted.
Is that in any plans for the future?
Thanks,
Kathi
Not sure I like the alert for comments entered on my journal... I have a feeling it will fuel a bit of garbage.....
Would love to see animation be compatible with aol pictures and journals.... so many folks don't get photobucket or flicker... maybe make it easy for the user?
d
I cannot see why anyone would want an alert to any comment left on my journal or anyone elses. I agree this could create a problem with negative comments.
Why don't you work on letting us have our own header/image ON TOP of our journal. That would be nice..Ü
Marie
Vish,
Thank you for explaining about OpenID. I hope you will consider using it for AOL journals soon.
As for plittle's argument that we don't want to open AOL to other blogger's comments b/c we would get spammed, I don't agree with this. I still would like to open my journal to commenters. Yes, I will get some spammers. But I already do. I get quite a few AOL spammers, actually. I got three different ones yesterday. They were new commenters to my journal. I imagine they found me through blogplugs or some other search method. I merely deleted their comments and blocked their screenames. Not hard I would say.
Thanks again for considering OpenID, and I am very curious to learn more about it!
Krissy :)
http://journals.aol.com/fisherkristina/SometimesIThink
Hey folks,
Thank you so much for all the comments....keep them coming ;-)
Just to let you know, we are taking note of every comment.
Malika
To those who are not sure about subscribing to comments alerts, there is a purpose to that. In many blogs, the comments threads can become almost like a message board, as readers continue the discussion promtped by the blog owner's entry. Those who are participating in these ongoing conversations like to be notified when other comments have been received, so they can return to the blog in question to see what else has been said, and maybe comment further on the topic.
I like the idea of OpenID use for journals commenting, but I agree that allowing straight anonymous commenting is a bad idea. There's already enough flaming, venom and vitriol seething through the veins of AOL journalers. Allowing them to spread it anonymously would be the final knife in the back of this community.
-Paul
On 12-11-07 one of your Live Help technicians fixed a problem I was having.
Yesterday I went to Live Help again because I kept getting Sorry, AOL Journals
is not available. Was told that maintenance work was being done. Today I am
getting both the cannot find page error--my original problem--which CAN be
gotten around by closing it out because edits made are actually saved but it is
necessary to close the error message via the X box and then re-enter journal
to prove it/// and I am also getting the Journals not available error. Is
maintenance work stiil being done? There are a couple of other topics relating
to this, but enough for now. Thank you. b a j salchert
the more I thought about the comment alert feature the more I think I might like it ... along with the email address of the person leaving the comment. Some already know I have a troll who has no courage at all and generally goes back to old entries to spill their hate. To hide themselves with the idea no one but me will see and I will delete it promptly. With this new feature maybe they will stop for fear someone might actually figure them out. Be able to email as well. For those who have their comment section as a message board type, it works fine. Only time will actually tell if this is good or bad......... lets hope it's good. I for one get to many entry alerts to add comments to, so................................
d
PS would still love .gif files, AOL pictures, and journals to work together! Instead of having to go outside of AOL to store graphics :)
Hi there,
Just thought I would address some of the common gripes in this one comment.
1) Inability to upload .gif files
Here, the problem is that we use AOL Pictures for storing our pictures and they do not support the .gif format. They convert them to a .jpg and hence the animation goes away. We are looking at alternatives. When we find the right solution we will be able to support .gif's. Please bear with us till then.
2) 12pt font not working for the last 3 years
Unfortunately, this is a bug in IE. Not much we can do about it. Mozilla Firefox browser works fine with the 12pt font. I did a little test on the fonts/browser combos. You can see them here. http://journals.aol.com/vishy2004/pj1/
Notice how Firefox renders it correctly
3) Inability to screen comments before they are posted.
I am not sure it is desirable to screen comments. You can always delete comments and block the user
4) Is it possible to block certain people from reading my blog ?
Not if the blog is public.
5) Last, but not least, anonymous commenting
For now, we are going to keep things the way they are. One idea I wanted to pass by you all, until OpenID becomes more popular...
Would it be useful if we have an "Email Author" link at the bottom of the Entry, next to the "Written by" blurb ? Would that address some of your concerns about anonymous comments ?
A little more about OpenID. The promise of OpenID is to be able to use a single ID/password across the web. However, the way AOL's OpenID currently works, you will still have to fill out a registration form (this is apparently for legal reasons).
All AOL/AIM users get an OpenID by default (http://openid.aol.com/YourScreenName) and you can test this out on say livejournal.com which supports OpenID. Go to the screen that says "Login w/ OpenID" and put in your OpenID url. And you will get the picture :)
Apologies for the long winded comment !
Vish
Went to Live Help again this afternoon, and found out that editing problems I wrote
about in comment #22 are known issues, and that the technicians are working on
them. I, therefore, am going to continue using the link to my journal I have in my
Favorite Places. Whenever an edit I make brings up the cannot find page error
message when I click SAVE, my edit is saved, but I have to close out that message, and then go back to my journal through my link. Making an entry in
this manner is arduous, but it does work.
Things appear to be working well with my journal. One thing I'd love to see is a "preview" mode added. I'm the only one who posts to my journal, but I'd like to have the ability to preview my entries and correct errors before the feed goes out to people who have subscribed.
Laura :-)
http://journals.aol.com/lpleas3333/AdensAdventures/
h
I have a couple of technical issues. It seems that no one can access their e-mail from their journal site as the links are now gone. The next is really interesting - once you sign into your journal, you can't sign out. There is no longer any sign out button. This creates a security breach that makes it possible for hackers to get into journals.
Dirk
http://journals.aol.com/tsalagiman1/the-first-amendment-not-politi/
tsalagiman1@aol.com
P. S. to my comment below: I can't sign in from the journal either. I have to either go all the way out to the AOL Blog page, or sign in on a private journal then switch over to mine.
Dirk
http://journals.aol.com/tsalagiman1/the-first-amendment-not-politi/
tsalagiman1@aol.com
Hi folks,
Its Malika.
We are aware of the "Sign-in/Sign-out" link missing at the top of your Journal.
We have informed the appropriate team and they are working to resolve this issue.
In the meantime, please go to :
http://journals.aol.com
And sign-in using the "Sign-in" button.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
Have a wonderful weekend.
---Malika
My journal has a sign-out button, but when I click it, it goes through the motions
of signing out but it does not sign out. It is been that way for days. Over the
weekend, hopefully, it will get repaired. Is there a reason why it is hidden off to
the right? It is only visible when the horizontal scroll bar is moved or the screen
is widened.
Update from possibly the only journaler with a continuing edit conundrum:
What I need to say is too long/ so I am going to send an email.
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