Friday, October 10, 2008
Blogger Help Group
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Update on Private Journals and Comments
I'm pleased to report that those of you who maintain private Journals and have been holding off migrating them while we corrected this, you may now proceed to make them to public and start your migration. We made the necessary adjustments which will allow your comments to follow your posts over to Blogger.
How you can help us help you...
In order for us to be able to help with migration issues, especially if you got as far as being able to create a Blogger URL, it really helps if you include that URL in your comments when looking for help. While you're at it, please include your AOL Journal URL too, although your comment is associated with a blog we want to make sure we have all the facts.
Migration Update
Issue 1- Failures to Find Journals
Blogger have been examining some of the failure cases that have been reported and after testing URLs given to us, it appears there may be some confusion around URL to use when starting the migration. So the Journals URL you need to enter should be the one people use to view the blog. The URL should never contain white space.
Example:
Good URL: http://journals.aol.com/screenname/TitleOfBlogWithoutSpaces
Not So Good URL: http://journals.aol.com/screenname/Title Of Blog With Spaces
Issue 2- Failure to Upload Journals Image
Blogger is currently having problems uploading Journals images that were added directly from AOL Photos when that feature became available March 2007. These images use the URL structure http://pictures.aol.com/ap/singleImage.do?pid= . Blogger is working on the issue. If you've already imported your Journal to Blogger you may need to reimport it to copy these photos over. Oct 10 Update: Images of the form pictures.aol.com/ap/simgleImage.do?.... are now importing into Picasa Web Albums.
Blogger.com Transfer Update
All,
Now that we've had about a day's worth of transfers to Blogger, we've tracked a couple of issues that I wanted to make you aware of, and I wanted to reiterate a couple of important tidbits.
I think that about covers all of the known issues at this point.
I know there is a lot of anger and frustration out there about this shutdown, but please understand that we are doing everything we can to make this as painless as possible. The team doing this work is primarily composed of the same people who developed and managed Journals through it's launch and growth stages, and we're just as sad as you are that the call was made to retire the product. Our partnership with Blogger isn't making us a dime, and was done solely because they offer a very solid product and are backed by very passionate people who were willing to take on quite a bit of heavy lifting to make this a smooth transition. Our collective hats are off to them for being such great partners in this, and if you give this a shot, I think you'll be very happy being part of the Blogger family.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Blogger.com
Though we know this is an inconvenience, the good news is that we've partnered with the good people at Blogger.com to provide a smooth transition for your journal. Blogger is a free service from Google that makes it easy to share your thoughts with friends and the world. Blogger supports most of the features you've come to expect from AOL Journals, and it's easy to get started. If you wish to transfer your journal to Blogger, they will move your posts, comments and photos to your new blog on their service. When you're ready, go to this link to get started.
- Some users may get "Transfer process failed" error when trying to import their AOL Journals. They may need to clear their cookies and try again.
- Badly formatted HTML may cause Embed or Object tags not to be imported.
- Some users may see the import fail during the final "Publish imported posts now" step. Refreshing the page usually solves this problem. Also, some users will be able to go to www.blogger.com to view, edit, and publish their imported blog, even after the failure message.
- AOL Pictures Albums embedded in your Journal will not automatically migrate over during the standard process. Individual images will migrate just fine, but any albums you wish to re-associate with your Blogger blog will have to be done manually, post-migration.
- If your Journal is currently marked Private, you'll have to flip it to public status prior to the migration, otherwise the import tool will not be able to find it. Once you've moved the Journal to Blogger, you'll be able to set it to private again at your leisure.
If you are planning to move your Journal to Blogger, we recommend that you help your readers find your new blog by posting a redirect link in your AOL Journal, which will stay live and fully functional until Oct.31.