Update on FTP & Hit Counter Problems

Hi everybody... here's an update on the flakiness we've been seeing in
the FTP/Hometown space.  It should be resolved now. Here's what happened:






Around Tuesday, some files were being migrated on the servers that handle Hometown (this includes the images in
members.aol.com that you can put in your Web pages and Journals). 






There was a problem, and some files were lost.  This is what
caused some of your photos to not show up in your
Journals.  Also, an older version of the hit counter was
installed.  This is also why your hit counters may have dropped
some hits.






However, early on Thursday, the techs started running a process that recovered 99% of the affected files.







I've checked in with a few folks who'd dropped me a line, and we've seen most previously affected images back up.







However, I am not sure if the data recovery means that hit counters will be restored to their previous states.







If you folks are still having problems with your hit counters, please leave a comment in this entry so we can take a look.







Sorry for the delay in responding, I wanted to make sure we had good information.







Thanks -- Joe

Having FTP Image Problems?

Hi...if you're having problems with images from your FTP or Hometown space not showing up in your Journals, please send me an e-mail (with the address of the affected Journal), so I can forward the info to the tech team so they can investigate properly.

Thanks -- Joe

Fun With Font Colors (and about those cool headers)

Hi everybody. Here are a couple of updates on...stuff.

As you know, when we rolled out Journals 1.9 (all these projects get version numbers), we changed the archive navigation, which is much improved except for one small thing -- the comment text in the archived entries is always black. This obviously becomes a problem (well, it's obvious now) if you have a black or dark background in your blog.

The tech folks are working on a fix for this, but we don't have a timeline yet. Fortunately, there is a workaround, which is to switch to a lighter-colored background (I know, I know, it's not as k-R4d k3wl).

I'll let you know when it gets fixed.

On a related note, blogger Marie asked me about a problem she was having in her Journal, Photographs & Memories. For some reason, the description text (right below her Journal title) wasn't showing up. Well, I asked Ian (the Journals Product Manager) to take a look, and he quickly found the answer: In the color scheme she had chosen, her Journal's background was red, the body text was white, and the header area with the description field was also white. You can probably see how this ends.

Anyway, it's fixed now.

Speaking of the header area, a lot of folks have been asking how they can get cool header graphics like you see on many of the AOL Editors' Journals. Right now, you can't -- in order to upload header graphics, you have to have superuser access rights, and there are very few superusers (they have a lot of power, so it's wise to keep the number down).

However, the good news is that the team is looking at custom skins for a future release -- it's on the 2005 plan. It's not fully-spec'ed out yet, but it will likely be a lot more robust (and easier to use) than just a header graphic, so I think it will be worth the wait.

Anyway, that's it for now...have a good weekend. -- Joe

Gary Gnu Says: "No News Is Good News"

Hi everybody...just checking in, not much to report. Journals Search
seemed to be acting up a little bit for me this afternoon, but by the
time I raised some flags with the appropriate tech folks (responsiblity
for Journals Search is spread across a few different groups), it seems
to have settled down. 



No alarms had been triggered (there are a bunch of different automated
processes that watch for problems of various types), so it might have
been a local thing.



Maybe it was related to the solar flare warning that Scalzi mentioned in his blog.



Talk to you later. -- Joe

Greetings, Journalers & Bloggers

Hi everybody...for those of you who don't know me, I'm Joe, an AOL employee who programs the AOL Journals main page. I also help choose and manage the AOL Journals Editor's Picks (which you can find on said Journals page -- a new five every Friday.)

I'm also involved with a bunch of other screens and areas for AOL Community, and you can also see my other AOL product blog, The Expressions Factory.

Like the description above says, the purpose of this Journal is to give you a look at some of the behind-the-scenes stuff involved with AOL Journals (and AIM Blogs), give you an idea of what we're working on, get feedback on things we've done, and tell you when we have scheduled outages or when stuff breaks. 

(Some of the Journalers who've been around a while may remember the previous AOL Journals Journal, which was a great Journal that Christy, one of the previous product managers, kept. I want to do something similiar with this here Magic Smoke journal, though I decided to do it under this screen name, which I use for all the Editor's Picks stuff anyways.)

By way of background, I am not a super-technical person, but I do know a few of them, and I plan on bringing in some of them from time to time. (This means you, John, Ian and the lot of ya.)

You may ask, "Joe, if this is an AOL Journal, how can you use this to tell us when something is broken with AOL Journals?" And I would answer, "I guess I didn't think about this very clearly." 

I'm not sure how frequently I will be posting to this Journal, since we also have John Scalzi's great By the Way... blog to communicate with you, so you may want to subscribe to the Alert by clicking up top where it says "Alert Me as Entries Are Posted."

Lastly for now, a little bit about the term "Magic Smoke." Here's a link to the Wikipedia definition. It's pretty much a technical in-joke about how computers work, and I thought it was a little more evocative than just calling it the Journals Journal.

That's it for now, talk to you later.  Feel free to leave a comment below or to send me an e-mail at this screen name (JournalsEditor@aol.com). Have a great weekend. -- Joe