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.
Private Journals & Comments - While it's possible to move a private journal to Blogger by first making it public, it does look like there is an issue in importing the comments from that journal, and they may in fact be deleted upon import. We're is investigating a solution to this one, and will let you know the moment it's in place. Until then, unless you either don't have any comments, or don't care to keep them, I'd suggest you hold off on migrating private journals for now.Account Name Already In Use - If you had established your Blogger blogs prior to the import using the same blog name, the Blogger importer will *not* be able to use it as it will not overwrite any files. You'll first have to clear out or rename your placeholder Blogger blog, then re-initiate the import process. Feature Requests for Blogger - While we've been working very closely with the good folks at Blogger for the migration, we're really not at all involved with the future development or enhancement of their product. I'd encourage you to use their feedback mechanisms to make these suggestions, as they may never see them here in Magic Smoke.AOL Pictures and Albums - As Frank commented below, individual AOL Pictures images in your Journal are actually getting copied over to Google's Picasa. AOL Pictures albums, however, will not be included in the import process. If you wish to re-associate your AOL Pictures albums with your new Blogger blog, you'll have to do that manually. Ditto if you wish to move them to Picasa.Blogger Can't Find Your Journal - Is your journal marked private? If so, that would be why. Prior to making it public and initiating the import process, please review the first bullet point above. If the journal is *not* private, let us know and we'll try to figure out why it's not being found.Images Not Stored in AOL Pictures - Images hosted anyplace *other* than AOL Pictures are not being automatically copied to Picasa, and will have to be copied over manually, if you desire.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.
40 comments:
Losing the comments of a private journal is not an artifact of the transfer process. Rather it is a "feature" of the AOL blogging platform. When a private journal is made public, all comments made on that journal while it was private are lost, and there is a warning to this effect during the process. Why should a user have to point out "features" of a piece of software to that software's provider?
-Paul
I've just commented on this, Blogger seems unable to find my Journal which is public, however when the link is clicked it say "Isn's She Great" is not found but Cayasm has the following journals, so it is there, and I have put in the correct URL, so some help with this please
Thanks
Yasmin
Regarding pictures, in my experience with the process, the pictures in my journal were *not* ported over to Picasa. They stayed exactly where they were, on AOL Hometown. That may be because my transfer experience did not go exactly as described by the ap. I'm going to try again with a slightly different approach and see what happens.
-Paul
cayasm - We've looking into your issue and will keep you abreast of our progress.
cayasm - It actually looks like the Isn't She Great journal transferred just fine:
http://cayasm-isntshegreat.blogspot.com/
Still looking into why it wasn't found by the importer though.
http://kath-httpmysimplerhymes2blogspotcom.blogspot.com/
I am speaking here for quite a few members of the old J/Land.Please do you know where we can write to to ask to get the blocks lifted on many new blogs which have appeared.Re:- contins spam.Rubbish of course just checks we understand.The block is supposed to be lifted apparently after a certain time of I think it is 24hrs.Yet still we have the block on our new blogs.Thus many members are not commenting ,when in actual fact they still can but when this sign appears on the blog they go no further.It is so frustrating.Knowone seems to know who to write to about any problems they have whatsoever.Much appreciated if you could help at all.Thanx a million Kath new URL above.
plittle -
We're looking into the AOLP url structures being imported by Blogger. It looks as though there are two that AOLP uses. It appears if your individual pictures weren't imported, that one of the urls we expected to be imported - isn't. We'll update all when we sort this out.
Frank
And an update to my plittle reply
Blogger are importing that second URL, but it appears to be failing for everyone. We've checked the logs and we're seeing errors with that second URL when it's being imported. Though not 100% sure what's causing the error at the moment, we are investigating.
Frank
Thanks for the help... but I guess my journal will be one of the ones that just doesn't get transferred over. Repeatedly I start smoothly then it just stops and I get a transfer failed. I've done all that I was told and after several attempts it still only goes about half way. Maybe all the graphics... don't know but to say I'm disappointed is an understatement. ::sigh::
Thanks if it did transfer where is it, and how do I go about finding it.
Yasmin
Frank,
All of the graphics in my blogs were manually uploaded to AOL's ftp service, rather than using any of AOL's picture management tools. So they are just files on an ftp space with an html pointer to them in the body of the blog post.
I went looking to see if the pictures were being imported to Picasa but just not reassociated, but could find no Picasa account related to my Google account. Not sure where to go from there. Thanks for your attention to this on behalf of all us AOLers.
-Paul
Donna,
Have you cleared your footprint, emptied your cache, deleted your temporary internet files (including all of your 'cookies'), etc? Have you tried doing the transfer from outside of the AOL client? Have you gone to Blogger.com, and signed into your Google to look at your Blogger dashboard and see if your blog is there, just not finished being published? Try these things and let me know how you make out.
-Paul
I am having problems transfering my journal ,it tells me it doesnt recognise my e mail address ..Jan........ http://journals.aol.co.uk/jeadie05/Serendipity/
"All of the graphics in my blogs were manually uploaded to AOL's ftp service"
Only images hosted in AOL Pictures are being copied to Picasa as part of the import process, so these would all have to be copied over manually.
Yasmin,
Go to Blogger.com and sign in. You should be taken to your Blogger 'dashboard' page, where you will see your blog, and have the option of editing it, or adding to it.
-Paul
over all, I've been very pleased with the migration. Thanks to everyone who has worked hard to make this a smooth transition.
"Only images hosted in AOL Pictures are being copied to Picasa as part of the import process, so these would all have to be copied over manually."
That's what I assumed. Thank you for confirming that. Luckily, I recently downloaded every picture from Hometown, and uploaded them to a flickr account, so I won't lose anything. However, it will be a long and arduous process reassociating them.
-Paul
Paul I did as you said, but from what I could see using the link given nothing tranferred, as the journal could not be found so it hasn't been given a new title.etc.
It apprently has transferred ok, but I cannot find it, just my new journal on my dashboard, even though they have the same name, I've checked imported etc, nothing....help....I've saved my journal already but would like to migrate it to Blogger
Yasmin
I already have 67 followers on my "new" blog account....If I change the title of it...won't I lose all my followers?
Can't I just change the blog title of the one I'm transferring over as it gives an option to change the title of the transferring blog?
When I try to transfer mine it stops midway thru sometimes before and just locks up. What do I do?
Further clarification my new journal at blogspot the URL is: http://cayasm-isntshegreat.blogspot.com
The journal I want to transfer is http://journals.aol.co.uk/cayasm.isntshegreat/
I want to make the AOL one an archive journal on blogger, if I can get it to transfer
I'm not unduly stressed about it, but would like some answers as and when, you have them.
Maybe this is why you think it has transferred
Thanks for your help so far.
Yasmin
Paul.. yes, yes.. yes.. and yes... several times. It did show in dashboard but no entries there to publish. It's bizarre to say the least as I see so many are going over very smoothly. Only thing I can think of is the number of graphics.. stored both on AOL and on Photobucket. I have the pictures so that wasn't so important but I though it would be nice to have the actual text moved. Oh well it wasn't meant to be I guess.
Yasmin, Blogger will be checking your Journals blog and where your missing import landed...
Frank
Yasmin, I actually saw the differences and know your new blogger blog is not a migration. Thanks for clarifying also. We just want to get you in a good place with your AOL Journal.
Cheers
Frank
Thanks Frank
Yasmin
Nitemaremom, I'll ask them check into your migration issue.
Frank
So does this mean you guys do not have a job now?
Donna In tEXAS
Hi, would it be possible to have an alert system on Blogger? It is very time consuming and alerts would make all the difference. All we can do at the moment is to send out mass emails which some people just don`t like. Anyway, it would really make life much easier and I know others would agree with me.
Love Sandra x
http://sandrasscribbles.blogspot.com/
First, I personally want to thank you all at AOL for helping us here in J-Land with the migration. I know that you are working hard to try to make this as smooth as possible for everyone involved. I know that there is a lot of anger and frustration among us..but after all it is understandable...you do not tear a family apart without some form of it showing through.
Please, if you can...will you try to get help for those of our J-LAnd friends and family who have had spam blocks put on their journals/blogs over at blogger???
I thank you AOL for the four years that I have had here...AOL JOURNALS brought to me angels when I needed them most; after my husband died...and I am forever grateful.
sincerely
Carlene Noggle
http://journals.aol.com/tendernoggle/HORSESHOEBEND/
Thanks Frank... I only wanted it for archives as I started a new one but it would be nice to have it over there.
tendernoggle
First off, our hearts go out to you and it goes without saying that we're very glad Journals and the people who visited you on your blog were able to play a role in helping you through your tough times.
As for the spam block. My blogs locked as well during testing... so let me see how Blogger wants us to handle getting these cleared.
Frank
Hi Cayasm.
Have you tried using this as the URL when starting the migration process?
http://journals.aol.co.uk/cayasm/isnt-she-great/
I noticed that the URL in your comment doesn't actually point directly to the view of your blog.
Perhaps this will help.
Thank you JJLueck, that worked a treat my journal has now been migrated WOOHoo
Yasmin
x
I'm having a problem with the transfer...... I can log in to my google account and view my friends blogs, but when I click on the link provided from the transfer email to transfer MY blog over...it says my email doesn't exist. What the heck? I mean, I've already logged in with that email, so......??
~Amy
Vish/Frank -
If you have the time I'd like to ask a few questions before the move (I'm sure most are redundant and have been answered already).
1. When I 'practiced' by moving a secondary blog none of the sidebar graphics migrated. Did I miss something, and/or how do I go about establishing them on blogger?
2. I have slapinions.blogspot and something silly like yada yada slap-Inionscom here at AOL - w/ Slapinions established on Blogger (but empty and unused) will I still have to delete it in order to use that addy for my transfer?
3. Is there a nice three column layout in blogger? Not a big issue, just curious.
4. " Images hosted anyplace *other* than AOL Pictures are not being automatically copied to Picasa, and will have to be copied over manually, if you desire. " Does this mean photobucket pics won't port over? I could swear they did on my practice blog.
Thanks
Dan
Dan (and others) To answer your questions.
1. We are currently migrating the About Me feed and storing it in the user's profile only if this is the first blog in your account. Also note that no images that were in the About Me feed are pulled over. Only the plain text. This is a limitation in the migration tool.
2. If you don't feel like deleting the other blog, one thing that you can do is go into the "Settings -> Publishing" option and change the subdomain of the old blog and this should allow the new blog to take over that blog's subdomain when the migration asks for the Name/Subdomain for the new blog.
3. None that I see, and Blogger will not divulge plans for future templates. Having said that, Blogger gives you full control over your templates so if you don't like one they provide you can edit the HTML or find a template online and upload it. Here is a site that shared blogger templates: http://blogger-templates.blogspot.com/ . I would say serious template hackery is not for the faint of heart though and I would first try with a test blog.
4. Photobucket links to pictures will get ported over, they just won't be copied into their Picasa account.
Thanks Frank.
Dan
Labdancer51 and anyone else who's interested --
If you use the Google address solely or mostly for your blog, you can set it up so you get an email for every comment made. Then set up GNotify on your Gmail page. A little window pops up each time you get email.
I seem to be migrating my old AOL Journals okay, but I used FTP space for all my images. So I loaded them all on my external hard drive and I'm putting them back on the blogger blog one by one.
But this has been a tremendous job done by both the AOL and Google/Blogger folks. Thank you!
Just wanted to say thank you for all your hard work. The transfer for me was very easy which I appreciate alot. Sandi
I've been gone for over a month now and just recently found out about this. I have been trying for over an hour to transfer my aol journals to blogger. I've followed all the help links but it still isn't working. I'm competely stumped. Am I the only one still having problems with this? Is there a simple answer to why it just stops transfering in the middle of it? AHHH Wish I had come back sooner..
I appreciate any help you or anyone can give me!
Promise
http://journals.aol.com/promiseluv372/TheJournalJar/
Promise that has been happening to me and so many others since the migration link came out. We are told it's being worked on............ but apparently I am only one of a handful of folks this is happening to. I sure wish they would look at the numbers on this and take positive action so we ALL can move our journals too.
d
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