Yesterday, I posted one method to crawl and backup your entire AOL Journals destination. In theory, that can also work with Hometown. One limitation is that it is pretty advanced for people to do, and there is room for error. Today, Marah from Anti-AOL has another method that makes it much easier for AOL Users.
Simply, those methods are:
- Use BackStreet Browser
- Save Files by Hand (not recommended)
- Use Wget method to archive all files, locally.
Now despite these methods, AOL states they are making efforts to allow easy transport to Blogger. One tiny problem…
Not everyone wants Blogger. They want to take their content with them to a variety of blog software and manage their experience. Many, I can imagine are going to get their own domain and hosting and host their blog there. People are tired of having their toes crushed by big companies who dictate where (and how) they share their personal thoughts.
I stand firm that I will only give AOL credit for for giving 30 day notice to bloggers if they provide a universal export on their blog. Every real blog software offers it. Why not AOL? Unlike, e-mail; blog destinations are not the assets, it’s the content.
To some, 100K users might not be much; but they are where people have learned their basic Web page uploading skills, basic blogging skills; and you probably know at least ONE person who does blog on AOL Journals. It’s not about the number of users, its about doing the right thing to support those users.
I’ll share with you that AOL HQ does not give a shit about users. They really don’t. Truthfully, they believe that users are like sheep and you need to corral them to destinations via the Welcome Screen. They don’t care, as long as it makes their page views go up; they couldn’t care. Greed runs AOL. The irony here is that AOL Journals and Hometown DID contribute a chunk of traffic to the Company. I am stumped as to why they killed it with out at least giving a solid attempt to fix it.
Thanks to all the feedback, AOL Users. I feel your pain and your confusion. Please take a few moments and read those links and decide which solution works best for you. It’s funny, AOL make it easy to create your blog and Web page — but double the difficulty on taking it with you.
