The Real Blogger Status

The migration from AOL Journals to Blogger blogs has now begun . But, we still expect challenges. One of the first challenges to show up is with Private Journals. To use the import tool, you'll have to make the journal public. After the import is done, and you have a working blog, you can make it private (select friends can read it) , or you can make it closed (nobody but you can read it) . If you have a private journal, and it has comments that were made while it was private, you might want to hold off on making the journal public . Bear in mind you decide to make your Journal public, all comments added while it is private will be deleted. Comments posted to a private Journal are written with the expectation of privacy. I'd be surprised of Blogger leaves this as an open issue, but let's wait until they can acknowledge the situation. You have until 10/31 (and possibly later). >> Top

Earlier today, Blogger Employee Gatsby announced the start of the migration process , from AOL Journals to Blogger Blogs. The first thing to do is check out our migration guide, which should walk you through all of the steps you need to take. Now, we see the first announced successful migration , including pictures. Finally got it to transfer..I went to my Hometown Journal, copied the exact Url from the page onto paper..then went to IE and deleted all cookies. Then signed back on to the Email that gave the link to start transfer, signed in, continued to next page, typed in exact url and bingo..finally transferred, even the pictures came though. Yes, Virginia, there is hope. >> Top

On Sept 30, 2008, Kelly Wilson of AOL announced to AOL Journals Users - United States We're sorry to inform you that on Oct. 31, 2008, AOL® Journals will be shut down permanently. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Blogger has now created an automated tool for importing from AOL Journals to Blogger. The tool, described in Blogger Help: Importing your blog from AOL Journals to Blogger , sounds fairly intuitive and linear. To help with any possible problems, they have also created a Google Group: Blogger-Help-AOL Import . A bit of bother will be experienced by those with private journals . You'll have to make the journal public, before you can start the migration. And as AOL Journals works right now, taking a journal from private to public will cause deletion of comments made while it was private. This is a matter that bears correction. Note: Do you already have a Blogger blog? If you do, just transfer your Journal and make a new blog, then merge...

We have multiple reports in Google Blogger Help that AOL is now filtering incoming email on "*.blogspot.com". If someone tries to send the URL of your blog (or their blog), in an email to an AOL customer, that email will be rejected, and the sender gets a return similar to PERM_FAILURE: Gmail tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. The error that the other server returned was: 554 554-: (HVU:B1)http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/554hvub1.html 554 TRANSACTION FAILED. This is apparently a natural result of the perceived BlogSpot spam blog problem. My suspicion is that AOL will suffer more than Google, by doing this. Blogger blog owners may be caught in the middle, unfortunately.