You’ve Got Blogs!
A first look at AOL Journals, Part One
Part One | Part Two | Part Three
by Scott Schrantz
July 23, 2003
What are AOL Journals?
AOL Journals have a basic, homogeneous look, but they are well suited for people who want to start blogging with a minimum of fuss.
All throughout 2003, we've been getting little teases that AOL was going to be offering weblog-building tools. This raised many questions about how they would work, who would use them, how open they would be, and so on. But it was still in the rumor stage, so there was precious little information to go on. At the beginning of July more concrete info began to come out, as some A-list bloggers were invited to see a demo of the tool and give their input. They came back with glowing reviews, but AOL kept us hanging, saying the AOL Journals, as they had been named, were sill in beta release. They wouldn't be available to the masses until AOL 9.0 was released later in the summer. But then on July 22 I discovered, through Dave Winer and Michael Gartenberg, the secret link that would let you create an AOL blog of your own. Dave wasn't able to try it out, since he didn't have an AOL account. But I have one that I keep for my laptop, so I fired it up and entered the brave new world of AOL Journals. My first attempt is located at journals.aol.com/yinandyangtwins/AOLComputerVet.
These pages will serve as a guided tour, to AOL Journals, seen from the point of view of a tech professional and semi-long-in-the-tooth blogger. I've had a Blogger weblog at www.computer-vet.com/weblog/ since February, 2002. So as soon as I started playing with this new service, I viewed it with a critical eye. This article is part tutorial, part review, part screenshot gallery, and part me just having fun with a new tool.
Contents
Basics
In my short time of playing around with AOL Journals, I can definitely see how they trimmed down the feature list. You have very little control over the templates for your page; AOL opted instead to give you a few basic choices. You can layout your page in 1, 2, or 3 columns, choose from a dozen color schemes, and pick one of three existing templates to display your posts. Aside from that basic personalization, all the AOL Journals look very much the same. This is not a tool for people who want a fine level of control over the look of their site. This is for people who just want to type and click, and let the computer do the work. In other words, a perfect tool for the majority of AOL customers.
The service is a little buggy, but that's a consequence of it still being in beta testing. I'm not sure if they wanted the link to get outside of the official channels yet. So, I've been putting up with a few weird errors that I hope will be polished by the time it is released. I won't be talking about those bugs here.
There are some nice aspects of it, though. One that has gotten a lot of press is that you can post to your blog from AIM, by sending an instant message to the AOL Journals bot. Another is the editing method. Unlike other blogging systems, where the editing controls are separate from the page, with AOL Journals the editing controls are part of the blog. They are hidden for most viewers, but if you log in to AOL's ScreenName service, when you view your journal the editing controls magically appear all over the page. It's a really nice blending of user tasks, and it makes a hell of a lot of sense to do it this way. I'll have more on that in Part Two.
Getting Started
The Create a Journal screen is the first step.
The first step in using AOL Journals is to create a journal. At the moment, getting to the “Create A Journal” screen is the hardest part of the procedure. Most likely this is because the feature is still in beta testing; I can't find any links to it in the AOL interface. Presumably you'll be able to visit keyword: AOL Journals and go to some sort of management screen; right now that keyword just lets you sign up to be alerted when Journals have gone public. So, to start a new journal, you have to use the super-secret direct link that I first saw on Dave Winer's page.
http://edit.journals.aol.com/_do/create_blog
When I first tried the link, it wouldn't work unless I used it from inside the AOL client. That must have been a temporary glitch, though, because later it was working through a “regular” internet connection too. In fact, you can fully manage your blog from right inside the browser, once you have signed in using AOL's ScreenName service. In-browser editing even works in Mozilla, which took me by surprise. But more on editing later. First we've got to create a journal.
Create A Journal
You can choose whether your blog will have one, two, or three columns, and what the sidebars will contain.
Creating a new journal turns out to be a very simple process. Compared to other systems, such as Blogger or Movable Type, it's a piece of cake. The process is easier to understand if you're already familiar with blogs and blogging conventions, but I could imagine someone completely new to the scene picking up on it quickly.
The first screen starts you out slow. It asks for a name for your journal, a description, and a “community” drop-down. You're supposed to “select the category that best matches the content of your journal”, but I know a lot of blogs fall into more than one category. It'll be interesting to see how they use this information later. You're then given the choice of creating a Simple Journal, which sets up some default options and lets you jump right into writing, or a Custom Journal, where you can modify your layout and colors before you get started. They make a point of saying that, either way, you'll be able to change all the options later on if you want.
Layout
If you picked the Simple Journal, you'll be taken all the way to the last step. But because you're an adventurous pioneer, you're going with the Custom Journal, so you can set things up the way you want. After you click Next, the Layout screen comes up. On this screen, you can choose whether you want one, two, or three columns on your blog. If you choose the two- or three-column options, sidebars are added to your page, and you are given a few options for what you want to populate these sidebars with. You can write a little “All About Me” blurb, you can add links to other blogs or interesting sites, you can list recent entries, and you can even put a hit counter in your sidebar. How quaint.
Post Template
You are given three post templates to pick from.
Once you've decided on the basic page layout, you are taken to a page where you can pick from one of three templates for your posts. The choices here are rather limited, and there's no way to customize any of them, so, just like in many other places, you're stuck with what AOL thinks your site should look like. The three choices are “Friendly”, “Minimal”, and “Professional”. All three of these choices include the date, time, title, author and a permalink. They also include these insipid little “Mood” and “Music” lines, which I can only imagine came about during months of focus groups comprised of teenage girls. I mean, it's fine to say you want your entries to look “Professional”. But when you have a line that says “Mood: Chillin’”, it kind of undermines the professionalism. Or maybe that's just me.
On this same screen, you're also given the opportunity to enable comments. Actually, you have the option of turning on comments for each post, and also turning on a guestbook, where people can add comments to the whole blog. I was confused for a minute when I first saw this, since the concept of a “guestbook” has all but disappeared in recent years. It's still alive and well in AOL, though, so if you're interested in having one you can put it in there.
Colors
You have your choice of twelve colors.
After clicking Next, you are taken to the color screen. Here you are given a choice of twelve color schemes, and are asked to pick one to be applied to your journal. Each scheme has a matching set of rounded graphics for the header and sidebar. It's a nice little graphical touch, possibly better than the CSS blocky look we're used to, but it's a little reminiscent of the AOL 8/Windows XP cartoony style of graphics. They're not everyone's cup of tea.
The color choices they give you are all very basic and safe. There are a couple of blues, one green, a purple, brown, yellow, even a red, white, and blue “Patriotic” scheme. You can also choose “Custom” and create your own color combination. If you pick Custom, you are taken to a pop-up screen where you pick from a color palette. They let you change the colors for the sidebars, the header, the background, and the text. One drawback of the custom color scheme, though, is that choosing Custom turns off the rounded graphics. The graphics only come in the eleven pre-built color schemes, so choosing custom colors gives your site more of the CSS blocky look. Also, you need to keep in mind that the top 100px or so of the screen is comprised of AOL-branded headers, and your chosen colors don't apply to that part of the screen. Depending on the colors you've chosen, the transition can be a little jarring. So, in the end, you're probably better off picking one of the pre-built color schemes, since they were specially created to look nice with the AOL Journals templates.
Finishing
On the final screen you can modify the URL for your journal.
After your color selection is locked in place, you're taken to the final screen. On this screen you're given an option to tell your friends all about your new journal, and given one last chance to change the URL. All URLs take the form of http://journals.aol.com/[ScreenName]/[BlogName]. It's only the last part of the URL that you're able to change. It defaults to the name that you entered way back in the first step, but you have the opportunity to change it to make a more friendly URL. I've seen people change it to /blog, which would certainly keep things simple. Also, with AOL Journals, you are able to have more than one journal with your screen name, so you could have /blog1 and /blog2, or /work and /personal. Choose your URL carefully, because it's the only thing you can't come back and change later. When you've settled on a URL, go ahead and click Next.
After clicking through the final screen, AOL will set up your journal for you. It takes a few seconds for the back-end processing and templating to be done, and then you are dropped right into your journal, with all the in-browser editing controls active. You now have an AOL Journal, and you're ready to start customizing your sidebars and adding entries.
Part Two of this series covers the mechanics of actually using your AOL Journal, adding and deleting entries, customizing the sidebar, and changing the choices you made during the setup routine. Go there!
Part Three of the series covers the extra special features, such as Post-From-AIM, Comments, and Archives. Go there!
Part One | Part Two | Part Three
