To my fellow AOL Journal users, and to any and all AOL staff members who may be screening this on behalf of Homeland Security:
My General Beefs with AOL Journals, and some Ideas on How to Improve Them
1. Clean up the url's. Is leading off the url with journals.aol.com really necessary? Shouldn't the emphasis be on the author of the page, and the ideas they want to get across?
Slapinions.journals.aol.com is still long-winded, but would be a vast upgrade.
And I see no reason, in this security conscious world, that an authors screename (and therefore his/her email address) be force-fed into the url.
2. Compromise between ease of use and creative control. I like how simple it is to add a blogroll, and once you get the hang of it adding pics is pretty easy on the gray matter too. I very much like being able to IM or phone in a post.
But short of sidestepping (cheating) the rules by various methods, there is no way to add the harmless collection of personal banners, countdown charts, etc. that bloggers on other services love. And why a measly character limit on the about me section?
3 Make the comments user-friendly Right now, only AOL or AIM users can register a comment. (and frankly, when I check the site from other locations, I have trouble accessing the comments from AIM).
Sure, it's wonderful to hear from other AOL members. But after 10000 hits and very few comments I figured a way to sidestep the issue by adding my own comments service (sort-of). My first post after that brought 4 comments from 50 hits, none of them AOL users.
Dontcha think it's advertising the breadth and ease of AOL when a Journal attracts an audience outside of the service? Wouldn't it be in AOL's best interest to help that along? And if you feel the need, throw down an AOL banner on the journal to make sure visitors know who's king of the net.
4. Where's the help? Outside of some very basic official help available when starting out, I've relied on innovative Journals like Pam, Random, and Patrick's Place to help me over the rough patches. There should be a comprehensive, universally known and accepted help options for the Journals.
5. Look, I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings .. . but the folks who designed the color schemes for the Journals need to put down their crayons. I mean, who comes up with this: [item removed temp.]
Even if you go with 'advanced' controls and tweak it yourself, you are left with that ugly white sash across the top of my page. Why not let users add graphics or a title bar to that area?
BTW - I know that's possible, because some personal journals run by admitted AOL staffers do the impossible and pimp out that space. Poor form to allow that to happen while paying customers are left behind.
This is just my personal wish list. Let me know if anyone has something to add. Dan/Slapinions
