Comments on: AOL Hometown Images & Files Still Available

By: j harnon

j harnon — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 22:03:42 +0000

I had saved a link from aol hometown user that someone sent me for research. The link was the descendants of francis billingsley. I am not an aol user, do not have an account, is there some way to access the spreadsheet? I do not remember the person’s name that posted the spread sheet.

By: Mr. K

Mr. K — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 05:03:11 +0000

All of you who are complaining had time to get your files from aol i knew about aol closing hometown and i was not even a member of aol, and if you people were so worried about pictures etc you would not keep them on any internet site you would keep them at your house on a disk. Aol announced the closing of hometown way before your files got deleted so that tells me that you must have not been to interested in your own site or you would have seen the warnings from them about closing hometown…

By: Simon Wagstaff

Simon Wagstaff — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 05:53:13 +0000

People like Lewis G. Schmidt may be able to recover their pages at the Internet Archive.

http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

I checked on the first of Mr. Schmidt’s files and it is there.

By: Lewis G. Schmidt

Lewis G. Schmidt — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 22:46:14 +0000

I wrote nine books on the American Civil War and established the following seven web sites that are accessed by interested people around the world. AOL deleted the sites and I lost them:

http://hometown.aol.com/lewschmidt/index.html
http://hometown.aol.com/lewschmidt/keywestgoldswordcolgood.html
http://hometown.aol.com/lewschmidt/Olustee.html
http://hometown.aol.com/lewschmidt/keywestpostcemeteryrelocation.html
http://hometown.aol.com/lewschmidt/page3.html
http://hometown.aol.com/lewschmidt/SandyLillahCornish.html
http://hometown.aol.com/lewschmidt/SmithBarnesFosterBattBobe.html

HELP!!!!

By: claudia

claudia — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 14:07:30 +0000

good morning Is there an easier ( for not too computer savvy PC users to try and get their AOLHometown pages back? I downloaded the Free FTP Commander , yet it was very confusing( for me) and I did take all the steps which you recommended. Thank you very kindly in advance for any further help.

By: ASCII by Jason Scott / Datapocalypso!

ASCII by Jason Scott / Datapocalypso! — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 23:02:08 +0000

[...] all the files were still accessible. You could log in via an FTP site and download your files. It is believed they had 25 servers with this data, and they decided to delete them all at once, with… AOL never explained this. Why should they? There’s no social stigma other than being told [...]

By: Joe O

Joe O — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 19:15:45 +0000

Well I think time finally ran out. AOL removed all files from the servers, even the backup servers. Port 21 is still open for anonymous FTP login, but all files are gone (erased). I noticed this yesterday and have made an entry to my site regarding it. I’ll leave my page available in case something changes, but I doubt it.

With server space so available and plentiful these days, they could have easily left one server available to help people. I just hope enough people could save their files.

Day before yesterday there were 25 servers, mirror images, containing all our files. Today there are none.

Typical AOL, just in time for Christmas.

Joe O

By: Joe O

Joe O — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 05:18:50 +0000

@Marah Marie

Joe and Marie, thanks to both of you for spreading the word. Starting to get more visits from different countries now. I link back to each of your sites on the page now.

Joe

By: Marah Marie

Marah Marie — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 08:49:48 +0000

Figures. Thanks for the update.

By: Joe

Joe — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 05:35:21 +0000

@Marah Marie I updated the spreadsheet with feedback from Mr. O'Brien. AOL's already made a move in decommissioning a set of FTP servers. ~J