Joe,

I, too, was touched by what you did for Virginia (and the rest of us, via providing information). The stories involving memorial and grief recovery sites (and I’ve now read several of these) are the hardest.

I think AOL needs to go to the wizard and ask him for a heart.

Unfortunately, I think it is too late for me. I did not receive email notifications and just found everything gone a couple days ago. I’ve since downloaded and tried FileZilla and the wayback machine with no success. The redirects are still in place, and my site name loads on the top of the window, so it seems something is still “there.”

Does anyone know if the files are still there? Maybe I’m making some mistake with the FTP, being new to it? I don’t understand about ports, so either left the port field blank or searched with “21,” as I read about others trying that (on boards like this one). I followed the other directions (and yours, Joe) and tried several variations also.

I’ve just submitted a request for archive.org to scan my journal site just to see if that was still possible. The URL is journals.aol.com/isabeau10/nocturnaldescriptions .

It’s a dream journal, most entries were not backed up. This loss has been very difficult. I plan to write books about dreams and would like to have had those records.

If anyone has any suggestions or information, please post. Even if it’s just to settle the matter of whether the files are definitely wiped yet or not.

Thanks to everyone who has offered help in this crisis.

x,
Isabeau

[Thank you Marah Marie for your comment ]

Ayesha,

We didn’t hear back from you if you got your files okay. I just now checked your Hometown directory. You presently have 111 HTML pages in your top-level directory, along with just a few image files, but your IMAGE Sub-Directory has 175 images. This represents a lot of your time and work.

These are still available to you if you want them.

I hope you got them okay. Let us know please.

Joe O

Hi Ayesha,

If you simply follow the directions on my site, you can save all your files (including images) easily.

http://www.taimantis.com/get-my-aol-files.html

The WayBack Machine is great, but often times does not have a recent copy and, as you stated, images are oftentimes not always available.

Good luck,

Joe O

I too am severely pissed off by what AOL did to us. I didn’t get the email, I checked all the time. And for people like me whose work takes us out of town or the country for long periods of time, I am mortified at what I lost. It took me so much time to put together what I did. Like everyone else. AOL will suffer for this in loss of members at the very least. Kiss it goodbye, I hate to say, you watch.

At least there is a glimmer of hope. I’m not sure if anyone mentioned this, I read most of the comments, but try the Way Back Machine. Google it. Type in your full previous AOL http address. It brings up our sites basically in tact but no graphics. At least the site itself is still around like this, so then either copy and paste your info into Word files and get yourself a better site, or if you know html, copy that and edit it to exclude AOL code. I can still click on all my links and bring up pages like I did them. Thats how I plan to retrieve my stuff. Those of you who lost graphics, I’m not sure if there’s a way to retrieve those, maybe search the net for another type of retrieval engine.

Ayesha

Sorry it took so long but I had to spend a bit more time and dig a little deeper into the Internet. Your story of losing your only son touched me. And the indifference of AOL in giving you your saved memories and images bothered me even more.

I have your entire journal saved (images included). Since AOL has done a redirect, it’s not available for viewing. I have instead copied it to another location and rearranged it as a new webpage for you to view. You mentioned it was private, so I won’t give the link here. I did however read the beautiful poem you wrote “If Only”. What a nice tribute to Daryk.

I’ll only give the link to Joe Manna (who provides this wonderful site) to guarantee the privacy of your journal. Either that, or he will provide you with my email and I can send it to you.

This journal was private. Aside from the beautiful poem, I did not read it. I only saved it for you.

Yes Virginia….. there is a Santa Claus

Joe

Thanks for your support and desire to help others with FTPing their files. Knowing how AOL operates, someone either secretly left it on or they will leave the server up for Read-access only. I anticipate a storm of executive escalations from loyal users the moment they shut it off. It’s probably in AOL’s best interest to leave it on through the end of the year.

I agree with your advice – get it now before it’s gone. AOL is notorious for not going back on a poor decision, so all should be advised.

~Joe

Gail M Feldman :

i got the email warning me journals would be shut down. not a problem. i also got the one about you’ve got pictures. never touch the stuff. never got anything regarding hometown and had no clue until it was gone. suddenly everything vanished. they may have sent out email to some, but if they sent any to me it was lost in the shuffle, and all my stuff, mostly still stored on the computer that fried during last summer’s big lightning strike, is GONE.

i am in the process of migrating what remains over to photobucket for graphics and usapages for pages, but so much was just destroyed.

why couldn’t they have forgotten to tell me about journals and made sure i knew about hometown?

i am much aggrieved.

g

To all the folks who never trusted AOL, kudos to them. I’ve always believed that products like YGP/AOL Pictures just “run on their own” without human input. To much disbelief, AOL kills this rather inexpensive product that keeps many people loyal. It even kept me loyal to their photo service due to the unlimited nature of it. No worries, all my photos are hosted on either Flickr or Google Picasa Web.

It is frustrating, but at least we have some time left to access the photos. Let me know if you need any help migrating photos to another (reliable) photo service.

~Joe