AOL Users: How to Backup AOL Journals to Your Computer

It’s been a couple days since AOL users were notified about the fact AOL Journals is shutting down. In an effort to help those who need it, I’ve put together a guide on how to backup all your AOL journals content (blog entries, images, etc.) locally to your computer for later access.

Until AOL provides an option to export your blog content into a simple XML file, you’ll need to “crawl” (aka, “spider”) your Journal and it will be mirrored locally. There are several drawbacks for doing it this way — but to save you time, let’s just say AOL will be paying the price for it in the end due to the inability to offer a blog export feature. Important notes are located at the end of this entry for review.

Overview:

• Download a free application (Wget) to be used later.
• Use a Command Prompt so you can send Wget the commands.
• Open the folder where all the files are stored.
• Wait until crawl is complete. It takes a while.

I recommend you close all other applications before continuing as this can be confusing for novices and distractions just make things worse.  This will involve a LOT of Web traffic moving over your Internet connection, dial-up users need not continue further.

This process uses the Command Prompt (terminal for geeks).  Please take caution as you type these commands as you could potentially cause more problems than good. Type all quotation marks, spaces and dashes for commands!

Process:

1. Download Wget for Windows. It’s free and is a typical software installation, accept the terms and click ‘yes’ and ‘continue’ to install it.
2. Click Start then Run. Windows Vista users can just click the Start Menu.
3. Type cmd and press Enter.
4. Navigate to the Wget installation folder by typing this command in and press Enter:
   

   cd "C:\Program Files\GnuWin32\bin"

5. Begin the crawl of your Journal. Type this command in and press Enter:
   

   wget -m -k -K -E --random-wait --html-extension http://journals.aol.com/SCREENNAME/JOURNAL-TITLE/

6. Observe the Command Prompt and make sure it’s crawling your Journal. At this point, just set it and forget it, and come back in a few hours and observe if it’s crawling your Journal.
7. When Wget is no longer crawling your blog, press CTRL + C to stop it.
8. Open the indexed files locally on your computer. Type this command in and press Enter:
   

   explorer journals.aol.com

9. Browse the folders and locate your screenname. The reason why other blogs show up is because you might have linked out to them and they were also AOL Journals users. At this point, you may close the Command Prompt.
10. You’re done! I recommend adding everything under your blog into one ZIP file and saving it to a CD so you don’t delete it by accident.

Important Notes:

• This will consume a lot of bandwidth. Do not do this if you have a rated broadband provider (like Verizon EVDO service).
• This will hit AOL Journals’ servers hard. If too many people do this at once, AOL could technically block these requests. (There are tricks to get around that, nonetheless.)
• Assume a full index will take about 500MBs, including images.
• *If* AOL offers an “export” function, do not follow the instructions above.

Any comments, questions, problems? Discuss it in the comments below. Unfortunately, I’m unable to back up everyone’s blog for you, but try these instructions on your own before asking me to do it for you.

Why the heck did I write this? Read: AOL Journals and AOL Hometown Will Be Closed.