AOL HELP

Therefore, I am removing the tutorial, and have no intention whatsoever of updating it. Instead, I will only give you some important tips and information for dealing with AOL's weird browser and problems with graphics.

If you are building a page on AOL, you need to know this information. I will leave this page up until it is no longer needed... which could be years!

This page is not going to be pretty or fancy. I just want it to be helpful. If you are lucky enough to find this page before you make any pages yourself with AOL's Personal Publisher, you will have saved yourself a lot of headaches. So, without further ado....

Are your graphics showing for all browser's? Probably not!

Code from the web, and making it work. (webrings, banner services, buttons)

Making your graphics show up with html (webrings, buttons)

Are your graphics showing for all browser's? Probably not!

Unfortunately, your graphics are probably not showing up for other browsers. This means that when someone from another ISP (other than AOL) sees your site, all he or she will see is your text and broken graphics (or pies).

There is a graphics option in your AOL preferences that is automatically ON when you installed AOL. This option compresses graphics to make webpages load faster (supposedly). However, this option also makes any graphics you save compressed. Your graphics will be visible to AOL users, but will not be visible to anyone else. Millions of people will not be able to see the graphics on your page, instead there will be an empty box, like this...
Okay, let's fix it! Do this now! Go to the top toolbar, and choose "members". Next, choose "preferences". Now, find and click on WWW. There will be several tags at the top, choose "graphics". See the little box, with the text asking if you want to use compressed graphics? Uncheck that box! You might want to restart AOL or maybe even Windows before trying to save graphics, to make sure that the option is set.
One more thing, if you ever need to reinstall AOL, or even upgrade to 4.0, you will need to set the option again.

Code from the web, and making it work. (webrings, banner services, buttons, guestbooks)

If you have ever tried to use a code from the web, you have probably experienced this problem. The code won't work, and/or looks bad on your page, like the html showing. This is an easy problem to fix, really. AOL's Personal Publisher reads codes differently. Don't ask me to tell you why, I can't figure out why.

A code from the web may be written with spaces between the tags. Like this... <tag> <tag> <tag>
In Personal Publisher, there can be no spaces, it has to be a continual line. Like this... <tag><tag><tag> with all the >'s and <'s touching. That's it! Just place your cursor in front of a < and backspace till it touches the < in front of it. If the code has a space in it, like this....

<center>
<tag>
this is text
<tag>
</center>

bring it together too....  <center><tag>this is text</tag></center>

Making your graphics show up with html (webrings, buttons)

This is the most difficult. How many times have you placed a code on your page, and couldn't get the graphics to show, even after uploading them? The problem is, is you have to define the path. There are two way's od doing this.

1. One way is to type in the path, or the file the image is in. For instance, if you have your images in C drive, in a folder called "graphics" which is in a folder called "mypages", the file name would look like this... file:///C:\mypages\graphics\
Therefore, if you have an image (in gif format) named "mypic", the file name would be
file:///C:\mypages\graphics\mypic.gif

Here is a way to see it. Using your add image option, put an image in your page. It might be a good idea to do it on a new page, or somewhere on another page, where it will be easy for you to find it in the html (you'll understand). Okay, the image is there? Now, view your page while still in edit. Right click on the page (not an image), and choose "view source". You will see the html of your page. Find your image file name. It will be in this tag: <img src="image">

2. Here is another way. You can substitute the URL of the graphic in the code too. Yes, your images will all have a URL once they are uploaded. First, of course, you have to upload the graphic. Have you learned how to upload in "My Place" yet? It's easy enough. Or, if you haven't learned, here's an easy way. Make a new page, put your images on it that you need uploaded. Publish it, and call it "test" or something. Your graphics will be uploaded to your "My Place". You can delete the page in "My Place" later, and the graphics will still be uploaded until you delete them too.

If all of this seems like a pain in the butt, believe me, it is. Probably the best tip I can give you is to move your pages to an online host. There are plenty of free hosts, and I understand that their home page builders are easy to use. I know that they are all better than AOL's Personal Publisher. Besides, if you are like me, and finally get sick of AOL's multitude of aggravations, you may eventually want to get another ISP. If you do, then your pages will remain with the other host simply by giving them your change of email address.

You can also get a good html editor and make your pages off-line, then upload them to your host.

If you are serious about your web pages, learn html, learn to upload, learn about everything you can, and move your pages from AOL! I can't even believe their new homestead thingy! What's up with that? A fourth of your web page is covered in their advertising and other crap. For heaven's sake, do you think any page would look good with that?

Well, that's it. I hope this helped you. Pass this page on to other AOL'ers with web pages. There are thousands of AOL users with broken graphics on their pages! Give them a hand, be a nice webbie.

Babe