TopTenREVIEWS

AOL Journals is part of AOL Hometown that supports personal webpages and blogs to those that are AOL AIM users. The journal is easy to set up and is free. This service placed a bit higher than Windows Live Spaces, because it is a journal (or blog) focused service.

This blog site offers basic blogging tools like simple templates, the ability to add images, manage comments, build a profile and monitor views. However, they offer few advanced tools for advanced bloggers like open source templates and traffic statistics. But if you are an AOL user and a casual blogger, than this is an easy to use service for basic blogging.

Blog Design Tools:

This service offers simple templates with a choice of color schemes or you can selectively alter the color of the sections of the template. You have a choice of four layouts and some side bar options, like a hit counter and an “All About Me” link.

AOL has included a simple text editor for adding blogs that lets you add images and links. You can also switch it to HTML mode if you want to compose a post in HTML.

Through this service you can post comments by IM, cellphone and from outside the service (by email).

Promotion/ Tracking Tools:

This site offers few promotional tools such as the ability to add tags or keywords per entry and it doesn’t offer traffic statistics beyond a simple counter. Finding AOL journals is a bit difficult; the AOL homepage does not have a link to AOL Hometown.

Ease of Use:

AOL is simple and easy to use; it is intended to be trouble–free for users of all ability levels.