AOL hometown and Journal are Closing

This week, AOL sent out a message to all of the members of their Hometown service, which was a free web host, and AOL journal, which was a free blog service. The message read as follows:
“Dear AOL Hometown/FTP user,

We’re sorry to inform you that on Oct. 31, 2008, AOL Hometown and FTP will be shut down permanently. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Though you will be able to modify your Hometown site and access FTP until this date, we urge you to save your AOL Hometown/FTP content immediately, and consider other options for hosting your site.
“

In the meantime, please bookmark the People Connection Blog, where you can find out more about AOL Hometown/FTP. You can also subscribe to the People Connection Blog RSS feed to stay informed about any changes. We’ll be updating the People Connection Blog often, so please check it regularly.

Thank you for your patience and understanding as we make this transition. Again, we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

”
This may cause a few problems for a few people, as I’m sure many people will have a lot of problems moving their website elsewhere. I also noticed that AOL did not do a very good job of telling people this, as I only found it by accident. Also, there are many people in many different places, such as yahoo answers that are somewhat confused on whether it is happening or not. The most official announcement I could find was the one on the People Connection Blog: http://www.peopleconnectionblog.com/ Personally, I’m not a big fan of AOL, and do not use their services, but I know a good number of people that do, and I know that this will cause problems for them.