Important Information for AOL Users

This page is one of the most important pages you will see if you are an AOL member trying to make a web page!

If you are using AOL, your graphics are most likely not showing up on your site except to other AOL members. This means that hundreds of people will visit your site that won't see your background, and will see a lot of small boxes with broken graphic images in them instead of your cool graphics. This is because AOL has a graphics option that is automatically turned on when you installed AOL. The option is supposed to make graphics load faster when viewing a website, but doesn't help enough to make that much of a difference. The thing is, when you save a graphic from a site with this option on, your graphic is compressed the aol way, and only other AOL members will be able to see it. The graphic is corrupted.

I used to be an AOL member and had 50 pages up before finding out the reason I was getting so many letters telling me that my graphics weren't showing. I could see them and other AOL members could see them, but the other ISPs couldn't.

There is an easy way to fix this. Go to your preferences (under 'My AOL' with AOL 4.0, and 'Members' with AOL 3.0). Click on WWW. Choose the graphics tab. You will see a small box with a check in it, asking if you want to use compressed graphics. UNCHECK that box, and never ever enable it again! Also, if you ever have to reinstall AOL, or upgrade to a higher version, you will need to uncheck it again. Do it right away.

Once you uncheck the box you'll need to go out and find those graphics again (if you credited them you will be fine!) and resave them. Then, re-upload your site. Any graphics saved while the compression option was on are corrupted.

Update: I received a letter from an aol user who has upgraded to the new AOL 5.0.

"Just wanted to thank you for your information on AOL users who make a web page and that others who are not AOL members may not see the graphics you have loaded. I followed your directions you gave in using the new AOL 5.0 version. You must now click on the www tab where you will find the compression check mark. You might pass that on to others out there like me who learn something new each day. Thank you again. George."

If anyone has info on the latest version of aol please send it to me to post.