I've been designing web pages for ten years. I've always had some disclaimer that we cannot guarantee that any of our pages or emails will work with AOL. They've done it again.

Let me be your consultant for a moment. AOL is not for business. It is not friendly with serious web applications like content management software. It works with our sites until you try to edit anything, then it fails miserably.

Skip this paragraph if you hate geek speak, but this is the definitive explanation. If you use the AOL browser, your IP address changes approximately every 6 seconds. It works by assigning a proxy that is controlled by AOL. This website needs to know your present IP to keep you logged in and AOL doesn't allow that to happen. In effect this site sees you as a new user every 6 seconds.

Solution? Go here and download Firefox an alternative to Internet Explorer. This will replace your AOL browser for this purpose. You may find that you like to use Firefox all the time, but that's up to you of course.

We cannot fix the site to accommodate AOL. We wrote this for our old website in 1997 and it still rings true!

Reasons why Sitecats no longer supports AOL:

1. AOL is not for business. Read their terms and you will see this clearly stated. Anything as important as your business should never rely solely, or in part, on AOL. Their commercials have never included anything to do with business, and they do not support it. If they could get business accounts, they surely would. They are ill-equipped for important business.

2. AOL guarantees nothing, and they ultimately support absolutely nothing. Mediocre at best, when it works at all. We've tried to work around them for several years, and we have had hundreds of complaints about our service, when it has turned out to be their fault.

3. AOL is comparable to a novelty system of internet access, for novelty purposes only. We don't play games with your work because it is very important to us.

4. AOL email is not guaranteed to get to you. Again, read their terms of service carefully.

5. AOL does not allow forwarding email from our systems. Why? We don't know. But it's probably a corporate decision to not collaborate with other internet services.

6. AOL support is sub par. If you've ever called them, you know what we mean. Second only to Register.com and Verisign, the paperwork behemoth.

7. As we try to cut costs of your service, AOL increases our overhead by throwing a wrench into our systems. If you ask us to deal with your AOL problem, we will promptly refuse.

8. If a problem arises, and AOL is involved in ANY WAY, we assume no responsibility, and no liability. Conversely, we insist on this policy to save you additional costs. Simple AOL problems have become week long issues for us (some unresolved), and we have had to bill people for this time. Just say "no" to AOL.

9. These items listed are the last time we will address the problems we have had, or will have with AOL. We will not pick up their slack, and we will not support them.

10. We will need to bill you $95 an hour, one hour minimum, to discuss these points stated above. Additionally, if we have to send something important to you using AOL email, and something goes awry, you are fully responsible.

11. We apologize for AOL's inconvenience. One last time.

John Ralston
www.sitecats.com