yourminis We're sorry to inform you that as of October 27, 2008, we will no longer support the yourminis startpage. You already know that one of the best things about widgets is their ability to give you access to the content and features you value from different locations across the Web. Because there are already so many great startpage solutions out there supporting yourminis (like myAOL, iGoogle or Netvibes), we've decided to let the startpage experts take care of the startpages, so we could focus on what we do best -- building widgets.
The startpage link will be removed from the site shortly, and the startpage itself will be completely removed on October 27, 2008, so please make sure to export all of your content from the site prior to this date. Although we know that this is an inconvenience, you can export your feeds data as an OPML file, take most of your content, and import it into other startpage solutions (see instructions below). yourminis widgets will continue to work on other sites as they have in the past.
We're also going to be making some changes to the gallery. The details page for each widget will still exist, but we will be removing browsing, favoriting, and statistics functionality from the consumer gallery.
To export your feeds data to another startpage:
1.) Simply click "Add Content" at the upper left hand side of the yourminis startpage.
2.) Click "Export OPML" at the bottom of the menu and save the OPML file to your desktop.
3.) Go to your favorite startpage and follow their instructions for importing the OPML file that you exported in step #2.
We appreciate your patience and understanding as we make these changes. If you have any further questions, please feel free to comment below.
Will the use of individual yourminis widgets continue to be supported? Will there be a new interface for non-developers to create and modify them?
Reuven
Posted by: Reuven | October 22, 2008 at 04:55 AM
Would be nice to embed these in a flash file so we can replicate the HUD effect is that possible?
Posted by: Brendon Smith | October 22, 2008 at 11:42 AM
Well I waited for the email that was supposed to come on Tuesday. I'm not at all surprised that email came late on Wednesday and that is contained the exact wording from their blog posting. This company just does not care about the people that made this site what it is. Ask yourself a question; would you honestly continue to work this type of site knowing that at a whim they will remove the hard work you have put in. I really hope your reading this yourminis because I'm preparing legal documents at this very moment. I have over 5 Number # 1 spots on google coming from my starpages. My monthly traffic totals are over 50 000 unique visitors a month and I have been supplying
large amounts of traffic to yourminis. Yourminis has broken the contract it made with each of you when you signed up to use this site.
Anyone interested in seeking justice for their breach of contract should contact Richard Kemp at 647-344-6193 or supergenius@programmer.net.
I plan on making as much noise as possible to alert the Internet community that Yourminis is a company that is not to be trusted.
Posted by: supergenius | October 22, 2008 at 11:57 AM
supergenius, I am upset by this, and was hoping they would release the startpage code, but it looks like AOL hasn't changed mych since the bad old days when they wanted to be "the internet..." and basically present an expensive to get into and expensive to use walled garden. however, "a contract"? please dude, take your chillpill
Posted by: martin | October 22, 2008 at 01:40 PM
Hi Gary,
What statestics do you offer for a paid version, what's the price and where can I find the subscribe page?
Posted by: RoyDuf | October 22, 2008 at 01:50 PM
Martin you’re practically illiterate and most likely a product of your educational system. Unlike Martin and most of you I took the time to read the YourMinis Terms of service. Their legal document is designed to enforce their rights on a Yourminis vs. You basis. Nowhere in the document does it express the right of service in a way that would affect thousands of users. On my own I would not stand a chance against them in any court. Oh by the way it will be a Canadian court and judgment against you will reflect on the Your minis credit rating. We may not be able to enforce anything on a US Company but things change when you cross the border.
So Martin please don't call me “dude” I’m not your dude and if you had as much to loose as some of us you would be singing a different tune. I'm just a guy who spent hundreds of hours working on my sites and provided your minis with steady stream of Internet traffic. I would like to express in the most fair and peaceful manner that I'm not going to take it. What I am going to do is take it to YourMinis.
Posted by: supergenius | October 22, 2008 at 02:56 PM
Okay, I'm not clear what this means...i don't use the "start page" that i'm aware of. I am using a widget powered by yourminis on one of my blogs...will this change affect the operation of that widget? I'm just not sure what all of your are referring to with the "start page" stuff. Could someone please edify me?
Posted by: Jae Baeli | October 22, 2008 at 03:30 PM
Jae - if you don't know what the startpage is, you shouldn't be affected by this at all. Your widgets will continue to work just fine...
Posted by: Goowy | October 22, 2008 at 03:47 PM
Richard - you are certainly welcome to your opinion about whether or not we should shut down the startpage, but if you continue to be disparaging to other members of the community, we will filter out your comments...
Posted by: Goowy | October 22, 2008 at 03:50 PM
Gary you can filter out anything you like here. Understand that I operate over 1000 websites.
Try and filter that out.
Posted by: supergenius | October 22, 2008 at 03:58 PM
Gary--thanks for your response. I thought maybe that was the case, but wanted to check.
Best,
Jae
Posted by: Jae Baeli | October 22, 2008 at 04:00 PM
Quick question can we render these somehow in our own swf. The whole idea of having them be in iGoogle, Facebook etc.. Is dandy but rendering the widgets in a hud in your browser or on your own web page in a flash file that is 100% height 100% is where the magic is at not to mention it seems to take away the whole yourminis mentality?
Posted by: Brendon Smith | October 22, 2008 at 04:13 PM
I realise the decision doesn't come from you Gary but rather a couple of tech ignorant bean counters but nevertheless it is i think a poor decision and the little time that you (AOL) have left your loyal community to recover and transfer their data reflects very poorly on all of you and leaves a bad taste to want to continue with any aspect of the service you leave up.
I can only reiterate what has been already said, the other startpage services do not provide any equivalent service to yourminis, i know i have used them all.
I would strongly suggest you talk to the powers at be at AOL and have them scrap their rather amateurish attempt at startpages and substitute yourminis for MyAOL or break the code out for an enterprising customer to continue the service.
Another idea, would be to archive the startpage database, clear down the active database and offer a premium paid service to your users to reinstate the startpage accounts that they wish to have continued. This would give you the financial ease of eliminating the bandwidth consumption currently hurting you but in turn bringing the service back on a profitable basis immediately.
Good tech shouldn't be lost to bad marketing or short sighted accountants.
Posted by: lawz | October 22, 2008 at 04:29 PM
Brendan - you can load widgets in your own SWF if you like... join our developer group to get additional detail on it, but I have a posting on this very topic: http://groups.google.com/group/yourminis/browse_thread/thread/c5e3dbd9420b6f7e?hl=en
That said, I'm not sure this will get you into a HUD experience, but you're certainly welcome to try..
Posted by: | October 22, 2008 at 04:30 PM
Thanks for the response cheers:)
Posted by: Brendon Smith | October 22, 2008 at 06:32 PM
Sorry to hear that...
Posted by: Egor Moscow | October 23, 2008 at 01:48 AM
It is so nice to configure all the nice Widgets at the startpage and copy it to own websites. It was easy to do that, cause you could easyily update that widgets on the startpage...what a nice service for widgets...and also link list Widgets...and all that is a little bit difficult to update...and then the best startpage-service will be lost? I can not believe that.
Posted by: Martin | October 23, 2008 at 03:27 AM
Hello Gary
As I wrote in the first comment, it is of course a bad thing to close the start page.
However, I do not want to go back to HTML pages and HTML widgets.. !! You wrote that it does exist great "startpage solutions out there supporting yourminis ".. you mean that they can support the Flash Widgets we created or we can rework ???
I will not cry for the start page only, but really I want Flash Widgets as yours on any start page.. how can I do with AOL , Netvibes & co to bring yourminis widgets , display in Flash ??
Posted by: JPB | October 23, 2008 at 04:16 AM
Flash widgets will definitely work on other startpages - no problem. Just choose the "copy me" option and than another startpage...
Posted by: Goowy | October 23, 2008 at 11:19 AM
Gary, I don't think your last reply actually answers the real issues about copying the flash widgets to other startpages.
May be i am mistaken but when the Flash Widgets are copied to a web page or startpage of another host then the widgets are no longer configurable or am i mistaken?
For example, a bookmark widget will no longer support persistent changes to the bookmark entries or a Notepad would not store the new edits. Am I correct or not?
Posted by: doymarn | October 24, 2008 at 02:00 PM
Doymarn - You can use our widgets in other startpages such as iGoogle. Our widget platform communicates with the startpage and tells it to save the settings. The only real difference is that you can't dynamically change the size of the widget to display more data.
As an example, I took our base bookmark widget and added it to iGoogle:http://www.grabup.com/uploads/ca64ded10c3eedabe0466b324027eb57.png?direct
I then added a number of bookmarks to it and you'll see that the widget gets a scrollbar instead of growing the available space. In any case, I closed my browser, went back to iGoogle and my widget had my changes saved as expected: http://www.grabup.com/uploads/dd5c02ab7a17cdefb35ca6e6ec63c6a1.png?direct
This same experience should be true of all of our widgets, including the notepad...
Posted by: Goowy | October 24, 2008 at 03:00 PM
nooooo...
dont do it
Posted by: and | October 25, 2008 at 03:54 AM
If you add a bookmark widget to Igoogle from the Igoogle gadget library then they work, but try copying widgets to Igoogle from the copy panel of the yourminis widget on the startpage do not work.
Also i tried the OPML export and imports with little success... inspecting your OPML export files it is apparent that the export opml files are incomplete, chunks of tab data is missing for many tabs.
Tried copying individual widgets to NetVibes from startpage tabs... no success
Posted by: Doymarn | October 25, 2008 at 06:49 AM
Well, without the start page, "yourminis.com" is useless.
You can make all the widgets or whatever you want....I'm not coming back.
Posted by: omnes | October 25, 2008 at 12:06 PM
Doymarn - I'm not sure why you had problems copying the bookmark widget to iGoogle. I can tell you that I just copied directly from the yourminis startpage and it worked perfectly. Obviously it's possible that you have some content within your widget that is causing a problem - try it with a "new" bookmark widget and it will work. We'd have to do a process of elimination to see why your widget may not copy over, but that should not be the usual case.
I'm guessing that the issue you experienced with your OPML file may be specific to some sort of content. I have over 30 RSS widgets and my OPML file exports without issue. Do you know how many of these widgets you have? How many tabs? Can you try to simplify to tabs/feeds that you're really interested in and then try exporting again? It's likely to be an issue of an unexpected character in one of the feeds, but I can't say for sure...
Posted by: Goowy | October 27, 2008 at 12:54 AM