Q: How are my home page preferences stored?
A: When you make changes to your page, your choices are stored as a "cookie" on the computer that you are using. Cookies store information you enter on a Web page, such as preferences or login information, to save you time later. They are very small files, and are designed to make a Web page more convenient to use so that you don't have to keep re-entering the same information. We use cookies on AOL.com so that you are not required to login or even have an AOL screen name to be able to still use and save our personalization features.

For more information on cookies, please visit this AOL Help link:

Q: What can I customize on the new AOL.com home page?
A: One of the great new things about the new AOL.com is that the are lots of ways to customize the page to both make it look the way you want it to look and give you the information that is most important and useful to you. Throughout the page, there are ways to customize but here are a few key areas:

Themes: Users can customize the colors and background of the new page. There are 6 themes to choose from with more to come.

My Links: Users can now add any links they want to the page so that they can access their most frequently visited sites more easily.

Directory: Users now have the ability to reorder the AOL Directory by dragging and dropping items to be able to put the links in whatever order best meets their needs.

My Stuff: Users can choose which 4 panels are present when the page first loads each time the browser opens. Additionally, for the AOL, Yahoo, and Gmail Panels, users can setup accounts to be able to login and preview their emails.

My Networks: Users can set up logins for any or all of the social networking sites including AIM, Bebo, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Depening on the social network, there are also different ways to view the content (list vs thumbnail) that users are able to customize.

My Local: Users can enter and store up to 5 different locations to get weather, real-time news, gas prices, and lottery information from. Additionally, users can customize the local experience by minimizing individual sections (for example hiding just the lottery section)

RSS Feed Browser: Users can add individual RSS feeds and categories to the page to be able to see content from their favorite external sites.

Q: Why did all of the changes I made to my home page disappear?
A: If you make changes as described above and then come back to the page to find that none of those changes are there, what might be happening is that your "cookies" have being deleted. As noted in an earlier question, cookies are the way that your individual choices are managed. So if your cookies are deleted or if your settings are such that you don't allow cookies to be saved, then your customization choices will also not be able to be saved for the next time you visit the page.

Q: How can I prevent the changes I make to my home page from being lost?
A: Sometimes the deletion of cookies can be manual and other times it can be from a setting on your Internet browser that either deletes them or doesn't allow them to be saved in the first place. Below are some steps to check your browser to make sure its set up to save your choices.

Internet Explorer

To check your browser settings click click the "Alt" key and "T" keys simultaneously and your "Tools" menu should drop down from the top of your browser window automatically.

Then select "Internet Options" from the menu and then the "Privacy" tab.

If your settings are listed as Medium/High or higher, you may need to manually add AOL.com as a site from which you will allow cookies to save your settings. To add AOL.com, just click on the "Sites" button and then type www.aol.com in the input field then click "Allow". That's it.

If your Privacy settings are Medium or lower, you should not have to worry about losing your choices unless you manually choose to delete

Firefox

To check your browser settings click the "Alt" and "T" keys simultaneously and your "Tools" menu should drop down from the top of your browser window. Select "Options" from the menu and then select the "Privacy tab. ". Make sure that the checkboxes in the Cookies section are checked and that "Keep Until" is set as "until they expire".

Safari

For you Safari users, you can find similar setting by clicking Alt-E and then click on the "Security" tab. Make sure that the Accept Cookies setting is set to Always or Only from sites you navigate to (make sure its not set as Never).

Q: Why don't I see the changes I've made to my home page on other machines?
A: Being that cookies are only saved on the computer that is being used, your personalization options will only be on that specific computer. If you use a different computer, even if you sign-on to the AOL network, you will not get the customization that you previously set.

Being able to make your choices portable is a feature that we see lots of value in and we have our developers working on to build a solution that will let you bind your home page preferences to your AOL or potentially other external accounts, which we hope to release later this year. The benefit of this feature will be that you can sign in to any computer at any time and have your home page reflect your preferences