Mail goes "offline" in AOL's smtp settings

My smtp custom port was always set to 587 but SSL was off according to AOL's previous settings. I turned it on both for incoming and outgoing mail, but outgoing still does not work. I'll try to run maintenance and repair permissions to see if that works.

I have trashed my AOL account and recreated it in various ways in Mail prefs. According to AOL's latest settings instructions, they have both POP and IMAP servers for receiving mail, using SSL is optional, SMPT set to port 587 for outgoing mail, and user name requires the complete e-mail address, i.e. with @aol.com included. I cannot connect to their POP server at all with with or without aol.com in my user name, I can connect to IMAP using the username with or without the aol.com attachdd, and can receive e-mails with or without SS. But SMTP goes "offline" whenever I try to send an e-mail. When SSL is unchecked in the prefs Connection Doctor tells me "connection failed" and to verify my user name and password. When SSL is checked the good doctor tells me the connection failed because of an SSL error and to make sure that AOL's SMTP server can handle SSL. I am completely mystified. AOL worked fine in my Mail app for years before this started happening two days ago, and my ATT and MSN accounts continue to work fine. Is AOL, perhaps, a target of the cyberattacks leveled at various ISPs because of their anti-Wikkileaks stance?

I can receive IMAP mail with or without aol.com added to the username, and can get mail with or without SSL (if you're using port 993 that's with SSL, without SSL the port is 143). Incoming mail is not my problem. Outgoing mail is a problem. My mail app simply does not connect to AOL's SMTP server even though the username, password and port settings are all correct. It simply goes offline whenever I try to send an e-mail and tells me the connection failed.

Okay, now I'm really confused. I was finally able to send an e-mail via AOL by switching the SMTP advanced preferences from custom port 587 to "Use default ports (25, 465 or 587) and using SSL.

I tried that already and it didn't work. Now I don't want to touch the AOL account as long as it's working again, since it's my main spam repository among other things. But thanks for all your help. Now all I have to do is figure out how to remove that weird date from all my roots and certificates without crashing OSX.