The Student’s Desk

Subscription Woes!

It’s a simple idea: Have people enter in their email into a server, then whenever I make a new post, they’re told about it via email. Just try doing it!!!

I did a search in WordPress’s forums and FAQS, and came across Feedburner. Quick, easy to set up, but the updates it churns out… eeww!!!

This is what I got today…

—

From: Ministries Page « The Student’s Desk [mailto:]
Sent: Saturday, 26 January 2008 12:08 PM
To:
Subject: [The Student’s Desk] Pingback: “Ministries”

 New pingback on your post #77 “Ministries”Website: Ministries Page « The Student’s Desk (IP: 66.135.48.210 , a210.wordpress.com)URL    : https://thestudentsdesk.com/2008/01/26/ministries-page/Excerpt: […] […] Ministries […] […] You can see all pingbacks on this post here: https://thestudentsdesk.com/?page_id=77#comments Delete it: https://cyclingjase.wordpress.com/wp-admin/comment.php?action=cdc&c=46Spam it: https://cyclingjase.wordpress.com/wp-admin/comment.php?action=cdc&dt=spam&c=46 

— 

It doesn’t exactly say, “visit me now, read me!!!” It says more like “Hi, I’m a piece of spam. DELETE ME!” And there doesn’t appear to be any way to change it.

So, I tried Botablog. Simple, easy to use, and total rubbish. It looked rubbish because it was rubbish! I couldn’t have people signing up on a server that looked like it was designed by a 1st year uni student! (No offence to 1st year uni students!)

So I tried Feedblitz, and it’s a really good server, if only it worked properly! The first task is to swim your way through the PAGES of options without any help or explantion of what they are. If you achieve that mammoth feat, you can then decide what your updates look like, but you’ll never really know what they’ll look like because what you see in the preview and what it sends out are two different things entirely. Oh, and if you happen to be a tight wad, your readers will have to read in between the ads! Nor can it remember what timezone you’re in. Nor is it aware of the email address you’d like to appear in the ‘from’ field even though you’ve told it.

Sufficient to say I am FRUSTRATED!!! Nonetheless, I am sticking with Feedblitz, I’m hoping things will improve. Unless of course someone has a better suggestion.

— 

Since writting this post, I’ve been able to SOMEHOW get the email notifications to the standard I want, and have done a few updates and found the notifications reliable, if a tad slow. It still thinks I live in Canada or US. (I’m in Australia).

January 26, 2008 Posted by Jason | Site News | botablog, email, feedblitz, feedburner, subscription, update | Leave a comment