Since my post last week on my blogging frustrations (which a lot of you share) I started to think about other (albeit smaller) frustrations. One of them is about subscribing to a blog via email. For me it is the perfect way to keep up with lots of movie blogs without having to visit all of them regularly (I will do so if I want to comment to something I have read). But it’s something that’s not always possible.
Looking at my current WordPress subscriptions alone there are 67 movieblogs I’m currently subscribed to. When it comes to Blogger blogs however there aren’t as much. One of the reasons for that is that a lot of them don’t offer any way to subscribe to them. By the way, there are also some WordPress blogs that haven’t enabled the feature. Here is how to change those settings.
So before I go into the specific settings for each of the platforms I first have to get off my chest that I really can’t stand it when I have subscribed to updates via email (or via a rss feed) when it is enabled and when I receive only part of the post and have to go to the blog to read the rest. Most blogs don’t have any advertisements, so why would I need to read your post on your blog itself? Please give people a choice and don’t force them to read in a specific way.
Do you think it is more important to see +1 on you site statistics or that your reader can determine him/herself how to read your posts? I must admit I do like looking at the statistics, but I actually like it more if I see how many subscribers I have through email. If they only read what I write in their inbox that’s fine with me. I really appreciate the fact they have subscribed.
So how do you make sure people can subscribe to your blog and receive automatic emails?
On blogger it’s easy to add the possibility to follow a blog by email. You can do this by selecting Layout
Then select Add a Gadget
A new window will open where you can select the Follow by Email gadget.
It’s as simple as that. If people subscribe to your blog you can actually look at statistics (number of subscribers and daily views) by logging into feedburner.com (which is used to send out the emails).
Within WordPress you can set an extra checkbox to appear below the comment box to subscribe to a blog. Select Settings > Discussion
Scroll down to Follow Blog and check Show a “follow blog” option in the comment form
So do you share these frustrations?
I feel your pain. WordPress makes it very easy for me to follow Blogs I like. However, there are some on Blogspot… and I cannot subscribe to them properly. Sometimes the links don’t appear on the Browser, and it seems very non-user friendly, when compared to WordPress anyways.
I like that you’re doing your part to reduce collective Blogging frustration.
Yeah, I wish Blogger would improve because I usually stay away from commenting on Blogger blogs because I will have to go back there manually…
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