Subscribing to all entries

[Melanieofsydney]

Hello,

I am aware people can subscribe to individual entries but is there some way they can subscribe to get updates when a new entry is made? Ideally I'd want this as a side bar item and like a box i could also include on another php page on my website.

I do newsletters but I do them manually and only when I have a whole lot to say, I'd like to give visitors the option to get an email alert when I make a new entry and maybe have some option of only subscribing to certain categories. I couldn't find a plugin that sounded like it did this.


Please help

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

Yes, that's called an "RSS feed", they can simply subscribe to your blog's RSS feed (syndication sidebar plugin).

Best regards,
Garvin

[Melanieofsydney]

Yeah the RSS feed thing is fine, but that's not serendipity sending an email like the subscribe to individual entries. I don't want people to have the 3rd party way of reading updates I want them to get an email that says something along the lines of "there has been an update at www.melanieofsydney.com here is the link to the new entry" or even if it would also send the subject of the entry with the email.

I have some very non computer literate people look at my site, so they arent using programs or bookmarks to track blogs. I want people to have the option of being emailed every time i write something, a more proactive way of bringing them back to my site as it were.

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

There is a plugin "Mail entry" which can mail entries of specirfic categories to a specific mail address. You could announce those different mailinglists so that people can subscribe to the newsletter you send special categories to.

That's a lot of overhead, though, because you need to maintain a mailinglist and the visitors need to pick and subscribe to your mailinglist somehow/somewhere.

HTH,
Garvin

[Melanieofsydney]

So im confused, do this mail entry thing automate it or do i need to be manually adding people to the mailing list or what?

Or should i start whining to my boyfriend to write me a plugin to do it?

[garvinhicking]

Hi!

It works like this:

- You setup an external mailinglist using your favorite mailinglist tool (mailman, yahoo groups, whatever) for each category you will later setup. You will then have mailinglists like 'melany-category1@yahoogroups.com', 'melany-category2@yahoogroups.com' etc.

- You install the "Mail entry" plugin

- You setup the mail enty plugin and enter the mailinglist addresses for each category you want to send mails to when posting in that category

- You let your visitors subscribe themselves to the mailinglists you have created in the first step using your favoirute mailinglist tool (mailiman, yahoo groups etc.)

- Now when you create an entry, a mail is sent to the configured address by the plugin.

- That mail is then forwarded by your mailinglist to all subscribers.

Best regards,
Garvin

[Melanieofsydney]

Ok cool, well my bf is going to help me write a plugin so that the mailing list can be managed from within my own website. Once we got it working I will have to read up about how to submit it for others to use.