A Change for Email Subscribers
I don’t work on the other ways people see those postings. I know Blogger reformats the page for cellphones, eliminating most of the custom design and the lists of links on either side. The content also looks different after going through R.S.S. feeds.
For people who wanted to receive Boston 1775 postings by email, I chose years ago to attach the Feedburner service since, like Blogger, it was part of Google. Aside from that connection, I didn’t dig into how it worked. Some people told me postings arrived in their in-boxes in the late afternoon, though I always schedule them to appear on the web at 8:30 A.M., and I’ve just lived with that mystery. (As well as why Blogger interprets 8:30 A.M. differently at different times of the year.)
This spring, Google announced that it would no longer support the email subscription feature of Feedburner. Observers suggest the service might disappear completely, like Google Reader, or become unusable. I looked at alternatives and chose to shift to Follow.it.
The transition turned out to be more involved than I thought. There were thousands of addresses on the Boston 1775 email list—far more than I imagined. That required working with the Follow.it help desk, which actually was helpful. Then some chunk of those addresses were probably fictive, snuck on through a particular domain, so they had to be cleared away. With other things demanding my attention, the shift took weeks rather than a couple of days.
Today I got my first look at an example of the new Follow.it email feed, forwarded by a subscriber. The service is asking everyone to confirm that they want to continue to receive emails, which is good.
That email also contains more advertising than I like, and Follow.it wants people to use its service to subscribe to other blogs or news sources as well. Those seem to be the unavoidable prices of a free service. And of course my lovely design features are gone.
This posting is meant to explain the big changes that one set of Boston 1775 readers will see. For people checking in on the web, the blog will keep the same look, at least until I get a brighter idea. But for people reading on other platforms, those are out of my control. I appreciate whatever attention you give to this content.
5 comments:
Technology, gotta love it. Thanks for continuing your informative and entertaining blog. I always learn something and often get a chuckle. And I was amused to see that it is supposed to be delivered at 8:30 am. I have occasionally wondered why you are up and posting at 3 or 4 am. Thanks. Jeanne Munn Bracken
I hear that each email from Follow.it has the subscription language at the top. I hope that disappears once one actually decides whether or not to subscribe.
Hmm, I don't have any option to subscribe or continue to subscribe to the emails. Not worried personally; if I fall off, I'll just go in and start over. But thought the intel on how it looks to different subscribers might be useful. (Also still getting the email at 4am the following day!)
I will continue to subscribe no matter what hoops I have to jump through. Love your website and, I am glad I can click on the follow.it emails I get to get to your website.
Thanks for all you do to keep lovers of Rev History informed and enlightened.
Huzzah!
Pretty clean header and email, after consenting that I want to retain subscription. No issues at all. Thanks for keeping up the tremendous amount of work for a daily blog of this caliber. I am often astounded by it.
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