I’m hoping to get some help and clarification on how rss feeds work please.
We are doing our first blog for an association I’m a member of, we are hoping to have it setup so people can subscribe to the blog and receive notifications when we put up a new post.
Using Foundry 3 and Alloy…all latest versions.
What we can’t get our heads around, is how people subscribe and receive the notice of a new post. I have setup and published draft blog and included the Alloy RSS Feed stack.
However if we click on the rss feed button it doesn’t link to the blog page or the latest post. Instead it gives me a link to download an rss feeder app.
So, question is…does having an rss feed on our blog page mean people have to have an rss feeder app to get notifications. Is that the case on all browsers or just Safari?
Is there a simple way people can subscribe to our blog without having to use a rss feed app?
@scottf Hi, yes. Your users must go through an rss feed reader (a dedicated application, some offer extensions for browsers). It is the rss feed reader which is responsible for regular updates by checking whether there are new posts and notifying subscribed rss feed readers.
An alternative to the RSS feed (which few users use due to ignorance of this system or the impression of complexity it gives or out of laziness because you have to click several times) is the newsletter. You can offer your subscribers to receive an email (this is the most economical) when you post a new blog post. However, if your blog is very (too) regularly updated, receiving too frequent emails will become a nuisance. If you opt for this solution you will have to plan to use a mailing service if you have a large number of subscribers (like Mailchimp) unless you manage your web server directly, then it will be much simpler if your webhoster allows mass sending of emails. Hope that helps.
Hi Bruno,
Great thanks for the advice…yes I think most users won’t use a dedicated rss feeder app unless they already have an extension in their browser.
You mention the option to use email subscription…can this be done automatically? How would the email service (Mailchimp or other) know we’ve posted a new blog?
We do have our own host server (Siteground) for our website and email but once again how do we have this done automatically?
Posts would not be that often, once a monthly or every few weeks maximum I would think.
Really appreciate your thoughts on an automatic way to send emails once we’ve posted a new blog.
A service like Mailchimp will use your blog’s RSS feed, which it will check at the frequency you determine, to send an email to your subscribers when you have posted a new blog post. As with any Mailchimp service, it works on a subscription basis and its cost is not trivial. There are many cheaper competitors (but sometimes less efficient of course): Sendinblue, moosend, Mailer Lite…