Just had this question from a client. Seems like a reasonable question. Does anyone know if this is possible (without Mailchimp or newsletter subscription)
“Is there any way to make it so people can ‘subscribe’ and get automatically notified when there’s a new blog post?”
@James249 , there’s always the possibility to add a RSS feed. Downside to this is that one has to install something like Feedly.
My client uses (free version) of Mailchimp to inform his ‘folks’ there’s a new post.
Hans
This is what RSS feeds are designed for, as @Panans points out. In addition to specific Feed Readers like NetNewsWire, Feedly, etc, users can also subscribe to in Apples News app, too, if I’m not mistaken. Older versions of OS X allowed subscriptions in Mail.app even. RSS feeds were designed for this purpose though.
ok great, thanks @elixirgraphics and @Panans . I’ll take a look into RSS feeds. Te be honest, I’ve never really understood the RSS feed. I used tick it in the native RW blog but when I clicked on the link it produced, it brought me to a very basic page with no real styling. Perhaps its because i wasn’t using Feedly. Anyway - I know what to do now and will find out more about RSS. Thanks
@James249 Personally I’m not a big fan of RSS readers (anymore). As said, one has to open yet a new app to read the blogs. For me it acts more as a filter, I prefer to keep things in one browser.
For one specific client I added a ‘subscribe to blog’ form on his homepage. He then adds the new subscribers to a mailing list and informs them himself via Mailchimp. If you want to automise this a bit more you should take a look at Post Office Stack (Joe Workman) to add subscribers automatically to an address list. I don’t know how solid this is, I’ve never used it.
Hans
@James249 , just thought of another way to show viewers there’s a new blogpost: Recent Posts (Alloy Stack). Can be put on the homepage of the website, add a nice header (e.g. Recent News) and the visitor can immediately acces the blog from here.
Hans
Hi Hans, thats a great idea and easy to set up a recent posts stack on the homepage. I’ll take a look at the Post Office stack, Mailchimp and also RSS - it looks like theres quite a lot of options we can explore. Thanks for your help, James
@James249 , just to give you a visual idea, this is the setup I used for a (dutch speaking) client:
Two columns: left side a Header, a paragraph and a button leading to the blog page to attract the attention of the visitor. Right side the Recent Posts Stack.
Cheers,
Hans
Just FYI, looking at the Post Office stack comments on the WS community site, it seems to have a lot of issues with Bots.
Allegedly, there’s a new version in the works which will be a paid update…
looks great Hans. Really clear. I will have a go at something similar.
Thanks for your help, James
thanks for the heads up. I’ll probably stear clear if its attracting spam bots.
