Know what? I’m starting to like WordPress.com as free blog hosting site. I mean at least, it continues to improve its services not unlike its rival – Google Blogger which seems to have stagnated for quite awhile now.
So aside from the recent geotagging feature that was rolled out recently, WordPress.com has also introduced another important feature – email subscriptions. Yes I know, like me you are also wondering why WordPress.com took this long to have this feature. But hey, better late than never, right?
Anyway, to add email subscriptions to your WordPress.com blog, you need to add the blog subscription widget to your blogs. Fortunately, it’s just as easy as clicking a button once you logged on to your WordPress.com account.
Once activated, your readers can easily subscribe to your blog updates and receive them through email. The email sent to your blog subscribers will be in HTML format, so images and formating will be retained, giving your readers the same look and experience as when reading your blog updates from your WordPress.com site. Your blog readers can also opt to receive email updates in text format.
In addition, your readers can also control their email subscription to your blog – that is set frequency of receiving emails as well as cancel their subscription anytime they want to. They really don’t need to inform you that they want to cancel their subscription to your blog updates. They can do it themselves. In addition, you need to approve all new subscription to your blogs before your subscriber can receive your email updates.
At last a useful way to retain users or attract users on wordpress!! Good find have added it to my site.
Was just looking for exactly this. Have started to add it to all my sites. good work!
But a lot of people would still argue, if you can afford the hosting, why settle for this right? As for that new feature, better late than never is really the phrase for it. At least some free blogging platform is improving in terms of service.
I have added this to my site, too. Thanks and it will be very useful for blog owners
Dude, I love WordPress as the next geek, but bashing Blogger for a feature that they had in place WELL before WordPress is silly (think Google FeedBurner acquisition).
I’m glad that WordPress.com has added this functionality, but it still has a long ways to go before I would recommend using their free service over Blogger, which is still vastly more popular do to it’s UI, and features.
Note: For the record, I’m on WordPress self hosted (and loving it!), and only switched from Blogger due to the plugins.
Yea Blogger seems really outdated, however it seems like teh google likes it more than anything else.. Damn nepitism..
Been running WP self-hosted since 2003 and loving every minute. Check out my site for more info on how to customize your self-hosted WP.
How do you install this??
This is going to come in really useful for blog owners and I will start adding it to my sites. Finally a good way to try and attract new users.
At least some free blogging platform is improving in terms of service.
Very nice.
I’m going to download and use it on my blog. Looks good and will see how it does.
Thanks,
I have added this to my site, too. Thanks and it will be very useful for blog owners
@Darnell – dude, i’m not really bashing Blogger. That’s were I started my first blog as well, only moving to WordPress self-hosted blog due to the lack of the “Category” features.
@Arnold: Okay. I just hate the WordPress vs TypePad/Movable Type vs Blogger vs Squarespace wars, as all of them have their strengths and weaknesses.
FWIW I started my first blog on Xanga, but switched to Blogger in order to gain more control over the layout. WordPress (self hosted) is what I am currently using after I fell in love with the plugins.
Hi Arnold,
I just love WordPress. =) It’s awesome that WP.com is providing more value to their free clients.
I have a service called Page.ly that automatically combines domain name, WordPress hosting, email, WordPress.org install, free/ premium themes, and popular plugins with a 2 minute set up. It has been dubbed the fastest way to website creation by some industry leaders.
I’d love to have you check it out when you’re ready.
Where do i download this plugin from ? I cannot find any download link on wordpress site, :(
When my emails get sent to my subscribers, they actually look nothing like the formatting on my blog. They look very unprofessional and the pictures are scrambled all over. Is there any way to improve what the emails look like when they go out?
good read thanks a lot for the share and very nice website
I cannot find a download for this widget. When I look up how to find a download for this widget, i see other people who can’t find a download for this widget. but i’ve seen it in use on other sites. help?