I will be trying something new in my ongoing effort to get my blog delivered to your inbox. I have a long explanation below, but you don't have to read it. I will start out with a short section covering what you need to know.
What You Need to Know
1. If this works properly, you will automatically receive an email whenever I publish a new post on my blog. If you want to receive my blog via email, there is no action you need to take.
2. If you do not want to receive the blog, you have the following choices:
- Try to unsubscribe yourself on follow.it
- E-mail me and ask me to unsubscribe you
- Delete the emails when you receive them
I promise I won't judge you if you don't want to receive my blog. We all get too much email, and reading about someone else's vacation may not be very high on your list of priorities.
3. If you have an RSS feed and you want my blog to be added to your RSS feed, email me and let me know if you need help with that. If you don't know what an RSS feed is, I'm betting you don't have one. (Just joking. You probably have one.)
--The End of the Short Section
The Long Explanation
In Computerland you can't just set something up and expect it to keep on working forever. Sooner or later there will be an Update or somebody will Stop Supporting something. Sometimes a euphemism will be uttered in a language that looks and feels like English, but isn't. Maybe there will be "a transition to a more stable, modern infrastructure" but the "core feed management functionality will continue to be supported" and . . . blah, blah . . . source feed . . . blah, blah . . . metadata . . . blah, blah . . . analytics.
Maybe I ignored what was going on. Maybe I didn't even realize something was going on. Some people were still getting my blog. Anyway, there was a pandemic, and I wasn't traveling, so I wouldn't be blogging.
So, to anyone who wanted to receive my blog but couldn't: I apologize. It wasn't your fault. You are not computer illiterate.
Here's what happened in a nutshell.
Problem #1
Google owns Blogger and FeedBurner. Blogger is a "platform" for writing and publishing a blog. Blogger puts your posts on the internet but doesn't "push" them out to readers. FeedBurner is a feed management tool that sends content to a mailing list. FeedBurner also gives you information about how many people (but not who they are, as far as I know) are reading your content.
Google decided it was time for FeedBurner to enter "a new chapter." I'm not really sure how to interpret this change. Maybe I could have kept using FeedBurner. But maybe this is a sign that FeedBurner's days are numbered.
Problem #2
Blogs can have followers and subscribers, and there is a difference. I didn't understand that for a long time. Apparently most people don't pay attention to the difference (including follow.it).
In the Blogger/FeedBurner context, a subscriber is someone who receives the blog as an email, through FeedBurner or a similar service. The subscriber is part of a mailing list that is controlled by the blog owner. Readers cannot see who the subscribers are, but the blog owner can.
A follower is someone who typically reads a blog on a news feed or by going to the blog's website from time to time. (A follower can also be a subscriber.) A follower expresses public support for a blog. Readers can see who the followers are. The blog owner cannot control the delivery of content to followers. It is up to the followers to check their news feed if they want to see if you have posted.
For a blogger, it is best to have both. There is a "follow" widget on the right side of my blog page, if you are so inclined. I can't add people to my list of followers. (In case you are wondering, I do not get any money for this blog, and I do not plan to try to get any money. It's just something I do for fun.)
Why follow.it?
Now you know why I am bringing all of my subscribers over to follow.it. I have a tool which will do the same thing FeedBurner did, but it is more stable and modern. I won't have to worry about follow.it entering a new chapter.
If you received this via email:
- You are a subscriber
- My transfer to follow.it was successful.
RSS
"RSS" sounds like some really techy thing. Maybe it could mean "Remote Server Source Code" or "Random Scalable Search." Not to worry. It means "Really Simple Syndication." What it does is put all your blogs and news sources and such on one page. You might well have an RSS feed, even if you didn't know it.
FYI, follow.it comes with an RSS feature, here. You can set it up so all your news headlines come to a single page. Try it.
Now, here's the part where I start to get in over my head. I think you can be a subscriber without having to create an account on follow.it. But I think you have to create an account if you want to use follow.it as an RSS. If you try it, let me know what you think. You can comment on this blog post so others will see, also.
Phew!
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