FilterJoe is easier to subscribe to than ever. If you’ve enjoyed any of my posts about baseball, batteries, or other topics, please subscribe via Email or RSS, or follow me on Twitter, using the links in this sentence or icons located at top of sidebar (far below on mobile, upper right on notebook/desktop).
Why?
- Category Choice. You can now subscribe by category (Email or RSS). If you do, you will receive new posts only in the categories you choose. Note to existing email subscribers: to receive posts via email for certain categories only, scroll down to the very bottom of this email and click on “update preferences.”
- Improved email formatting. Posts are now easier to read on many email clients, especially Safari on iDevices (mobile view).
- Discovery. The vast majority of FilterJoe readers are coming from Google search. That’s all well and good, but Google’s algorithm for ranking content is fickle. Some of my best content (such as my guide for how to manage passwords or description of how attackers steal passwords) never ranked well with Google and are difficult to find via Google search. Subscribers get to see quality content that might never be found via a Google search.
- Low quantity, high quality. I aim for infrequent but relevant, high quality posts. This will continue. You will not get spammed or flooded with several posts per week.
- Support. If you appreciate my content, subscribing is a great show of support.
In the rest of this brief post, I explain why and how I recently improved the subscriber experience.
Why the Change?
Before the recent change, FilterJoe used Feedburner for both RSS and Email subscriptions since inception (2009). Google acquired Feedburner in 2007, which at the time was the top service for RSS and Email list management. Google has since minimally maintained Feedburner and has gradually been removing features.
Google has deprioritized RSS. They even shut down the moderately popular Google Reader web app in 2013. Thankfully, Feedly emerged to take the place of Google Reader, so RSS is alive and well. But Google continues to neglect Feedburner.
I’ve therefore moved on from Feedburner for the usual reasons, and also because:
- The previous post sent by email was formatted poorly on some email clients due to a large image that was not automatically resized.
- Even without that issue, Feedburner offers little flexibility for controlling the appearance of emails.
- FilterJoe has several categories that are completely different from each other. Some readers have made it clear they would like to subscribe to only one category. Doing this with a modern service is much easier and better than doing it with Feedburner.
- I may offer exclusive content to subscribers at some point.
Mailchimp is the new email list management service for FilterJoe:
Subscribe via Mailchimp Email Service
Those of you reading this via an email subscription will notice how obviously better it looks.
For email subscribers who would like to only receive posts in a specific category such as baseball, click “update preferences” at the bottom of the email, uncheck “All,” and then choose one or more categories.
RSS Subscribers
For those of you using RSS, please update your feed links from the Feedburner URL for FilterJoe to:
- https://www.filterjoe.com/feed/
- https://www.filterjoe.com/comments/feed/
Or if you want to subscribe via RSS to one or more specific categories:
- https://www.filterjoe.com/category/baseball/feed/
- https://www.filterjoe.com/category/batteries/feed/
- https://www.filterjoe.com/category/browsers-and-the-cloud/feed/
- https://www.filterjoe.com/category/games/feed/
- https://www.filterjoe.com/category/password-management/feed/
- https://www.filterjoe.com/category/reading-and-writing/feed/
- https://www.filterjoe.com/category/uncategorized/feed/
One last thing . . . I updated the category page by including for each category an RSS link and description.
Any Questions?
Questions? Requests? Please ask below in the comments area.
I just subscribed via email! I think it would be easier for readers of this article if you had your email subscribing link in the list at the bottom where you listed RSS options… that was the first place I looked, then I clicked on the Mailchimp link in your article, which was general. Finally I went to the top left of the web page. Just letting you know so you don’t lose a potential email subscriber! 🙂 Esther
Esther – Thanks for subscribing. I took your suggestion. I just changed the article in two ways to make it easier, by both including links in the first paragraph, and just before the RSS section. Thanks!