Saturday, October 16, 2010

Blog Subscriptions

I subscribe to over a dozen blogs. How 'bout you? =)
If you're reading this, you're reading my blog. Duh! Most people read my blog because all new members are auto-subscribed to it. There are actually hundreds of letterboxers with blogs, however, and most of them you will not be auto-subscribed to. Those that you are subscribed to show up in the Letterboxing News widget, making it very easy to keep up with your favorite blogs.

One little annoying thing is actually trying to subscribe to a blog that interests you. You have to look up the blog from Atlas Quest then add it to your subscriptions. Wouldn't it be nice if you read someone's blog and think, "Hey, I'd like to subscribe to this!" and have a button readily available that you could click and POOF! You're subscribed. On Atlas Quest, at least.

Now, you can. But since the code to do this must be on your blog, you have to add it yourself. Go to the Manage Blogs page, and click on one of your blogs to open it. On the right side of the page is a large box with the code necessary to add a subscription link to Atlas Quest. It also shows an example of what the subscription button would look like. Add that code to your blog, and anyone visiting your blog can click it to add your blog to their list of subscriptions on Atlas Quest.

Here's an example button for the blog Wassa created of my West Coast Trail adventures:
Toggle AQ Subscription

I'm actually in a strange position where I have absolutely no desire to add the button to my own blogs. Since all new members are automatically subscribed to my blogs anyhow, there's not really any pressing need to have a subscription button. Perhaps the unsubscribe button would be more useful, but why would anyone possibly want to unsubscribe to this amazing piece of literature? ;o)

But seriously.... The button will allow people to subscribe (or unsubscribe, if the case may be) from your blog instead of requiring people to look up your blog on AQ and subscribe--a task that probably limits a lot of people from subscribing to your blog. Hopefully, this option will help change that.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cool. Put it on my letterboxing blog. Thanks.

Ryan said...

I can't put it on your blog--I don't know your blog's username and password (nor do I want to know them!) You need to add the code yourself.

-- Ryan

veganf said...

Thanks, that was easy. :-)

Kaaren said...

Cool, I added it. (I read ontariocacher's comment to mean "(I) Put it on my letterboxing blog." :)

Christie said...

So, I need to add this code each and every time I write a blog entry? Doing it once does not add it to all posts, correct?

David Baril Jr. said...

Heck, I was pretty surprised when I found out I had more then 700 people subscribed each for my 3 blogs! And one of them had only 6 posts with the last being over a year ago!

Thank you all for making Hamlet such a huge hit! Oh ya, and my other blog too!

Ryan said...

Christie: No, you don't have to add the code to every blog post. You include it in the sidebar once (where the "About Me" part shows up on every page of this blog) and it'll show up on every page automatically. It only needs to be added once.

Anonymous said...

"I can't put it on your blog--I don't know your blog's username and password (nor do I want to know them!) You need to add the code yourself."

Oops. I'm bad about omitting 'articles'. I should have written. I put it on my blog. Sorry about that. =} It was a quick and easy process. Thanks again.