Ok, so we've all heard that Google Reader is shutting down soon and have all gone looking for our own replacements. Personally I use Feedly, I've been using it on my iPad since I bought it.
What you might not have noticed is that I've added two new buttons to my sidebar. One for Feedly and the other for Bloglovin'. It took a bit of digging around to find the code to provide a Feedly button and if anyone would like a copy of the code just email me.
A lot a people are reading blogs in their Reading List on the Blogger Dashboard and there are people who prefer to get their blog updates via email. I use Feedburner to burn my feeds, and although they do provide a RSS to Email feature I am a little nervous since other features have been disabled (Adsense for feeds) and that Feedburner might be next on Google's hit list.
So, I've been looking for a replacement for Feedburner' email feature, and of course I'd prefer it to be free. That brings me to this guy. Mailchimp seems the perfect fit for me, it's free for the first 2000 subscribers and they also offer paid plans, by the month or pay as you go. You can purchase credits for as little as $9AU and each newsletter costs only 3cents to send. They have an excellent range of pre-made templates or you can make your own using their RSS features that "pick up" your blog header and content.
I've tested it out on myself this week and have received a rather nifty email weekly newsletter. My aim was to get it to look as much like this site as possible. I was a bit concerned that if I had posted more than once last week not all of my posts would appear, but both turned up in my newsletter. Unfortunately the mobile version bombed-out with no posts at all (I'll have to fix that!) but everything else looked good.
So, here's the question (there's a poll in the sidebar) would you sign up for a weekly newsletter-style email based on the blog feeds or would you prefer daily emails. Either way if I don't post you, won't get an email. I might even be able to offer both options, I'll have to check it out on the Mailchimp website.
Soon I'll be adding a subscription box for the newsletter (daily or weekly, you get to decide) in the sidebar and including it on my Facebook page and other places. You can be reassured that your information will be 100% confidential, and will never be used for nefarious (love that word) purposes.
Oh, and before I forget, I've changed the Contact Me option in the tabs at the top of the page. A lot of the emails were going straight to my spam folder so I've changed the form over to 123contact. It seems to work better with my email provider and 123contact keep a confidential record of the emails in case something goes wrong.
