Feature Update: Setting "Email to a Friend" Free

The "email to a friend" facility has been liberated! It used to require readers to be logged on in order to use it, which - let's face it - wasn't exactly user-friendly. So we've removed this requirement to make it easier - and free, of course - for subscribers to share your content and build your circulation.

More interestingly, this change means that if you want to add an "Email this article to a friend" link to your web site or blog, well, you now can. No emails need be harmed in the process! You just need to be have your bog registered with FeedBlitz, and then set up the link as follows:

http://www.feedblitz.com/f/f.fbz?Fwd2FriendEdit=NNNN;;UUUU;TTTT;0

The parameters are:

• NNNN - Your FeedBlitz feed ID (visible in its edit screen).
• UUUU - The HTTP encoded URL of the article.
• TTTT - The HTTP encoded title of the article.

Note that there are TWO semicolons in the middle of the URL, and that the trailing ";0" is required. You can use your blogging system's templating codes to drop the right values in.

Put in practice, here's the link for an article from Elise Bauer's "Simply Recipes" site:

http://www.feedblitz.com/f/f.fbz?Fwd2FriendEdit=25748;;http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/elise/simplyrecipes/~3/107530425/004383happy_easter.php;Happy%20Easter!;0

So you can see that premium customers get their templates used as well, ensuring a consistent user experience throughout the process. If you are logged in, then FeedBlitz will automatically substitute in your email address as the sender to save you some time. Once you've previewed the message on the second screen it's a single click to send it on its way.