Updated WordPress Plugin

A new version (0.91) of the FeedBlitz WP plugin has been posted at http://assets.feedblitz.com/feedblitzmembermail.zip to resolve conflicts at sites who also have the FeedBurner FeedSmith plugin installed. You should now be able to use both at the same time!

   

"Garbled" mail...

Hi All:

We've had a few instances today (Friday June 12) where the occasional recipient received a "garbled" message. It seems to be pretty rare and somewhat random but nonetheless it's not OK and so a dial that was recently tweaked and which appears to have provoked the problem is being duly untweaked ASAP. Everything will all be sorted in time for the overnight runs tonight (Friday). Apologies to those affected.

Thanks

Phil

   

New WordPress Email Plugin Integrates Subscriber and User Registration

UPDATE! This plugin now also adds "subscribe" checkboxes to your comment forms too! Click here http://blog.feedblitz.com/2010/08/get-more-wordpress-email-subscriptions.html for the news

I'm pleased to announce a public beta of FeedBlitz's very first WordPress plugin!

The FeedBlitz "Member Mail" plugin enables hosted WordPress blogs to integrate email newsletter signup with the user registration screen. With the plugin activated, the visitor selects a "subscribe me" checkbox when they register for an account on your site (see the example on the left). As well as registering the user, enabling the FeedBlitz checkbox seamlessly starts FeedBlitz's mandatory dual opt-in email subscription process.

You get the benefit of simplifying the subscription process for visitors, thereby greatly increasing the odds of gaining a subscriber as well as a user. Crucially, you get all this without having to work with the FeedBlitz API, which up until now was the only way to achieve this effect. Instead, just drop in the plugin, activate it and you're up and running.

You can also customize the text next to the checkbox. However, like all WordPress plugins, it won't work on wordpress.com sites. It only offers email subscriptions to your blog (so no IM or Twitter options). The plugin also does not eliminate the need for a regular subscription form or link on every page of your blog, since you want to be able to capture subscribers who aren't users, are visiting directly from search engines, or who are already users who will never go have cause to go back through the registration process. You can generate a new RSS to email subscription form at any time at Newsletters - Forms - Subscription Forms.

We've tested it on WordPress 2.7 but I see no reason right now why it shouldn't work on 2.5 or later (no doubt someone will tell me if I'm wrong :-) ). Support via the usual channels, comments welcome. You do of course have to have an active FeedBlitz account and an RSS to email newsletter set up. Links to help you with this are in the plugin configuration screen.

Download the FeedBlitz WordPress plugin here.

One final note: Thank you to Jenn Mattern (follow her on Twitter @queryfreewriter) for helping kick the tires pre-release.

   

Outlook hangs opening emails - solved

Several users recently reported issues with Outlook opening our emails and Outlook "hanging" waiting for images to be downloaded. This issue not only affected FeedBlitz but also FeedBurner and presumably anyone else trying to send email based on certain RSS feeds. It was something of a mystery to us since we hadn't changed anything that might have caused the problem.

The culprit, as found by Google Groups user Kevinbuckleywfb in this thread http://groups.google.com/group/publicity-tools/browse_thread/thread/33377c0ce50bc038?pli=1 was a malformed image URL in some Blogger blogs that causes Outlook to hang looking for a non-existent image (my guess is that it is interpreting the opening "//" as a UNC path "\\" and scouring your local network for machines and files that simply aren't there, which can take some time).

Anyway, as of 3:35pm eastern today (June 2nd) all FeedBlitz emails will now fix the malformed URL responsible if it's in your source feed (whether directly from Blogger or via FeedBlitz or FeedBurner RSS services) and the issue should not recur in emails from us going forward. I also know that the Blogger team is aware of the issue and will no doubt have a fix in place shortly for everyone else.