Friday, November 25, 2011

How to create RSS feeds by email for WordPress.org/Blogger

Not all visitors to your website or blog will be familiar with RSS feeds or how they work, while some other visitors just don’t want to mess with using a feed reader. I've discovered how to use an email subscription, which is another great service to offer to your visitors. It's convenient, and to your visitors, it's like getting a newletter in their email inbox. Very cool.

First you’ll need an email subscription service that’ll send out the emails for you.
The service I currently use Feedburner through my Google account, or you can just log on to www.feedburner.com
First, set up a Feedburner feed if you don’t have one already. Then follow these steps:
  1. Go to Feedburner.com and login
  2. Click  "My Feeds" in the upper-left-hand corner
  3. Select your feed from the list
  4. Click the “Publicize” tab
  5. Click “Email Subscriptions” on the left
  6. Make sure “Feedburner” is selected, and click “Activate”
  7. Copy the HTML code in the box
  8. Login to your WordPress blog’s administration area
  9. Go to the “Appearance” section (a.k.a. “Design,” “Presentation,” or “Themes” in versions prior to 2.7)
  10. If you’re using Widgets in your sidebar, click the “Widgets” sub-tab. Add a “Text” widget to the sidebar you want, and paste the HTML code in the configuration section. Save your changes, and that’s it!
  11. For Blogger, go to your website's dashboard, and click the "design" tab.
  12. Click on the "gadgets" tab.
  13. On the available list of gadgets, click on "feed by email"  
  14. Copy/Paste the URL of the feed in the configuration box and click "save"