I received this question from one of the members here on AdamWWarner.com.
Hi Adam,
I was looking around on your site and didn’t find this information, but that could just be me. The question is – Whenever Jamie posts something on her blog, I get notified the next day – the post arrives. Same thing happens for your blog. (wpmodder) I get notices of your posts.So, WP guru, what’s the key?
Thanks!!
Milt
http://manykites.org
Thanks for the great question Milt! This is a popular feature on many websites and is known as an RSS to email subscription service. There are many ways and many services you could use to accomplish the same goal of sending people updates to their email every time you add new content, but in this tutorial I’m going to show you what I consider to be the easiest method. Best of all it’s completely free. The service is named Feedburner. The first thing you need is a Google account. If you don’t have one, you should…they offer all kinds of free services that I’ll be covering in future tutorials.
Once you’re logged into your Google account, click on Settings–>Google Account settings.
Google Account Settings
Once in your Google Account settings, look for Feedburner listed under the My Products heading. If it’s not there, you’ll need to add that to your Google Account product listing. You should be able to find it by clicking the More link to see a full listing of available Google product services.
Click on Feedburner
Once you click on the Feedburner link, you’ll see a window similar to the one below that gives you the option to “burn a feed”. In other words, you’re going to tell Feedburner where to find your RSS feed address. Now, if your site is built in WordPress (and most likely it is if you’re reading this), you should know that be default WordPress provides several different RSS feeds “out of the box”. This makes it easy for services like Feedburner to find your feeds. Simply enter your website address and Feedburner will find one, two, or more of your feeds and ask you which one you’d like to use.
Enter WordPress Website Address
Choose the feed you would like Feedburner to use and hit Next.
Your Available RSS Feeds
You have the option here to define a different feed address. Feel free to make it something easy to remember.
Choose Your Desired Feed Address
Once you’re done here, you’ll be presented with a few more options. They’re self-explanatory so I’ll skip the details. After you’re all done, you’ll see a screen like the one below with a series of tabs. Click on the Publicize tab.
Feedburner Feed Settings
You’ll then see an option for Email Subscriptions. Click that.
Click on Email Subscriptions
Click the Activate button.
Activate the Email Subscriptions Service
You’ll now be presented with the code that contains the Email Subscription Form. We’re going to put that form inside a Text Widget in the WordPress backend Widgets area.
Copy the Subscription Form Code
If you don’t want a form, you can also choose to copy a simple text link to the Email Subscription Form.
Optional Text Link to Email Subscribe
Go to the Widgets area of your WordPress backend and paste this code into a Text Widget. You’ll also want to give it snappy title to prompt people to “take action”.
Paste the Code in a Text Widget and Save
On the front end of your site, now you’ll see the Email Subscription Form.
Why not sign up for my updates?
Hello,
I followed all these steps and added an email subscription box to my blog. The trouble is that feedburner is not sending updates via email to my subscribers, even though i have updated my blog several times. Please help!
Hi Hassan,
I just subscribed to your site using the email subscription box you added to your site. A couple things to check…
1. Make sure your subscribers are clicking the “subscription activation email” they receive after submitting the form on your site. When I just subscribed to yours, the Feedburner subscription activation went to my spam folder so be sure to tell people to look there…and the fact that they will receive a subscription activation email.
2. Check the settings in Feedburner where you set the time for the emails to go out. Feedburner–>Publicize–>Email Subscriptions–>Delivery Options.
@ Hassan,
I just received an email with your most recent posts from Feedburner, so it seems to be working. Great usage of a blog site by the way. If you have any interest in creating a self-hosted site for your class, I think it would be a great way not only to share content with your students/colleagues, but also a great way to foster communication (and keep it on record for future classes to review…
Thanks a lot Adam, it’s working like a charm!
P.S Sorry for the late reply!
You’re welcome Hassan, better late than never:) I’m glad it’s working out for you. Let me know if you ever need any further assistance with site development…
hi adam,
i had same problem like hassan’s feedburner problem…
i wanna ask two question..
1- is it normal that not email last content to subscribers?
2- is it possible to update my content what i want to my subscribers?
thanks a lot…
Hi Sercan, thanks for your comment here:)
1. No, I don’t think it’s normal for Feedburner not to email last content. I think it may be caused by the two things above that Hassan checked (and corrected).
2. I think you’re talking about updating your subscribers when you want, not just when a new post is added, yes? Yes, you can do this, but not through Feedburner. Feedburner only emails new posts and it does not allow you to pick and choose what gets emailed. If something is new, it will get sent to subscribers.
You may want to look at an Email Marketing service such as MailChimp. They have a good size free service and we use it ourselves at WP Pro Business. You can set up RSS feed emails (like Feedburner) but you can also send individual email campaigns with any content you choose to send. If you switch to MailChimp, you will need to do a few things to start…
1. Import all your Feedburner subscribers to a new list you make in MailChimp.
2. Setup an RSS to Email campaign in MailChimp to aut send your new posts (like Feedburner)
I hope that helps and I encourage you to visit our WP Pro Business site and sign up for our updates there. We will be offering in-depth email marketing tutorials there soon.
thank you quickly reply Adam.. thank you so much…
i just moved my blog to blogger for many plug-in problems in wp..
i read your advices and i’ll try MailChimp ( i thought, it’s so useful)
i’ll check my settings.. may be it’s turned default..
thank you adam..
have a nice day and work..,
Hi Adam, I hope you find this.
I have noticed a 12 hour lag between a scheduled Publication or manual Publish and Feedburner sending out the email.
IS there anyway to preselect the time wanted, or a window of a couple of hours?
I feel like I have read everything on Feedburner but to no avail. sure hope you can help
or clarify for me
thanks
Jane
HI Jane, thanks for commenting and nice looking site you have:)
The short answer is yes and no.
Yes, you can specify the time of day you want Feedburner to send, but no, you can’t avoid the lag time. Feedburner sends only once a day (at whatever time you specify).
To change the time Feedburner sends, go to Feedbuner–>Publicize–>Email Subscriptions–>Delivery Options and set the time zone and email delivery time (two hour range increments).
I hope that helps.
Additionally, it seems your building a great community of authors and readers. I’d like to invite you to take a look at my main site http://wpprobusiness.com and read about our mission there. I think we have some articles, tools, and services that you and your community might benefit from.
Hope to see you there!
Hellow,
I use feedburner and i would love it to send the new say 20 or more items. It only sends the last 10 i.e. the new 10 items only. How can i customize it to send more than 10 items.
Thanks
Hi Herman,
The number of items in your feed isn’t controlled by Feedburner, it’s controlled by WordPress. Have a look in Settings–>General–>Reading and look for this option “Syndication feeds show the most recent…” you can change it to any number of RSS items you’d like to included in your feed;)
hi,
I have clear fully readed everything twice. have done things in same steps as you said and other users said. But still i am unable to get subscription email at all.
Help me out with your expertise
Thanks
Hi Adam
Excellent post – thank you.
I have just migrated my WP blog to its own .com domain from its previous location as a subdomain of another of my websites. I have a few questions in relation to Feedburner that I am hoping you might be able to assist with. I’ll enumerate for the sake of clarity.
1. How do I change my Feedburner feed without cutting adrift my current subscribers?
2. How do I notify current subscribers of the change in my blog address and Feedburner feed? (I can’t see any email addresses for them within Feedburner). I know I can just do a post on my old blog and that they’ll get the information that way, but is there a better way of informing them? NB: I have created a 301 Redirect to my new URL.
3. Is there a simple way to give them the new feedburner subscribe details without them having to re-subscribe to the RSS or email on my new blog?
Cheers!
Hi, is there a way to limit the text send to email?
I don’t want the whole article in the email just some intro with a link.
Thanks
Hi, yep there is…when in Feedburner go to Optimize–>Summary Burner (at the bottom of the list) and enter in the number of characters you’d like to show and the teaser content. This will force your readers to click through to your site to read your content.
You can also limit this in WordPress by navigating to Settings–>Reading–>and choosing to show “Full RSS or Summary”…
Thanks,
I know the second way, but I couldn’t use it because some sites use RSS for publishing my content on their site.
Thanks ones again
Understood and you’re welcome:)
p.s. Please also consider visiting our main business site at http://wpprobusiness.com for more WordPress and online business marketing articles and tutorials.
Will do. Cheers
THANK YOU!!! I added this link in a text box in about 15 minutes following your directions. I met with several WP experts and they said it would take them an hour and cost about $100! Now I hope some people will subscribe!
Hi Jill,
YOU’RE WELCOME
I aim to please and am so glad I could help you out. Please don’t forget to visit my main WordPress business site at http://wpprobusiness.com for more great content focused on WordPress and how to utilize it to run an online business…
Hi Adam,
I’ve had a Feedburner email service set up for a while now (over a year), and for some reason about half of the subscribers who input their email, are inactive subscribers, meaning they’re not getting any email updates.
I figured this is happening because these people are not clicking the activation link in the verification email that gets sent after someone subscribes. They may not be doing this because this verification email is getting sent to their spam/trash folder.
My question is, how do I fix this? Do you know of any way I can prevent the verification email from going to peoples’ spam box? Is there a reason this is happening that maybe I can change in my Feedburner communication settings? Thanks for your help!
Hi Suhail, unfortunately I can’t offer any help with the verification email issue other than to suggest that perhaps you try and make your users aware of checking their spam folders to ensure that they activate their subscriptions. I don’t believe there are any settings specific to this in Feedburner.
Since writing this article, I have moved into using email marketing services for my subscription building. I use both AWeber and MailChimp. There is one large advantage to using these services over Feedburner and that is that you don’t have to rely on a new blog post in order for an update to get sent (you can do this though)….but you also have the option of sending manual emails whenever you choose.