14 DAY TRIAL // Emails look awfully outdated today when things like Twitter, Google Wave, and Facebook grab the headlines. Still, email-killers have come and gone and the communications service is alive and kicking with no signs of slowing down. WordPress decided to acknowledge this, albeit a tad late, with a new feature it's launching for blogs using WordPress.com – email subscriptions.
“This is a very simple way for your readers to subscribe to your blog and receive updates by email. Anyone can subscribe, whether they have a WordPress.com account or not. All you need to do is add the Blog Subscription widget to your blog and then you and your readers are ready to go,” Auttomatic, the company behind WordPress.com and the open-source blogging platform, announced. “If a visitor is logged in to WordPress they need only press the Subscribe Me! button, otherwise they can enter their email address.”
All you need to do to get the feature on your blog on WordPress.com is to install the Blog Subscription widget Auttomatic just released. After this, any visitor to your blog will be able to subscribe by email, regardless if they're using WordPress or not. The emails are formatted with HTLM so that the post keeps its structure, photos, videos, and the likes. There is also the option to receive a text-only email if the client doesn't support HTML, but the vast majority of email clients, either web-based or stand-alone, don't have this problem.
WordPress.com assures its users that the subscribers are in full control. The subscriptions require confirmation from the email recipient and they can un-subscribe at any time. The users will also be able to choose the frequency of the emails, they can receive an update every time something new is posted or they can get a daily or weekly summary. Of course, most people use RSS/Atom feed readers to subscribe to content these days, but some may feel more comfortable using their email client.