Comments on: Stopped Writing and Kept Working, Accumulated Miscellaneous Stuff

By: David Szpunar

David Szpunar — Thu, 29 May 2008 16:05:46 +0000

For use as a newsletter, I can see the frequency being OK since you would want the email to go out when you posted a new blog entry (although I think FeedBurner batches emails daily, so it may not go out right away and you don’t have scheduling control). Scheduling control is another reason to use a paid service if you need it. But if you don’t care, a weekly version could be sent by just posting a blog entry weekly with FeedBurner. But you are correct if you’re saying that no “digest” version is available. I’m not sure if FeedBlitz has a digest version either. Plus, FeedBurner has extremely limited design control. More reasons to mess with it soon!

By: foxnomad

foxnomad — Thu, 29 May 2008 15:25:07 +0000

The only thing I don’t like about the Feedburner emails is that they can only be sent daily. A weekly version would be nice.

By: David Szpunar

David Szpunar — Thu, 29 May 2008 15:23:29 +0000

Thanks Matthew! That’s not a bad idea; in fact I’m contemplating adding FeedBurner email subscriptions to the news/podcast area of the Lakeview website. However, at this point we have some preexisting mailing lists that we need to mail, even though we are also posting that info to the Lakeview Worship blog at the same time. I think FeedBlitz has a lot more management features compared to the limited FeedBurner email subscription option (which I do use for my blog). If I remember correctly, FeedBurner will integrate with FeedBlitz too, though! Feedblitz is free if you don’t mind ads in your emails (and missing a few features like Twitter broadcasting). But I think the paid version is going to be well worth it for us. Or so I think now; we’ll see if after we try it my opinion stays the same!

By: Matthew Irvine

Matthew Irvine — Thu, 29 May 2008 06:05:22 +0000

I wondered where you had been! Welcome back. You gave me some real thoughts on newsletters. Why not just make a church news blog and let people sign up with FeedBurner’s e-mail delivery. There’s a good free way to manage a subscriber list. I’ll have to think through all the possibilities there.

By: David Szpunar

David Szpunar — Wed, 28 May 2008 17:56:47 +0000

Thanks foxnomad, that’s a good idea! I tend to break up my items into paragraphs rather than lists, but I should try lists sometime. I use them in other writing, might as well move them over to the blogging world :-)

By: foxnomad

foxnomad — Wed, 28 May 2008 17:51:48 +0000

Although not the most popular with everyone, a list format helps to keep thoughts concise but the creativity flowing.

That said, a break from time to time can be refreshing and help you stock up on new ideas!