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[quest]

I have quite a heavy following on my travel blog. A lot of people who follow it are people who I do not know or barely know. It makes it impossible for me to spend several hours adding each interested person into the address book. Again these people, while they would like to subscribe and get email updates, cannot be expected to figure out how to use an RSS feed and they cannot be expected to stalk my facebook page everyday hoping for the update, most of them probably do not even have a facebook.

I have had some people complain that it they wanted to follow my blog but didn't want to register on another website or they couldn't figure it out. It really is silly that people have to register. I know this issue has been asked before, and I searched before I posted. I know the reason is due to spamming, but that is a silly excuse for a simple feature that is a neccessity for travel blogs. Avoiding spamming is easy, simply send a confirmation email out like every other website does. Either way, the logic fails when you allow unregistered people to comment on my page but you will not allow unregistered people to receive email updates.

My visitors are growing exponentially with each month, and this feature is absolutely vital to my goals. I have been recommending Travel Pod to everyone, swearing that it is the best out there. Please create the OPTION to allow people to subscribe, or you will be losing me and my referalls

[jacquesl]

Hi,

The first thing that I want to mention is that the people who subscribe to your blogs are automatically added to your address book so you don't have to do it manually.

As it concerns people having to register if they want to be added as fans; if we did not ask them to register then a spammer could easily create a thousand fans to your blog and then they would have to be removed individually.

Registering on our site is very easy to do and we have received very few complaints about people having to register when they want to follow one of our member's blogs. I am quite surprised by your comments. You seem to indicate that you are receiving many such complaints.

You can rest assured that I will pass your comments on to our developers for their review.

Thanks for the feedback. our site is where it is today mostly due to feedback we get from our members!

Cheers!

support@travelpod.com

[kiwiflemings]

I'm a new blogger and I'm with the original writer on this one. I have had many friends and family unable to figure out how to subscribe to my blog and when they find out they need to register...well, they just don't. Many of those "un tech savvy" people being talked about don't trust signing up for anything online because they think THEY are going to start getting spammed because they have signed up to "something".

I understand the desire to keep out spammers but I cannot believe it is that hard.

[quest]

Hi,

The first thing that I want to mention is that the people who subscribe to your blogs are automatically added to your address book so you don't have to do it manually.

As it concerns people having to register if they want to be added as fans; if we did not ask them to register then a spammer could easily create a thousand fans to your blog and then they would have to be removed individually.

Registering on our site is very easy to do and we have received very few complaints about people having to register when they want to follow one of our member's blogs. I am quite surprised by your comments. You seem to indicate that you are receiving many such complaints.

You can rest assured that I will pass your comments on to our developers for their review.

Thanks for the feedback. our site is where it is today mostly due to feedback we get from our members!

Cheers!

support@travelpod.com

It's why I like you guys so much because you guys always seem to adapt based on feedback. I think it is more so the act of registering that deters most people than the difficulty of registering itself. Non-computer savvy people tend to think that registering on a website will lead to all sorts of side-effects.

You are correct that spammers could create millions of followers that would clog up the system, however that would not be the case if you guys introduced a simple email confirmation system like most websites have. It would require a spammer to create a new email with every subscription. It is really no different than having someone creating an account however it is something they can manage from their email (usually the emails come with an unsubscribe button in these situations), rather than another username, password, and website that a person has to worry about, you can probably guess by the last statement that many of my readers are quite a bit older.

again, regardless of the solution I just proposed, why is a spammer creating millions of subscriptions a serious topic of concern but a spammer creating millions of comments on a post not a topic of concern? It is the same animal is it not?

anyway, thank you very much for your quick reply, I really hope the development team sees the light, so to speak :-)

[jacquesl]

I'm a new blogger and I'm with the original writer on this one. I have had many friends and family unable to figure out how to subscribe to my blog and when they find out they need to register...well, they just don't. Many of those "un tech savvy" people being talked about don't trust signing up for anything online because they think THEY are going to start getting spammed because they have signed up to "something".

I understand the desire to keep out spammers but I cannot believe it is that hard.

I will let you know what our developers say to the comments posted here!

Have any of those people sent you an email asking to be added to your address book and if so have you added them and how difficult do you find that to be?

Cheers!

support@travelpod.com

[quest]

Adding people is not difficult by any means, and you guys provide plenty of assistance in terms of email contacts and what not. My problem is my blog is being spread by word of mouth and I no longer have a direct relationship with the readers of my blog. They should be able to decide if they want to subscribe or not, I should not have to be the one to subscribe them.

If my blog was read only by close friends and family, I would not be making this humble request.

Thank you again so much for your time and patience

[jacquesl]

Hi again,

Just thought I'd update you all on this one. Our developers have told me that they will work something out on this matter.

I will post a message to let you know when it's done!

Cheers!

Jacquesl
support@travelkpod.com

[ericlussier]

Good news! We're going to get this one done early next week.

All your points are valid, Quest. Thanks for bringing it up!

[quest]

Good news! We're going to get this one done early next week.

All your points are valid, Quest. Thanks for bringing it up!

hey guys, has there been any progress with this?

[jacquesl]

I's coming along.. Should not be much longer now before it's live.

Cheers!

[ericlussier]

Good to go!


People no longer need to register on TP to get email updates!


Thanks for the suggestion, quest! Let me know if you run into any problems!

[quest]

Thank you guys so much for your understanding. I cannot describe how impressed I am with how willing you guys are to change the website as a response to the requests of your customers. I did quite a bit of research before I chose travelpod, and I know now that I made the right decision. A superior, fast, and user-friendly website was enough to make me give travelpod a try, but your customer support and true acknowledgment of our requests and feedback will make me swear by your website to every potential traveler I meet.

Thank you again so much, Travelpod is truly the best blogsite out there.


p.s. I tested the feature, it worked fine on the table of contents of my blog, but when I clicked on the button when I was reading a specific blog, no window popped up.

[ericlussier]

It's our pleasure.

Can you try again? I just tested all the links in IE and Firefox and the overlay showed up correctly.

Just to be clear, you're trying to click on the "Get email updates" link in the sidebar of a page like this?

http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entri...52833/tpod.html

[quest]

strange, I tried it again on my latest post and it still didn't work, then I tried it on my older posts and it worked on every single one of them, I tried it again on my latest post afterwards and it began to work. Maybe it's just strange settings of the Cambodian internet cafe that I am using.

[ericlussier]

It may have been a caching issue.

btw, i was looking through your thailand pictures... i swam at the same pool as you in Pai!!

Great spot!

[vjlarson]

I just need to clarify what just happened. I'm new and I'm adding interested friends to my address book and sending them the "notification email" with the link to my blog. Can they just click on this link and go to my blog... or do they have to register in order to view it and/or comment on it? I just want to know how to advise them. Thanks so much.

[ericlussier]

I just need to clarify what just happened. I'm new and I'm adding interested friends to my address book and sending them the "notification email" with the link to my blog. Can they just click on this link and go to my blog... or do they have to register in order to view it and/or comment on it? I just want to know how to advise them. Thanks so much.

Welcome to TravelPod!! Glad to have you around!

Your friends and family most certainly do not need to register to read your blog. The feature we were discussing on this thread allows people to subscribe to your blog without registering. Basically it allows people to add themselves to your TravelPod Address Book.

You still have complete control over who you send notification emails to and those people will not have to register to see you entries.

Hope that helps! Looking forward to hearing about your trip!

[vjlarson]

I just need to clarify what just happened. I'm new and I'm adding interested friends to my address book and sending them the "notification email" with the link to my blog. Can they just click on this link and go to my blog... or do they have to register in order to view it and/or comment on it? I just want to know how to advise them. Thanks so much.

Welcome to TravelPod!! Glad to have you around!

Your friends and family most certainly do not need to register to read your blog. The feature we were discussing on this thread allows people to subscribe to your blog without registering. Basically it allows people to add themselves to your TravelPod Address Book.

You still have complete control over who you send notification emails to and those people will not have to register to see you entries.

Hope that helps! Looking forward to hearing about your trip!

That helps a LOT. Thank you so much.

[goettenews]

Hello all,

I looked around for our travel blog on many different sites and desided to use travel pod. It seemed to me the best choice - even with the small disadvantage of the needed registering for getting notifications.
And now, when my son told me, that he did not need to register for that, I found this thread and I'am very happy to see, that the only negative point we found before has disapeared.

Many thanks for that great site.

One small question: Am I right, that I have to start the notifications manually after writing a new entry?

[jacquesl]

Hi,

Notifications are not automatic. You might not want to send a notification after you complete a particular entry and that choice is yours.

When you publish an entry you are presented with choices and one of them is to send out notifications, at that point you decide if you want to send out any notifications, you can send notifications only to a few select people or to send it to everyone.

You will see that it is only a matter of a few clicks to send out the notifications at that point.

If you have any other questions you can ask them here or contact me directly

Cheers

Jacques
support@travelpod.com