Email subscription button
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Let me translate “staff”s post:
If you guys don’t like it, too bad. We at WordPress think it’s cool and we’re not gonna change it back.
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suddenly and not anounced my subscriber – widget changed to a blue “Follow” – symbol.
The effect: no one gets email notifications about new posts anymore. And I don’t get notifications of new entries of other blogs I’ve had subscribed to. Pretty sad. Does anyone WHY that happened, HOW I can get back to normal, and WHO was so bold to just invent this, change all and not even bother to let us know? -
@apeatling Staff, it has been more than 24 hours and 3 pages worth of complaints against this change. I think you could have approached it little differently, for example, instead of updating a live widget, create a new replacement widget and then announce the retirement of the old widget. There could be discussions around the new widget and you would get the time to improve before change takes place.
In any case, having a live widget modified to the dislike of so many people, is a bad policy. Your strategy doesn’t even conform to rapid development, or standard change processes. Although it isn’t a big change in a grand scheme of things, but many bloggers take email subscription of their audience very seriously. The term Follow just doesn’t fit. You should let the bloggers choose their own term for the button and you should let the bloggers choose how they want this button to look according to their themes
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you guys ALL have to mail the 24/7 team who ever they are… and aks them how to get back to normal.
IF WE would have WANTED TO BE ON F++.IN FACEBOOK WE WOULD! please don’t make us all idiots
JJ -
Well, I’ve made the morning rounds, checking in with fellow WP.com bloggers I know, and, echoing the sentiment in this thread, everyone is unhappy with the the Follow button.
Everyone agrees that it’s confusing readers, preventing new subscriptions because the words “email” and “subscription” are gone.
I’d like to stress that I actually don’t mind the concept of moving towards using the term “follow” to include everything from Facebook, Twitter, other social media sites, RSS, and, yes, email subscriptions. (This is why, as a short term solution, I’ve added instructions to subscribe by email via the comments interface to my Follow page.)
But, most people aren’t quite there yet.
It seems to me that a great solution would be a widget that expands to offer all of these ways to follow a blog all in one convenient place. Or, it could be a page template, similar to the Follow page that I created, where all the different options for following a blog, yes, including email subscription, are available.
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I have my blog set to private for family only. I wanted them to log in as a guest, be able to enter their email to subscribe. Now they are all having a hard time figuring out how to register and get a username/ID, some are accidentally creating blogs, concerned about their privacy.. etc… some hit follow and they are not getting emails as I post them or emails sent to subscribe. Since my post is private, they are not getting option to enter email. What I thought what would been a nice way to share great things with my family right now, has turned into a nightmare. Everyone is overwhelmed and upset. I don’t like that change.
I’m sending them step by step what to do on registering for a username only, but it’s all trying their patience and they are not getting email of my new posts. (I’ve looked through my settings so much and can’t figure a way to enable it anymore ) Any suggestions?
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Thanks for listening WordPress . My personal view would be to leave it as just ‘Follow’ rather than ‘Follow Blog’ and would be interested to hear from others .
We do understand you are just trying to improve the service but we do become very protective of our blogs . Thanks for having the balls to change your mind .
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I wrote the comment before I checked the widget and realised you can alter the title yourself . I must admit I like Follow and will leave it, rather than Subscribe .
Thanks again
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@merovee, I agree with you that change is not inherently bad and that, in most cases, the changes that WordPress roll out fairly regularly are usually very good enhancements to the service.
Also, as I said in my last post, I’m at all not opposed to the migration towards making the “follow” terminology standard across the varying methods of “following” available: e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, RSS, email, etc.
The problem that most everyone is complaining about, I believe, has to do with the manner in which this migration has been initiated and implemented.
The conversion of the email subscription widget to a Follow widget is a terrible solution, especially from a PR standpoint. If you want to migrate users toward the “follow” concept, you have to do it elegantly. Instead, WordPress has people pissed off and hating the whole “follow” concept, sabotaging their very efforts towards that goal.
Again, change the widget so that it expands and offers users the option to select how they want to follow the blog from all the available options, or offer a page template that provides the same interface. Then, I would also suggest restoring the old Email Subscription widget so that others can opt to continue using that very effective tool.
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Count another unhappy and irritated user. Without warning a satisfactory widget was exchanged for another that has a confusingly labeled button with color and style out of place with the rest of the theme used, and which can not be configured adequately.
I would be happiest if the change were simply reverted.
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Thanks for all the feedback folks. You should see the old subscription widget back in place with the new follow terminology (which you can edit if you wish).
We’ll continue to look into ways to display the follow button, but with better display and management options for you as a user.
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Hooray! Thanks, @apeatling! WordPress still rocks!
And, like I said, I think most people will come around on the “follow” concept if it’s done right.
I know I will.
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@apeatling: And this is why WordPress is better than (and should never try to imitate) Facebook – you listen to your users. Thank you!
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This widget now asks me to subscribe even though I am already subscribed. Previously it used to hide the text box if you have already subscribed.
This is a waste of space and could be confusing, you should reconsider.
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Yes! And THIS is why WordPress users love you guys.
You LISTEN to your readers, instead of Facebook that shoves changes down people’s throat. (Facebook constantly has me wondering whether I shouldn’t just leave it, I’ve done it many times actually.)
WordPress has never made me feel that way. WordPress always made me feel smug because you guys always do great stuff.
Please continue to listen to your users and I guarantee we’ll never leave.
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Okay now the box to fill in is back but it says on mine “Join 62 other followers'”- why do you have to tell everyone how many followers I have? Why can’t I decide to do that or not to do that? I don’t like that at all – very unhappy with all these changes back and forth. :(
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Jo, there is a tick box in the widget – you can turn that off!
PEOPLE POWER – thank you WP for restoring the functionality we loved!
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