Is there a limit to invite users to follow our blog?
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Is there a limit to invite users to follow our blog? We’re thinking about inviting some 6,000 people who have already left a comment on our site, but they still haven’t become followers (right now we already have +1,000 followers). I can see on http://en.support.wordpress.com/adding-users/ that we can send up to 10 email invitations per time from the dashboard, but I wonder if there’s some limitation due to abuse reasons, that will raise some alarm when we try to send 600 times x 10 invitations :-)
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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There is no limit to the number of followers. Yes I think inviting that many would trigger the software to assume you are a spammer. Email address we submit for the purpose of commenting on any blog cannot be legally used for any other pûrpose.
Follower (public sites) / Viewer (private sites only) – can read and comment on posts and pages http://en.support.wordpress.com/user-roles/
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Can we have some confirmation about that from Automattic people? I’d like to know which is exactly the limit and, besides, they should warn in that inviting page that such a limit exists.
Regarding to the legal matter, in our case it wouldn’t be illegal. On our site we warn that personal data are being legally gathered in a file registered with Spanish authorities and that those data can be used to keep commenters informed about the subjects of our site: http://ultimallamadamanifiesto.wordpress.com/aviso-legal/
So, when people publish their comments they are legally giving us permission to contact them regarding our site and our manifesto. We’re worried about the possible technical limits to that massive sending, not for the legal ones, because we have commenters’ permission as I have said.
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I can’t find any limitations on the inviting page nor in the general TOS http://en.wordpress.com/tos/
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I do not believe there is a maximum, however, I tagged this thread for a Staff response. Please subscribe to it so you are notified when they respond. Note there is a backlog so you will have to wait patiently for Staff help.
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Thanks for the quick answer, Timethief! :-)
Meanwhile I was searching for similar subjects and I found that there is some kind of secret about that limit! :-/ https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/can-i-invite-more-than-10-people-per-day?replies=4#post-1909337
I can understand but it’s trouble for the people who can do massive but legal sendings. We even took care to legally register the commenters’ database with the Spanish authorities (it’s mandatory in our country, that if you gather personal data you must tell authorities about the kind of data, intended use, and the like).
(I’m already subscribed to the thread, thanks.)
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(I resend. Something went wrong and my message did not appear. Sorry if it appears twice in the end.)
Thanks for the quick answer, Timethief! :-)
Meanwhile I was searching for similar subjects and I found that there is some kind of secret about that limit! :-/ https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/can-i-invite-more-than-10-people-per-day?replies=4#post-1909337
I can understand but it’s trouble for the people who can do massive but legal sendings. We even took care to legally register the commenters’ database with the Spanish authorities (it’s mandatory in our country, that if you gather personal data you must tell authorities about the kind of data, intended use, and the like).
(I’m already subscribed to the thread, thanks.)
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Hi there!
We leave the option to follow a site up to the reader, not the site creator.
The invite follower feature is designed for inviting small groups of people you know, not mass e-mailing large lists (regardless of source). This is likely to be considered spam by many of the recipients, which can negatively affect both your site and WordPress.com as a whole.
Please reconsider this method and use the invite follower feature for much, much smaller groups. If you’d like to run an email list, you should use an email list service.
Let me know if you have further questions!
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If you’d like to invite others to publish posts or help approve comments on your blog, you can invite them to be a Contributor, Editor, or Author. If you want users to receive updates each time you publish new content you can invite them to be a follower/viewer.
See:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/adding-users/
http://en.support.wordpress.com/adding-users/#invite-people-to-view-your-private-blog
http://en.support.wordpress.com/user-roles -
There is no such mass mailing feature here at WordPress.com. Your followers can subscribe to receive your posts by email and they can control the frequency of receipt. However, when subscribers or commenters provide an email address for a specific purpose you cannot use it for any other purpose. In fact doing that in Canada is against the law.
You can create a page and clearly state on it that you intend to harvest email addresses if that’s what you want to do. http://en.support.wordpress.com/pages/
You can add and customize a contact form with multiple fields, change the email address where you’ll be notified, and mark feedbacks as spam from your dashboard on that page. http://en.support.wordpress.com/contact-form/You can create a sign up page on MailChimp directly and simply link to it from your WordPress.com site. Here’s their instructions http://kb.mailchimp.com/article/how-to-add-a-mailchimp-signup-form-to-your-wordpress-blog
Additional information:
You can set up email subscriptions here > Appearance > Widgets > Follow Blog Widgets by using this guide > http://en.support.wordpress.com/widgets/follow-blog-widget/If you would like a follow button to appear on the bottom right hand corner of your site for those who do not have WordPress.com accounts go to > Settings > Reading and scroll down to Follower Settings:
These settings change emails sent from your blog to followers.
Logged out users __ Show follow button to logged out users.Checking this will present a follow button to logged out users in the bottom corner of their screen.
Find Friends Who Use WordPress > http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/find-friends/
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We leave the option to follow a site up to the reader, not the site creator.
Of course. We didn’t ever think of removing that option, but to give it to them inviting them to follow the blog as a a way to keep in close contact with our news.
The invite follower feature is designed for inviting small groups of people you know, not mass e-mailing large lists (regardless of source). This is likely to be considered spam by many of the recipients, which can negatively affect both your site and WordPress.com as a whole.
I understand, and I think it should be clearly stated at that invitation page at the dashboard or even in the TOS of WordPress.com.
Please reconsider this method and use the invite follower feature for much, much smaller groups. If you’d like to run an email list, you should use an email list service.
OK, then. We won’t use it.
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There is no such mass mailing feature here at WordPress.com. Your followers can subscribe to receive your posts by email and they can control the frequency of receipt. However, when subscribers or commenters provide an email address for a specific purpose you cannot use it for any other purpose. In fact doing that in Canada is against the law.
Yes, it’s also the law in Spain, but when commenting they are also giving us permission to contact them regarding the Manifesto (so, it’s an approved purpose). Remember we have a page with legal terms which they are told to read before commenting. Please take in account that ours is a special kind of blog, which we use to receive signatures for an Eco-Political Manifesto, so when commenting, they are not just leaving an opinion but making themselves signers of that manifesto. It’s political matter and, because of that, they are not likely to regard any contact from us as spam.
And thanks for all the additional info and for all your help with this matter, Timethief :-)
We’ll look all those reference just in case they can help us to contact safely with all these people who want to change the world for the better. Our purpose here is not to lose contact with them and that they can know about continuations of this political action. BTW, all of you are also invited to read and sign the manifesto, which has been translated to many languages, English included: http://ultimallamadamanifiesto.wordpress.com/el-manifiesto/last-call-the-manifesto-english/
Thanks again!
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about inviting some 6,000 people who have already left a comment on our site, but they still haven’t become followers
I leave a comment on your blog and you send me ANYTHING my response would be to give you the middle finger and never visit again – I only subscribe to blogs I want to – I leave comments from time to time on blogs the use of my email for anything is a breach of the terms of service – your hiding a “we will spam all the people that leave comments” in some page is not right – all blogs I have ever seen never send anything based on my comments – and if I was following your spam blog with the RSS feed I would delete the follow also
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the use of my email for anything is a breach of the terms of service
Really? Which TOS? those of WordPress.com? I read them again and I can’t find where it’s stated :-/
Our blog’s TOS? Not at all, because we warn that when commenting you’re being added to a file whose purpose is to keep informed people about our Manifesto.
You say literally that “we will spam all the people that leave comments” but that’s not true at all. Spam is defined as having three conditions, all of them must apply to be regarded as spam:
1) Massive.
2) Unsolicited.
3) Commercial.The only condition that would apply is the first one. Second is not true for our case, because our blog’s legal terms warn about implicit permission. And third is not at all, either, because we don’t sell anything nor have any income from this blog or from the emails we could send.
You seem to have not clearly read about our intentions: we intented to send a one-time invitation to follow our blog to people who have already visited and commented and giving us permission to contact them regarding the subject of the blog, i.e., the “Last Call” manifesto. That’s very far from being a massive commercial unwanted bulk mailing, in my opinion!
But, anyway, never mind because we don’t want to cause any trouble to WordPress.com, so, as warned by Shawna, we won’t proceed with our massive dashboard-invitation idea.
…Just to make things clear.
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Thanks so much for your clarifications @asociaciontouda.
It sounds like an email list service is exactly what you’re looking for and would fit with the purpose of your site. I would encourage you to focus your efforts on email addresses you gathered from comments (signatures) on the manifesto itself rather than comments site-wide.
I believe what timethief and auxclass are trying to get at is the perspective of this type of email collection from the point of view of a commenter. In general, it’s always better to let your reader choose to sign up for ongoing emails. I understand from the outreach perspective this can be disappointing because you’ve engaged these users, but you might not be able to reach them again.
In the long run, good places to focus are creating consistently relevant original content and encouraging your readers to subscribe to be updated.
I hope this clarifies things! Let me know if you have any further questions.
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It sounds like an email list service is exactly what you’re looking for and would fit with the purpose of your site. I would encourage you to focus your efforts on email addresses you gathered from comments (signatures) on the manifesto itself rather than comments site-wide.
Yes, we’re looking for that kind of services right now. Or even a self-hosted mailing list.
And you’re also right that comments on the signature page are the ones more likely to be in that future list. It’s http://ultimallamadamanifiesto.wordpress.com/firmantes-iniciales/ and right now it has 6,600 comments/signatures.
Of course we’ll also try to encourage them to directly follow the blog via WordPress notification system, and I think we’ve already activated all the options for that on the dashboard. If you got some other suggestion, it’ll be welcome.
Thanks for your help.
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Perfect! My only suggest would be to move your Follow Blog widget higher in the sidebar. many of your visitors may not even see it so low on the page. Although there are the default follow buttons, so they do have other options as well. :)
Let me know if I can help with anything else!
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You’re right. I always tend to put it at the bottom of the sidebars, but in this case I think it would be better to have it in a higher position. And we had already activated the other Follow buttons. Thanks again for the suggestions, Shawna :-)
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