Try this accessible tool to increase blog readership: Subscribe To plugin

Anyone who wants to build a regular blog readership, or who wants to start their own blog site, knows that attracting and holding onto the restless and fickle eyeballs of the information-seeking public is a challenge.  The content needs to be interesting, of course, but all the experts say that you should probably post updates several times a week.  Further, offering customers a reason to come back, providing some interactivity, as well as some "sticky" content that keeps your readers on your site for more than a split second, also helps.  I suppose the purpose of this last is to encourage those impatient eyeballs to rest upon the ads you have sprinkled around your site.

 

In the case of this blog, however, I have no such ads, and if you are one of my regular visitors, you drop by to absorb the occasional pithy little wisdom pellet dispensed here.  Today I want to alert you to a Word Press plugin I’ve just installed to make that a bit easier.  Why it has taken me this long to offer this feature is beyond me, but if you want to subscribe to alerts about new posts, you can now click on the "Subscribe" link on the page and sign up to get my aforementioned wisdom pellets dropped into your email inbox.  I’m like a one-woman digital Pez dispenser.

 

While the "Subscribe To" Word Press plugin is one of the most popular in the sharing plugin category, I didn’t find it to be the most intuitive I’ve ever installed.  I’ll say this, though, it was mostly accessible, with some decent menu options that allow for some nice flexibility.  I cannot urge you strongly enough, however, to read the readme.txt file included with the download files.  On another of my blog sites, I used one of the suggestions made by the developer to create a "dummy" blog user, set as an administrator.  Give the dummy user a dedicated email account just for sending out new post alerts.  Since most web hosts allow you to create a gazillion email addresses, just set one up that you only use for this purpose.

 

Finding accessible plugins has not been easy.  For me, "accessible" means that I as the administrator must be able to install and configure it myself, without sighted assistance, and that my blog users must also be able to use the features.  Subscribe To, for example, allows you to enable an Ajax style subscribe form, or for visitors that do not have javascript enabled, a choice to use a widget or not.  On most blog sites, many plugins get a test run, then are deactivated and deleted.  Here on the Accessible Insights Blog, you can check out a list of the plugins I’ve used, some of which are currently deactivated.  I had to uninstall a popular sharing button because as of the latest version, it became inaccessible for my screen reader users.  I wrote to the developers of this sharing plugin to ask if they provided an accessible alternative, and I was told that the button does not support screen readers as of the current release, and there are no plans to make the button accessible in the future.  Out    it went.  To see a list of plugins used on this site, just click on the "plugins used" link at the top of the page.  Plugins Used is actually the name of a plugin that creates a page, then deposits on it a list of all the plugins you are running.  All those that I have installed and are currently active should be accessible for all users.

 

So, please subscribe to my blog.  Yes, new posts are tweeted out, thanks to Twitterfeed, but if you aren’t following me (@Accessible_Info), you don’t always know I’ve posted something new.  The Subscribe To plugin makes acquiring content more convenient, because readers need not frequently check for new posts.  Also, a site visitor does not have to register, although if you do, you can make some adjustments to your preferences as to how you want the content delivered.  I’ve selected the text-only option for the email updates I’ll send, since this blog isn’t exactly a multimedia production, anyway.  Subscribing is a simple, opt-in sequence that takes seconds.  You’ll only get an email when I post something new, so fret not that you will be inundated with messages.  My purpose here is to inform, not harass.

 

Click here to go to the Subscribe To plugin page.

 

Thank you, as always, for your eyeballs, text-to-speech engine, or whatever you use to consume my content.

 

LL