alternative to email subscription provider?

Hi edstevensdba,

The email service is optional. You can ignore it, or upload an email icon as custom icon and then link it to your existing email service provider.

Kind regards,

John

John, Thanks for the feedback. I didn’t know the email could be disabled since it is labeled “mandatory”. I deselected it, fought my way through all the nags (really? I’m still testing it out, you want a 5-star already)? and it appears to be gone. I see one review (SundayCrepes, Aug 3, 2015) that said they did same and it came back.

When you say to upload an email icon .. are you talking about integrating it into the lineup with the others? I already have a widget to collect email subscribers, and could leave that in place, I guess, but it would be nice to have it as just another icon alongside the others.

I’ll tell you what I find a bit off-putting about the current situation. First, the forced use of a particular provider. Second, the lack of information available about and from that provider. Even after blindly signing up for an account — no faq, no tour, no contact info, no support links, no way to evaluate if this is really what I want.

Why can’t the email icon here just accept the code to work with whatever provider one wants, they way virtually all of the other ’email icons’ do? What’s with the forced tie-in with SpecificFeeds?

Regarding “Why can’t the email icon here just accept the code to work with whatever provider one wants”, how should that work? Do you have an example for another plugin which allows it?

As part of the configuration with MailChimp, they provide the code to paste into a text widget. Seems that the same thing could be accomplished with the configuration of an icon within a plugin. Configure the icon by accepting the necessary code (pasted in as text) as provided by the mail list provider.

So I went ahead and installed on my live site after playing with it a bit on localhost. In working through the config, I get down to option 8 — show a subscription form. And I see it creates a separate widget – just a text widget with code pasted in, exactly like I did with my current widget and code supplied by MailChimp, only you provide the code to use SpecificFeed. So what’s the difference between that and what the mail icon itself really does? And if it really isn’t different, why can’t that functionality be put into the mail icon?

BTW, I’ve looked at about a dozen other similar plug-ins and still like this one the best. Instead of nagging for 5-star ratings and tie-ins with other providers (like SpecificFeed) I’d rather just have the option of a paypal donation. I’d willingly donate to any plugin or theme creator that produced a useful product.

Thank you for your feedback.

A subscription form allows users to enter their email directly on the site, an icon cannot do that. Let’s assume you could paste some code for the icon, what happens then if you click the icon?

The ‘subscription form’ is coded to accept an email address and then send that address to a specified provider to be added to a mailing list. Regardless of what you call it, that is what is happening.

And the mail icon? How is it coded? When I click on it, it takes me to the SpecificFeeds website, where I’m prompted to enter an email address.

So what’s the functional difference? They both end up providing an email feed service with an email address to add to a mailing list.

There’s no magic here, it’s all just code that gets executed when you click on an area of the screen that has a pretty little picture. The only difference is how the user interface is presented, and the fact that there is no provision for the blog owner to select their own feed provider without hacking the code. I’m fluent in several computer languages, but PHP isn’t one of them.