Subscribing to this Site

A quick note about how you can conveniently get new content from this site.

I’m very pleased to see that this site, although less than 3 months old, has already attracted a large number of subscribers. Those of you who have subscribed obviously understand the convenience of using the RSS feed feature of blog-based sites to get new content delivered to your RSS reader, whether it’s a standalone reader like NetNewsWire or endo (my choice) or another Internet application like Apple Mail, Safari, or Firefox.

Subscribing by E-Mail

About 18% of you have chosen to receive new content by e-mail. This is especially easy for folks who don’t want to deal with RSS reader software. Articles are sent out once a day, by e-mail, and include all images and formatting you’d find in the original article on this site. A single e-mail message includes all articles for the day — although I usually have just one or two — and if there are no articles, there’s no e-mail. The e-mail list of subscribers is protected and not used for any other purpose, so you won’t get spammed by me, Feedburner (which provides the service), or anyone else.

I do want to remind people who are interested in using the e-mail subscription feature that it’s a two-step process to sign up. First, you enter your e-mail address in the Subscribe by E-Mail form at the top of the right column of any page of the site and click Subscribe. Second, you must click the link in the e-mail message that arrives almost immediately to confirm your subscription. If you use a spam filter, this e-mail message might end up in a junk mail or spam folder in your e-mail client. Look for it. If you don’t click the link, you will not be subscribed.

Unsubscribing is easy and it works. Just click the link at the bottom of any of the e-mail messages you receive. You’ll be removed from the list and will no longer get new content by e-mail.

Subscribing to the Feed

The remaining 82% of subscribers use some sort of RSS reader to subscribe to the feed. This is easy, too. Simply click the RSS link at the top of any page. Depending on your operating system and Web browser, you’ll be given some method to select the program you want to use to read the feed. Then, each time you open that program, the new content will be gathered for you to read.

Full Text Feed

Unlike many other sites, Maria’s Guides features a full text feed. That means the feed — whether it be by e-mail or by RSS reader — will contain all the text and images you’ll find on the site. I’ve done this purposely to make following the content on this site more convenient.

At the bottom of each feed item, you should see a link that you can click if you want to read a article’s comments or add your own. I urge you to do so if you find an article particularly interesting. Sometimes, there’s a lot more information shared in article comments than in the article itself. You can help share what you know with other readers by using the comments feature to add your input to the discussion.

Any Requests?

I’m open to requests for improving the site or its feed. Please use the Comments link for this article to share your thoughts or make requests.