Adventures in Feedblitzland

Every day’s a new adventure!

After turning off my tendency to worry about how I’m going to accomplish all the things I have to accomplish in the project of setting up a new website and blog, I resolved to give it over to the Lord, to stop trying to figure it out and let Him lead me.

I did not expect that He would lead me to deal with Feedblitz today. Feedblitz is the service that converts my blog posts to emails and sends them out to those of you who have subscribed so that you receive them in your Inboxes. (You can subscribe — I think — using the “Click here to subscribe” link in the sidebar.)

I’m trying to decide if I should move the blog over to the GoDaddy WordPress incipient website first and then design the two together, or design the website first, then move the blog. Or, not move the blog at all, simply link to it. That would be easier, but the whole would not end up as pleasing.

So I decided to head over to Feedblitz just to see how difficult it would be to change things there if I moved my blog to a new URL. Well, not hard at all, supposedly. At least as they described it. But then, changing out your email wasn’t supposed to be hard either.

Somehow I ended up doing that… changing out my admin email. And in the process I lost my entire subscriber list! You don’t just change the email address, you have to “merge” your existing list/”site” named by the old email address with a new, non-existent list/site named by your new one. Then they send an email to the old address to approve and the new address with instructions on logging in and approving… and then suddenly you are dealing with a template, and all kinds of social media feeds (or whatever they are) and well, they were asking me the weirdest questions as I set up my “publisher profile,” questions I didn’t think they should be asking someone who was doing what I was doing that I was becoming uneasy and frustrated. Especially when I had no idea how to answer.

And then I noticed that the tab leading to my “sites” had vanished.

I panicked, went looking everywhere throughout my account panel, couldn’t find them anywhere. I went searching through the documentation. Nothing on losing one’s entire subscriber list. Then one thing led to another, as I tried this and that (including emailing Feedblitz’s support and posting a public question) I even went back to previously opened browser windows and suddenly there were my sites again. (I say sites because even though I only have one Writing from the Edge blog, for some reason I had 2 “sites” for it.) But when I tried to get to that page through a normal login, they had vanished again.

Long story short,  I had to finish updating the publisher profile. Once I did that, they reappeared for good. But they were no longer under the “My Sites” tab which had been done away with, but under the Account Dashboard link.

How can things that are so basically simple get so weird and complicated?

Anyway, if you are a regular subscriber and have received this blog in your inbox via email and you feel inclined to reply, I’d appreciate knowing if at least some of you have received it. And if it looks different from what you’re used to.  You can either reply directly to me or in the comments. Thanks.

14 thoughts on “Adventures in Feedblitzland

  1. Gregory Kurtz

    I received the e-mail of your blog. It says “here are the FeedBlitz e-mail updates for…”. Looks just as it always has.

    Reply
    1. karenhancock

      I’m having lots of trouble with the new small fonts as well…especially on the defaults for Windows 8! Thanks for the feedback.

      Reply
  2. Ruth Duncan

    Well, Karen,

    You mailed this on 14 November — and here we are on the 20th… I’m just now reading due to husband having pnemonia and other complications to my life — how dare I call God’s plan complications?

    Anywhere — this loyal reader of yours is enjoying hearing about your electronic adventures — I’m sorry for your sake it is being so difficult… but I relate… glad to know there are others with similar talents to mine.

    (If the truth were known… one of my convenient excuse blocks to trying to see if my works might be publishable is fearing the electronic monsters — web sites and such…)

    You wanted to know if we got this… well… I did… though I’m NOT at all sure you will receive my response… between my inabilities in computer land and your current challenges. This note from you from the 14th is the last one I’ve gotten… so if you’ve tried to send any since that date, I didn’t get them.

    Hope that helps. My prayers go with you… for your writing… and for untangling the computer mess. Ruth Duncan

    Reply
    1. karenhancock

      Thanks, Ruth. As you can see I did get your response. Yay! Whether you’ll get this reply is another matter, since it came through the comments and I did not until yesterday realize that there is a WordPress option in “following” to have an email sent to the “subscribers” inbox. Which rather makes the whole Feedblitz thing unnecessary… This is not the only such discovery I’ve made in recent days. May have to do a post on that, as well. Right now the monster in the room is Migrating My Blog to the new website… stay tuned and thanks always for the prayers! (p.s. I love your lament regarding our calling God’s plan “complications”. So true, and it seems to take us so long to realize that it’s our plans that are the “complications.” 🙂 )

      Reply

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