I believe the reason the AskWoody newsletter format is so popular is that it comes to us, curated, on a weekly basis; we don’t have to constantly check the website for new content.

In addition to the newsfeed (I didn’t think those were still popular), AskWoody could offer a weekly digest of new blog articles. The article title and a link should be more than sufficient, perhaps organized by category.

Susan Bradley wrote:

FROM THE PUBLISHER By Susan Bradley Did you know that our blog, also known as the AskWoody home page, contains regular posts that are not part of our
[See the full post at: Our blog]

There are more visitors to the site than ever before, a happy trend.

Well I don’t know if I could call it a “happy trend” or not.  More like 24H2 is pretty screwed up and many folks who have it are seeking help dealing with the disaster that it is.

I believe the reason no one visits your blog is … where IS your blog? I don’t see that word in any categories on your home page – I see ‘newsletter/forum,’ I see news items but… is it sort of hidden or called something else?>

Hi Susan,

I just fwd’d you at 8:55 AM EST today (2/3/25) via email my 1/27/25 reply along with (2) additional 2/3/25 screenshots of problems with my annual renewal.

Same glitch as Jan ‘24. Not getting 2/3/25 newsletter now. My email has my phone # too.

Just left voicemail at your AskWoody # that’s on the renewal invoice. Pls call me today and/or email reply to my 8:55 AM EST reply today (2/3/25). I’m just sending msg here to be safe too b/c after sending another reply today I then got another renewal reminder (one today at 2:44 AM EST and then another at 11:57 AM EST, the latter being approx 3 hrs after my earlier reply today w/ screenshots and explanation).

Pls reply to my actual 8:55AM EST email (not via this forum or portal).
Thanks. Appreciate the help.
Best, Amy. 🙂

It was surprising to learn that only 40% of AskWoody readers know that there are regular posts that aren’t part of the newsletter. The first tab on my Pale Moon browser is permanently open to the Home page!

I guess it comes down to how you relate to a website. In my case, there are some sites that, like AW, include both a community forum and a news page, and yet I’m only dimly aware of the news section because I go in primarily for the forum discussions.

Speaking of AW readers being unaware of an important site feature, I did not know that AW is conducting a reader survey. To “highlight” how obscure it is from this angle, Susan’s mention of it didn’t even include a link to the survey! 🙂

I give up. Where is your blog? You didn’t include a link to it in your (paid) newsletter. Also, I don’t know anyone still using feeds.

Hello,

A Blog? A Survey? I’m a Plus member but have never seen an opportunity to be part of the Survey. How can I do that?

Would also like to checkout the Blog.

Ron

BTW, very glad to see the series about Windows 11 or Mac Mini!

Barney Lerten wrote:

where IS your blog?

The Home page itself is the blog.

RonE22 wrote:

I’m a Plus member but have never seen an opportunity to be part of the Survey.

I’m sorry to say the survey is now closed. However, it ran for three weeks and was mentioned front and center at the top of the emailed Plus newsletters. The large banner in today’s newsletter announced that the survey was closed, but the prominent banner in the previous three newsletters just needed one click to get you to the survey.

Sorry you missed it. About 10% of our Plus members responded, a fantastic showing! I hope we catch you next year!

Cybertooth wrote:

I did not know that AW is conducting a reader survey.

The survey was announced prominently in the Plus edition of the newsletters for three weeks, but only in the emails – not the online versions.

Cybertooth wrote:

Susan’s mention of it didn’t even include a link to the survey!

Susan’s “From the Publisher” article in the newsletter was published in both the free and Plus newsletters. The Plus survey is not available to free subscribers, so we could not put the link there.

rbailin wrote:

AskWoody could offer a weekly digest of new blog articles.

I wish to thank you for a suggestion that will make my job more time consuming!

Seriously, we occasionally run a “From the forums” piece in which I identify special aspects of the forums. Prior to Susan’s stewardship, this was a weekly feature. However, we found that it did not spur interest in the forums to any noticeable extent, and it was reduced in frequency accordingly.

I suspect the same would be the case for a blog digest. I suggest that when you read the newsletter, you hop over to the blog to see if you missed anything.

rbailin wrote:

I didn’t think those (newsfeeds) were still popular

They aren’t. Search engines did them in. But they are very easy to produce because they are just XML files, and they remain a handy way to get updates from a specific source, whereas search results can be scattered.

Most browsers used to have built-in feed readers. Vivaldi still does and presents them very cleanly. There are browser plugins or extensions. The Thunderbird email client can handle them as if they were email accounts. Outlook used to do the same, but something changed (we’re exploring that).

Will Fastie wrote:

The large banner in today’s newsletter announced that the survey was closed,

Will Fastie wrote:

The survey was announced prominently in the Plus edition of the newsletters for three weeks, but only in the emails – not the online versions.

What was the logic in putting “Closed” in the online newsletter but not “Open”?

b wrote:

I can read the AskWoody RSS feed in New Outlook and Classic Outlook.

I can read a feed (“RSS Subscriptions”) in my personal email account and I can add others, but I can’t set one up in my AskWoody account. I haven’t found out why yet.

b wrote:

What was the logic in putting “Closed” in the online newsletter but not “Open”?

From the January 13 issue. Seems prominent to me. As for today, I was simply indicating that time had expired. I’ve done it that way for the last four years.

WHY?

Oops. Because I slipped up. Fixed. Thanks.

My observation about how different people engage with a website in different ways, applies equally to the newsletter. For me, the newsletter item in the Inbox listings serves mainly as a reminder that the week’s new articles are up and available to read, so it’s time to refresh that always-open first tab in Pale Moon.

Here’s a suggestion: I couldn’t find a blog post announcing the survey’s availability, at least this year. How about posting the survey (with links!) on the Home page when it becomes available?

Cybertooth wrote:

How about posting the survey (with links!) on the Home page when it becomes available?

The survey is made available to Plus members. The home page (aka blog) and forums are open to anyone, including the general public. That’s why the links are available only in the emailed Plus newsletter. To do otherwise would mean we’d need to collect at least enough personal information to verify Plus membership, which in turn would mean we could not guarantee the anonymity of the survey results.

I feel the ‘regular posts’ referenced by beloved Susan is a misnomer. I for one do not have AW open 24/7 on my browsers, nor should we have to. If I miss a mere day, I miss Susan’s actual topic (will explain below). And I am a Plus member.

It is surreal, if not on AW daily, that one misses Susan’s important Topics. That are gone by the wayside in a mere few weeks (depending on subsequent topics/replies). Things change fast. And to miss those relevant topics/advisories/info can be tragic. (Happened to me.)

I think what happens to Susan’s Topics (independent of Plus newsletters) is they get skewed by date/time of the ‘latest reply’ to her topic. Thereby unsearchable by any means, buried, be it ‘Forums’ or anything else. Example: as per @PKCano reply above, going to forum ‘Newsletters and Homepage topics’ this is what I’m met with:

It does not reflect a list of Susan’s topics in any semblance of order, simply in order of last response, which is very confusing to those be it on AW daily or once a week.

Could there be a listing simply listed/headed Susan’s Topics with topic title? Rather than listed by ‘last poster/comment? ?? Love & appreciate AW and community, support ad nauseam!

PS it took me 2 weeks & 4 diff browser searches, and AW own search, using ‘Ask Woody, Winget’ to finally find get a result to a brilliant AW newsletter from 2023??? Finally found by DDG app. Shouldn’t be this hard.

I truly understand the popularity & growth of AW, my lord what would we do without your alarms and astute guidance! To the point though it’s become somewhat messy to follow?? Amazing attempts with all on our techno plates, applaud you. (Didn’t get survey or would have added it there).

Well a very weird thing happened. I tried to post a comment to thank Susan and all for the blog and the website, but got a message that it was removed as my IP address is considered a source of spam and my comment was not deemed relevant.  Considering that (i) I have never sent a spam, (ii) my IP address is recorded as 0% spam (per the link provided in the rejection notice), (iii) thanks are usally welcomed, and (iv) I used no offensive words, I am at a loss to explain what happened. Someone on the invigilator side must have got their wires crossed!

Cybertooth wrote:

The difference between the two experiences … suggests to me that the website software is smart enough to treat the same link differently for members vs. non-members.

There is only one area of the site that is behind the paywall, and that is Plus newsletters. It’s hard-coded into the site and cannot be applied to anything else. It would be expensive to add paywall control to other areas of the site and we have other development priorities.

But a more important consideration is search. If we blocked items in the blog for non-Plus members, search engines would never see those posts. That would be detrimental to our Web presence.

Hi. When I posted replies yesterday here I enabled to be alerted of my post/replies. Thought it would be targeted to just replies to my reply. Got email alerts of every posting in this forum. I just logged in and did a mute forum by accident but really just wanted to unsubscribe to getting email alerts about posts in this forum.

By muting it actually muted me from the <u>entire</u> Homepage and Newsletter Topics forum list so I can’t see anything (e.g. any of the forums under Homepage and Newsletter Topics)  if I’m logged in under my Plus account.  How can I get this viewing back while no longer getting email alerts for every post in this specific forum? Thanks in advance for the help! (I had to post this w/o being logged in to have access to this forum).

Susan, Thank you for drawing attention to the blog. And kudos for offering RSS!

I have several RSS feeds, yours is the only one that validates 100% (using the validator link in Thunderbird/Betterbird.

Murray

Murray wrote:

yours is the only one that validates 100%

That surprises me because it’s an easy thing to code. Hard to get it wrong, frankly.

Will Fastie wrote:

But a more important consideration is search. If we blocked items in the blog for non-Plus members, search engines would never see those posts. That would be detrimental to our Web presence.

Will, thanks for the explanation. Just to be clear, the idea wasn’t to hide a whole blog post behind a paywall, but only the survey that the blog post, visible to all, was announcing. 🙂 It would be akin to showing links to the Plus newsletter on the blog as is currently done. Don’t search engines see the posts that contain these kinds of links?

But I do understand that there are countless things that need to be attended to with a website, so I’ll stop pestering you now.  🙂

Cybertooth wrote:

It would be akin to showing links to the Plus newsletter on the blog as is currently done.

Links in the blog post are static. It would be possible to develop a plugin to the site that would make the links dynamic but then, $$$.

Deo wrote:

Could there be a listing simply listed/headed Susan’s Topics with topic title?

To see Susan’s forum posts, chronologically, use the following link:

https://www.askwoody.com/forums/users/sb/topics/

To see Susan’s blog posts, use the following link:

https://www.askwoody.com/author/sb/

If you wanted to find mine instead, substitute “willf” for “sb” – I think you can see how this works.

Deo wrote:

AW own search, using ‘Ask Woody, Winget’

On every page on the site, in the right column, there is a box named Search Newsletters. Enter “winget” into it and see what you get. I think you’ll find the newsletter article you wanted at the top of the list.

The Search Newsletters feature is useful for finding material in the last six years, but not perfect. We have a project underway to make it and the other search features much more powerful. Our plans are to make it better than the search engines because it will return results only from AskWoody.

OK, now I am at AskWoody, now exactly what do I do to get to the blog. Clicking “blog” on the article simply takes you back to another copy of the article. I would like to look at something like this regularly but I have no idea how. Love the idea though.

Deo wrote:

Note: it only shows newsletters going back to 2023.

That’s not true. I admit that there are deficiencies in the way search works today, but for a simple experiment use the Search Newsletters box to search for “raid.” You’ll find content going all the way back to 2005. Unfortunately, you’ll also notice some of the deficiencies.

Deo wrote:

(Anything longer and it’s a very long scroll situation:)

Search results for blog posts are paginated. If there are more than will fit on a page, there will be an Older entries link at the bottom of the page.

Deo wrote:

your first link gives only a sorting by date of  ‘last poster’

Yes, that’s right – although I’d call it “last activity.” For a forum, that’s probably the solution most people want.

But I will take this under advisement.

The forums are not a “blog”.

This bit prompted me to look into feed readers again. It’s been a while and I am sad that there aren’t any good free options available (in my opinion). They were all kinda clunky, had ads, too expensive, etc.

I found a wee video tutorial about making a feed with Google Sheets, so I did that. Thank you for the heads up!

Patricia Grace wrote:

I am sad that there aren’t any good free options available

The Vivaldi browser does it natively. For Chrome, try RSS Subscription Extension from Google. For Edge, Feeder – RSS Feed Reader. Firefox: Livemarks.