How easy is it for new visitors to subscribe to or follow your blog, so they are notified of all your new blog posts or see them on their WordPress reader feed?

WordPress has several ways to follow a blog.

The most popular is clicking the ‘follow’ button in the bottom right corner of a blog. However, the button only appears when scrolling ‘up’ on the site, so it can be missed. And if you install any plugins on your blog, it disappears completely (as does the reblog button). It’s not visible on self-hosted blogs.

Another option is for bloggers to place a subscription or link to follow on the widget bar of their blog. I have one on the widget bar of my blog.

However, some themes don’t come with widget bars. Some themes hide the widget bar behind a button, so unless you click the button, you won’t see the contents of a widget bar.

For those themes that offer a visible widget bar (like the theme I use), visibility is only available when viewing the blog on a desktop or laptop computer, not on a tablet or mobile phone (where they’re hidden behind a button).

Given that many people read blogs on a mobile phone or tablet, I realise that I could be losing hundreds of new followers because it’s not clear enough how to subscribe to or follow my blog when viewing it on a mobile phone or tablet.

WordPress.com now has newsletter capabilities.

All you need to do is add a Subscribe block to all your posts. Readers who enter their email addresses will get an email notification when you publish a newsletter. And to make those Subscribe blocks look a bit jazzier, WordPress has added some newsletter-focused patterns to their library.

You’ll also find some subscribe to/follow my blog blocks amongst the newsletter subscribe blocks.

Here’s how to access and create them.

• In the draft page of a post, click the ‘add a new block button’ (the + sign) located on the top left of the page.

• Click on Patterns and then on Newsletter.

• A list of subscribe/follow templates will open up. Scroll down the list to view all of them.
• Some of the templates will be personalised with the name and tagline of your blog.
• All of the templates have settings/options that you can change. For example, I enlarged text on some of them where available.
• Choose the template you want to use after any changes you’ve made.
• Add it to all your posts.
• Now readers will be given an easier option of following your blog when reading your posts.

May I ask for your help?

Help me choose a ‘follow’ template for my blog by voting for the one you prefer. The poll is at the end of the list and will remain open until 23:59 GMT on Monday, 23rd January 2023. Any votes cast after the deadline won’t count.

A

B

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Subscribe for more posts like this

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C

D

E

F

Voting has now closed. Thank you to everyone that voted.

• When choosing your template, remember to make it a reusable block so that you don’t need to look for it every time you create a new post. Click here to find out how to create a reusable block.

• Remember to add your new subscribe/follow template to all your posts.

Once I know the poll results, I’ll add my new follow template to all the posts I’ve published in 2023 and to all new posts.

How easy was that?

If you have questions about adding a subscribe/follow block to your blog, leave them in the comments section.

Layout, content, settings, and format might differ on self-hosted blogs.

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