[jaymike]

Previously Posterous used to make subscribing to a Space dead simple by providing a link to click on and give your email address. Done.

Now it seems the only way to "subscribe" is to either do so via RSS or use the "Follow" button in the corner and be forced to "Sign Up" for an account. I've been going back and forth with Posterous Support and am being told that is just the way it is. The only way around it is apparently to have the Space Admin add them manually from the "Manage" page. Obviously this doesn't scale well or allow for strangers who want to be subscribe to updates.

I'm going to have some potential viewers who simply want to subscribe and get email updates. They're not technical people (they can't even spell RSS) and are averse to signing up for yet another account (and yet another password). Is there really no way to allow them to just subscribe by email anymore?

When I was digging around on Google about this, I kept finding plenty of Posterous sites out there that still have the old functionality (including Sachin's) but I can't figure out how to integrate it. Here is another one picked randomly which still has the "Subscribe to this posterous" link.

The magic link seems to follow this format:

http://{URL}.com/mem...?site={site_id}

But I tried adding a link like that to one of my Spaces with my site ID. Could not get it to work. Any advice or feedback is appreciated. I'm currently using the Gridlock theme if that matters.

-j

[Cory Watilo]

Yeah, they want people to make accounts now. But try adding in this code (via the advanced theme editor) where you want the option to appear on the page:

{block:Subscription}
{block:SubscriptionNonUser}
  	  <a href="{SubscribeLink}">Follow by email »</a><br/>
  	  Get the latest updates in your email box automatically.
  {/block:SubscriptionNonUser}
{/block:Subscription}

[jaymike]

Beautiful! I've got it working great in the right sidebar off of the main page now, but as of now it is only showing up on that main Home page. Thanks so much.

If possible, I'd like it to show up along the right side like that regardless of which subpage I might be on (say on an individual post or a separate "Contact Us" page that I have set up). Is that doable? I stuck it in a second area (within the "block:Show" section) and can get the text to show up on those other pages, but the link itself doesn't work correctly like it does off the Home page. It doesn't seem to recognize the special "{SubscribeLink}" path and instead treats it literally as a pointer to http://alliegreenefo...SubscribeLink}.

If it is too complicated to make that work I can live with this, but thought I would ask. Your tip already vastly improves on the way Posterous changed the behavior. Big thanks.

Cory Watilo, on 24 January 2012 - 10:57 AM, said:

Yeah, they want people to make accounts now. But try adding in this code (via the advanced theme editor) where you want the option to appear on the page:

{block:Subscription}
{block:SubscriptionNonUser}
  	  <a href="{SubscribeLink}">Follow by email »</a><br/>
  	  Get the latest updates in your email box automatically.
  {/block:SubscriptionNonUser}
{/block:Subscription}

[Cory Watilo]

Hm, didn't work inside block:Show? Interesting. Maybe it's conflicting with another {block:Subscription} on the page. If there's another {block:Subscription} inside {Show}, then try adding the SubscriptionNonUser inside it. You could also try finding a place outside of block:List or block:Show to see if the same link works on both the index and post detail pages. If it works, then it's just a syntax problem inside block:Show that's causing it not to work. Hope this helps.

[jaymike]

Uh, I was trying to be a little too clever I guess. When I copied the code block up within the block:Show section, I stripped out the "{block:Subscription}" stuff because I didn't see any other blocks inside there and thought I wasn't supposed to have a block within a block. That is what I get for thinking...

Once I copied it verbatim the same way I had added it to the sidebar section (the way you gave it to me), it worked like a champ. I'm all set and stoked to get this functionality back. Thanks again.