{"id":3448,"date":"2024-01-16T13:16:53","date_gmt":"2024-01-16T20:16:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.irenenorth.com\/writings\/?p=3448"},"modified":"2024-04-22T02:46:03","modified_gmt":"2024-04-22T02:46:03","slug":"changing-email-notifications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/2024\/01\/16\/changing-email-notifications\/","title":{"rendered":"Changing email notifications"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

It’s been cold outside.<\/p><\/div>\n

Note: to any of you who got the Book List notification, it wasn’t supposed to go out until Jan. 22. I think I got the scheduling part right now, so I apologize for spamming your email today. Thanks for being patient with me on this.<\/em><\/p>\n

Note 2: Okay, folks. I’m a dummy. I forgot to turn off the notifications for MailerLite. This should not happen again. You should only be getting one notification from now on. I knew I forgot something yesterday. I apologize and you all can kick me later.<\/em><\/p>\n

Many years ago, I used Icegram Express<\/a> when it was known as Email Subscribers on my site. People who signed up via Icegram would receive an email every time I wrote a post and it worked well. Then, something went wrong and it wouldn\u2019t send to hotmail anymore. So, I did some investigating and found MailerLite solved all my needs except for one. I made the switch as I felt I could deal with that one thing.<\/p>\n

For the next few years, MailerLite worked well. The only drawback was I had to schedule a time for the posts to go out. I don\u2019t remember why, but I picked 9 a.m. For some reason, when the clocks changed, that time changed to 10 a.m. Sometimes, it was 8 a.m. I never did figure out how to fix that either. The frustrating part for me was if I wrote a post at 3 p.m., it was not going to send until the next day. I put up with it because I wanted my readers on hotmail to get notifications.<\/p>\n

Well, a few months ago, MailerLite decided they were switching to a new format on February 1. I watched many step-by-step videos. It\u2019s a confusing mess. I have tried for two months to shift from \u201cclassic\u201d to \u201cnew,\u201d but there was always something I didn\u2019t do right.<\/p>\n

If I read all the documentation correctly, I can keep the classic, but no one new can sign up. I never did figure it out, but I think I needed two lists and a new plugin for my website.<\/p>\n

Then, I needed to get my website authenticated, except the only way to do that is switch everything from my webhost to the place I registered my website with. I think. I don\u2019t know because I keep imploding and\/or freaking out when I try to figure this out.<\/p>\n

All I wanted was a way to have people sign up to get a notification when I write something. I have spent hours trying to sort this out. MailerLite claimed it would take a few minutes.<\/p>\n

So, this morning, I downloaded the CSV<\/a> file from MailerLite with my subscribers\u2019 emails. In the most layman\u2019s terms, the CSV has a list of all my subscribers. It can be exported and then imported someplace else and is used in a lot of different ways, including email lists.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I went into my website and reactivated Icegram Express. I deleted all the email accounts in there since it hadn\u2019t been used in almost four years and imported the current CSV from MailerLite. Then, I sent out the test email, which seems to be working fine. The best news is that the hotmail emails aren\u2019t bouncing back to me. Yay.<\/p>\n

I also have two important things back. First, my email list is in-house and only on my website. I use WordPress for my site, so Icegram is a WordPress plugin, but the list is only located on my website. Privacy-wise, this was always a concern for me with using MailerLite because I didn\u2019t control what happens with my information and my subscribers emails on their end.<\/p>\n

Second, my posts go out within an hour of posting, starting immediately. I have the settings set so emails go out in 10-minute intervals until they are all sent. I no longer have to worry about scheduling, which is a feature I don\u2019t like anyway. MailerLite would let me send immediately, but I would have to pay $9.99 a month for it. So, yeah, no.<\/p>\n

If everything goes well over the next four or five posts, I will delete the MailerLite plugin on my site. Then, I will manually delete all information from MailerLite and then delete my MailerLite account. I think everything is working well, but I want to make sure everything is good before I start deleting things.<\/p>\n

Icegram also offers two pro accounts, which I haven\u2019t investigated properly yet, but I believe they are for people who have newsletters and need analytics as well as some other fancy stuff I don\u2019t really need. I just want folks to get an email that says, \u201cHey, Irene wrote something. Go read it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hopefully, it all works out and I can go back to being happy about how things work and focus on writing. So thanks for putting up with a couple of emails in one day from me. I really needed to get this sorted and appreciate you all putting up with me.<\/p>\n

I can say my next post will be about my 2024 book list. After that, I haven\u2019t decided on my next topic. I\u2019ve got some work for my job to catch up on as well. I need to make 5-6 phone calls today and hopefully people will say yes to me writing stories about them. I have four stories I need to write. If I recall correctly, I only need another 6-7 stories to have everything sorted for the February issue, but that\u2019s still a lot of writing to get done. Work has to come first because I like money, food and a roof over my head.<\/p>\n

Until next time, I hope everyone is staying warm. I\u2019m done with the -21F weather for this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Note: to any of you who got the Book List notification, it wasn’t supposed to go out until Jan. 22. I think I got the scheduling part right now, so I apologize for spamming your email today. Thanks for being patient with me on this. Note 2: Okay, folks. I’m a dummy. I forgot to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[306,333],"class_list":["post-3448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-reading","tag-site-stuff"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3448"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3510,"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3448\/revisions\/3510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}