TL;DR: If you want to get notified of new posts on this blog via email, click here.
Most folks learn of new posts on this blog because:
- I post links on a couple of Discord servers I’m on;
- I put links on both BlueSky and Mastodon;
- I send them links via text (mostly Real Angela and Actual Sabrina).
One or two people have expressed interest in some automated way to learn of new posts. I recommend the blog’s RSS Feed. There’s link to it included in the side widgets of every post (it’s called “Entries Feed”).
The only problem with that: People don’t know what an RSS Feed is.
Although perhaps only one person will use it (and that one person may be me), I’ve flexed my sysadmin skills and set up automatic notifications of new blog posts. It should work for posts by any of this blog’s authors (as of June-2026, that’s just me and Real Angela).
If you’d like to give it a try, here’s the link.
FAQ
What happens exactly if I click that link?
The page prompts you for a name and email address. You’ll be asked to confirm that you want to subscribe to the mailing list blog-announce.
You’ll get an email to further confirm that you want to subscribe. This is to make sure you haven’t mis-typed your email address, and to keep idle hackers and bots from mis-using the mailing list.
I’ll have to confirm the subscription. If I don’t know you personally, I strongly suggest you find a way to let me know who you are; for example, you can leave a comment on this blog post.
If I get a subscription request for bqk124532@xyzzy.org.com.au.us, I’m not likely to approve it. I offer this as a courtesy, not another avenue for hackers to get on this site.
Hey, Bill, we know each other! Can I just ask you to add me to the list?
Sure!
What if I want to unsubscribe?
There’s an “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of every email from blog-announce.
You can also visit this page and click the unsubscribe link.
If you really want to get fancy, you can send an email to sympa of listserv.argothald.com with the body:
unsubscribe blog-announce <email>
That <email> option is for when you want to unsubscribe using a different email address than the one you used to subscribe.
There’s only one way to join, but many ways to leave.
Hey, Bill, we know each other! Can I just ask you to take me off the list?
Sure!
What will you do with the email addresses on the mailing list?
Nothing!
This blog site is a vanity project. I don’t charge for anything, and I don’t have ads.
Yeah, the site’s URL ends in .com. I regret that, but it’s too late to change it now.
Can folks see everyone else’s email addresses on the list? Or use the list to send messages to each other?
No. I’ve turned those options off.
If “fans of Argothald” want to chat with each other (why would anyone want to do this?) I’ve got a Discord server. I primarily use it to organize my Star Wars: The Role-playing Game sessions, but it’s available for other uses. Just send a message to winston_waterston on Discord and I’ll invite you… if I know who you are.
What if I only want to see announcements of a certain category of posts, like those by Real Angela, or those with pictures of pets?
I could set that up. Let’s see if enough folks ask for it.
Right now, I’m not going to bother. I predict that the number of folks who’ll use this mailing list, or even get this far into this blog post, is one.
How did you implement this?
For the mailing-list software, I used Sympa. It’s free, and I’m familiar with it because it’s what I use and maintain at work.
For the “trigger” I use the Notification Master WordPress plugin. The free version is good enough for what I want to do.
To get WordPress to send an email, I use WP Mail SMTP. The mail server itself is Postfix running on the same server as this blog.
If this seems complicated, all I can say is: Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a sysadmin!
