I’m fairly sure that you can see a couple of opt-in forms on this page, and therefore it’s fairly obvious that you can see that you’ll get a free pdf document if you do so… But I’ve run into a snag with all this: I’m using FeedBlitz as my mailing-list provider, and I can’t understand how most of their user-interface works – or should I say I can’t see how their user-interface works at all. The number of times I’ve spent several hours going round in circles on it is a joke: The thing’s a living nightmare!

FeedBlitzkreig

“Ve have vays ov confusing ze Englander schwine!”

With a name that sounds like a high-security German WW2 POW camp for the Catering Corps; it’s certainly not easy to find my way around inside FeedBlitz’ latticework of interconnected hidden links.

About a year ago I started my mailing list with FeedBlitz, because FeedBlitz are free: In short; they have to be or they’d have no customers in my honest opinion. – I can’t imagine anyone paying for total confusion. They do run some paid-services, but in all honesty I don’t know for the life of me how they make a profit. Anyway; the initial point of having a mailing list in my case was to notify people of the new content on the blog. I managed to work out how to configure the interface to do that, and left it there for the time being.

However, now, for the purposes of future and pending enterprise concerning this blog I need to set up autoresponder sequences that route the reader to a specific location, on this blog or elsewhere. I also need to set up multiple autoresponders which are situation-dependant, etc, etc, and it appears that the FeedBlitz system is either incapable of doing so or has buried or hidden the necessary setup part of the user-interface within the extremely complex and totally illogical maze of irrationally-labelled links that it calls its graphical-user-interface.

Actually it’s quite embarrassing that, since I can’t route anyone to a thank-you page when they click the current confirmation-link from FeedBlitz, that I have to give them the download location on the same page as the confirmation-link – and I have a feeling that a lot of people just click the download link, take the pdf, and ignore the confirmation link: That wasn’t the deal; but many people these days will do anything if they can get away with it: It’s otherwise known as an immature lack of personal responsibility and self-control, aka greed at any cost. – That’s their problem rather than mine anyway.

Why don’t I contact FeedBlitz and ask them  for assistance?

I shouldn’t have to: It should be perfectly straightforward and user-friendly, rather than confusing and badly-labelled. I shouldn’t have to get a series of straight A’s in rocket-science to operate their UI. Quite frankly I am tired of going round in circles and breaking into a cold-sweat just trying to get my bearings in their maze: It’s not even as if they give me a map, and the signposts might as well be written in an obscure Deutschlander dialect. Those that I can understand just lead me on a trail which eventually ends up at the point where I started…

Which is why I’m moving over to Aweber at the end of this week / beginning of next week. Everyone on my list should already have received notification of this by email. The snag is that everyone on my list is going to get a confirmation email from Aweber in order to make sure that they are happy with the move and want to continue to receive email from this blog’s lists about new content, special offers, insider information, etc.

I am prepared to discover that possibly half of my list don’t bother to click the confirmation link in the email sent by Aweber: That’s life. – But those who seriously like this blog and want to remain on the list will do so.

So this is public notification that I’ll be changing the mailing system over to Aweber, as well as making it a lot better too eventually in due course.

FeedBlitz will probably email me and offer me a map and full instructions plus a dedicated free customer helpline for if I get stuck in future, provided that I stay with them. I shouldn’t need a map and instructions in the first place: It should be as clear as daylight what I need to do from the outset. If they do try to offer me that it’s like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. – Too late FeedBlitz: You had your chance. – Aweber here we come.

Aweber is not free; but I’d rather pay $20 a month for a top-quality service that I can actually use then get a brain-ceasure through confusion for free.

Fair enough?

Is it fair of me to slag-off FeedBlitz’s free service like that? – After all it is free. – But even if they paid me to use it, there’s no point in trying to use something that only wastes my time and goes nowhere. – Yes I know, if they did pay me to use it I’d be paid for doing virtually nothing; but that’s loser-mentality at the end of the day: That’s unemployment-benefit-addict-thinking: Freeloader-folly: A step in completely the wrong direction: –

Welcome to Dead-End-Alley; off Subsistence Street.

You’re welcome to it if you like: I have bigger and better plans. – No matter how long it takes me to implement them fully.

In the coming year you’ll see bigger and better things from this blog; along with a slight change in direction; but It’ll be staying on a technical theme nevertheless. – Don’t worry; you won’t log in one day and find that the blog has become a feminist-UKIP-recruitment-centre or something similar and equally obtuse.