Monday, July 14, 2008

The Carpetology Wear-Dated Website Guide: Subscribing to the Newsroom

This installment of The Carpetology Wear-Dated Website Guide will take you through Subscribing to the Newsroom.

First, some information about the Newsroom itself. You may notice from the navigation at the top of each page on the website, that the Newsroom option looks a bit different. It's a different color, and it's a link. When you mouse over it, you won't get a listing of pages as you do the other navigation choices like Learn About Carpet or Plan And Design.

When you click on the Newsroom link, it takes you to the Newsroom. There, you will see the recent entries in News & Events. You'll notice on the left sidebar several options:

+ View All Recent Entries [this cuts across all categories and shows your recent items]

+ News & Events where you can view Wear-Dated News, Press Releases, Newsletter Archives, Promotions, Contests and The Carpetology Blog

+ About Wear-Dated includes reference information like What Is Wear-Dated?, The People of Wear-Dated, Corporate Social Responsibility, Wear-Dated Timeline, About The Newsroom and What's New at Wear-Dated?

+ Links of Interest

+ Media Gallery where you can find Print Advertising and Wear-Dated Logos

+ Document Library with digital copies of our printed resources.

As part of the Wear-Dated website redesign, we decided to enhance the Newsroom experience by offering the means to easily subscribe to any updates or communications [i.e., from News & Events]. Updates like new press releases, promotions taking place at retailers around the country, and a weekly update summary capturing the week's happenings on the website, in the Newsroom and on the blog[s]...

We also felt it important to offer options as we all have distinct preferences for receiving news updates. The result: two options as announced in Wear-Dated introduces Newsroom subscription options. [It's also summarized in Newsroom Subscription Options on the website.]

These subscription options offer a choice between having updates delivered directly to your email inbox or via RSS to your feedreader anytime we add new News items, Press Releases or Promotions.

Mind you, this differs from the website registration process [described in The Carpetology Wear-Dated Website Guide: Home Page] which lets you comment and rate products and retailers and opt in to our newsletter.

Let me go through the ins and outs of the subscription process here. [By the way, it's very similar to the options available here on The Carpetology Blog!] Feedburner, a reputable resource recently acquired by Google, provides the service for both options.

First, RSS.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. With RSS, updates appear in a 'feedreader' that aggregates news feeds. These feeds can be easily accessed and organized [e.g., in folders] according to your preferences.

To get started subscribing to an RSS feed, you first need to enable a feedreader like Google Reader, Newsgator, Bloglines and Netvibes by setting up an account. Once the account established, it's a matter of enabling the subscription - same as if you were enabling the email subscription.

On the Wear-Dated website, look for the bright orange RSS icon and click on that. It will take you to a page where you can select your feedreader and enable the subscription.

Next: Email.

For an email subscription, click on the Feedburner flame icon. This brings up a separate window for entering email address and spam-prevention letters. That then triggers a verification message to your email inbox. You MUST open that verification email and click on the link within.

Once 'verified,' FeedBurner activates the email subscription to “News And Events”. You are ready to receive updates!

Let me know if you have any questions.

Next: The Carpet Catalog II

Previous posts in this series include:
The Carpetology Wear-Dated Website Guide: Carpet Catalog I
The Carpetology Wear-Dated Website Guide: Home Page
The New Wear-Dated Website Is Live!



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