If you’re a subscriber to Cranky Flier emails, you know that there have been some delivery issues lately. Of course, posts have gone live on crankyflier.com at the right time, but I’ve spent too much time trying to fight our current mail partner (MailPoet) to stop suspending delivery. I’m stick of it, and I’m guessing you’d rather have it work better as well.
So, I’m considering a big change that would see me leave WordPress which I’ve used for over a decade. I’m thinking about turning Cranky into a true newsletter that would also happen to publish on a website. This might not sound different to you, but it is really about changing the thinking to be newsletter first, making sure delivery happens quickly and on-time.
If I’m able to get all my posts transferred, I’m leaning toward using Beehiiv. You can see a test website with the most recent 70ish posts at crankyflier.beehiiv.com. (Don’t subscribe there, just look.)
So, what would be different? Other than the layout and design, the only significant change I can see would be in the comments section.
- Existing comments would likely not port over. I don’t imagine this is a huge problem since there are rarely comments on old posts, but it is a change.
- You would have to be a subscriber to be able to comment. You don’t need to use your real name, but you would have to enter a valid email address that you can confirm by clicking the email in order to leave a comment. (Anyone would be able to see the comments on the website without subscribing.)
- Comment emails would look something like what you see below, but unlike today you wouldn’t be able to reply to a comment email to post a response. You’d have to click on the post or “view all comments” to go to the website to post.
Overall, I don’t think this is a real problem. Maybe it’s actually an improvement, weeding out some of the one-off comments that don’t add value anyway. But I want to get your opinions first.
Go check out crankyflier.beehiiv.com then come back here and leave a comment. Or if you’d rather, shoot me an email at cf@crankyflier.com. I really just want to hear if anyone finds this to be a problem.
No post on Thursday, so Happy Thanksgiving too all my American readers!
