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RSS is by far my favorite way to keep track of all the blogs I read. But I also recognize that it’s not for everyone. Email is still the biggest online communication tool, and many others like Twitter and Facebook gain new devout followers every day. So in the spirit of choice, I decided to give you a few options to subscribe to my blog.
However, I didn’t want to clutter up my sidebar with badges and more forms, so I decided to just create a separate Subscribe page where I could add new subscription methods whenever they become available.
The default Thesis layout puts a “Subscribe” link with an RSS icon on the right side of the top navigation menu. It also makes it quite easy to change the link in case you’re using FeedBurner or some other RSS management tool to serve your feed – just open up your Thesis Options page in your WordPress admin interface and drop in your feed URL. This will not only change the feed URL in the Subscribe link, but will also change the meta data in your <head> so browsers will get the right feed for that little orange RSS icon in your URL bar.
While this is great functionality for people who just want to use their feed URL for the subscription link, it doesn’t solve my problem. To change the URL in the subscription link while keeping the correct meta information for the browser, we’ll need to use a custom function.
All you need to do is put this function in your custom_functions.php file:
function subscribe_link() {
echo '<li class="rss"><a href="http://www.smbseoguide.com/subscribe/" title="Subscribe to SMB SEO Guide Blog">Subscribe</a></li>';
}
add_action('thesis_hook_last_nav_item', 'subscribe_link');
Just replace http://www.smbseoguide.com/subscribe/ with your own subscribe page URL and change the title and you’re good to go.
Important Note: After you complete all of the above, you may notice two subscribe links in your header area. To fix this, go into the Thesis Options in your admin panel. In the Navigation Menu > Feed Link in Nav Menu section, uncheck the box beside Show feed link in nav menu. Refresh your website and you should now see only one subscribe link.
