Answered Alternatives to RSS needed

So, I built a MODx website that the client loves. She's really happy with the results.

In the course of planning, she mentioned that she wanted to get away from sending email newsletters to her clients and we suggested adding a blog system to feature her writing. So far so good. In addition, her clients would get updates to her articles by way of RSS.

I added an RSS feed solution, along with a subscribe button. All works great...except for one thing.

...now I find that Chrome, which the client claims most of her clients use, doesn't have a built-in RSS reader, like IE and Firefox do. Google Reader has been deprecated by Google.

The thing is that she does not want to scare her clients away from subscribing by asking them to install any separate programs just to view her articles.

Are there any alternatives to get her articles to her clients instead of RSS?

She says her clients, for the most part, all use Outlook, which has a reader in it, but is there a way to create a RSS subscribe button that automatically targets the end-user's Outlook as the subscription application? As it stands now, the RSS solution offered in the MODx tutorials make the end-user's default browser come up first. Those with Chrome as the default browser see what looks like XML code, which might as well be an alien language. It looks broken.

Is there any kind of sniffer code one can add to the RSS code (see below) to detect if the user is using Chrome as the default, and if so, to then launch Outlook instead? I'm sure that's a stretch but it's the only thing I can think of at the moment.

I'm currently using the following code for the RSS page (content type set to RSS and no template selected):



Template (rssItem) as follows:



Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks.

MODx Revo 2.3.3-pl [ed. note: waizen last edited this post 11 years, 3 months ago.]

I don't know a way to do that, though I know almost nothing about Outlook.

I use Notify with Subscribe at Bob's Guides to send updates to users about new blog posts. You essentially send a manual email for each new blog post. It's very convenient for me -- it takes just a few clicks to send a new notice, and you can let users select topics they want to be notified about.

It's not at all what you're looking for, but might work as a fallback if you can't find an Outlook solution.

Quote from: BobRay at Jun 18, 2015, 11:51 PM

I don't know a way to do that, though I know almost nothing about Outlook.

I use Notify with Subscribe at Bob's Guides to send updates to users about new blog posts. You essentially send a manual email for each new blog post. It's very convenient for me -- it takes just a few clicks to send a new notice, and you can let users select topics they want to be notified about.

It's not at all what you're looking for, but might work as a fallback if you can't find an Outlook solution.

Thanks, Bob. I had originally come up with a similar solution (using Mail Chimp) but the boss nixed it. Would probably nix this as a solution, as well.

I appreciate you responding. [ed. note: waizen last edited this post 11 years, 3 months ago.]

Quote from: paulp at Jun 19, 2015, 03:49 AM

Try adding a link using:

<a href="outlookfeed://www.yourfeed.com">Add to Outlook</a>

Thanks, Paulp! This was/is the solution! Works perfect! I think you just got me a raise around here.

Glad it's worked