Thursday, May 14, 2009

New Help/FAQ Topic - Subscription Options

We just added a new topic to the Help/FAQ section of our website. It answers the question "I love you guys, how can I stay up-to-date with the band?" Here's the answer:

We have a ton of different social networking sites that you can follow us on, just click on the links page on our website and you will find a complete list. In addition to becoming our friend on those networks, you can follow our blog, which has both RSS and e-mail subscriptions, our a mailing list, and our micro-blogging platforms. Here is a breakdown of the differences between each of them:

  • The Mailing List - We only send out our major updates to our mailing list. Announcements about upcoming shows, a big review, or anything else that we consider high-priority news we will e-mail out to everyone signed up. Even if you plan on getting more frequent updates from one of our other notification services, you should still join the mailing list because we provide exclusive deals and content to our mailing list members. Most recently we gave everyone on our list a discount on the new album at the album release show, as well as the link to a "secret" web page to download live mp3s from the gig. Make sure you sign up so you don't miss out on these exclusives. You can subscribe here.


  • The Blog - Our blog is where we post the bulk of our news updates. Anything we consider significant news goes here, like if we post a new video to YouTube, add features to our website, or join a new social network. We will also re-post the major stuff that we send the mailing list here. There are two different ways to get updates from our blog, besides the obvious way of checking the page everyday, which we think is kind of annoying.

    • RSS Feed - RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary."  It is a way to deliver a stripped down version of a website to your computer, so instead of having to go and check a site everyday for new posts, you can just wait and it will automatically notify you when there is new material. A feed looks something like this. Pretty much every site has a feed these days, so all you have to do is go around to your favorite websites and subscribe to their feed. To subscribe you save a bookmark to the site's RSS feed in what people call a "reader" or a "feed reader." Your reader will regularly check all of the blogs and RSS feeds you subscribe to for updates, and all of the new posts will show up right in your reader. Most readers are free, Google has a popular free one called GoogleReader, and there is one included with the Safari web browser for Macs. Instead of having to go to all of the sites you want to follow everyday to check for a new post, you can just open up your reader and all of the new material will be right there for you to read.

      If you want to learn more about RSS check out this video and this site. You can find a list of popular feed readers here too. When you've got your RSS reader all setup don't forget to subscribe to our feed, or click on the RSS icon in our blog or our website.


    • E-mail Updates - This is different from our mailing list.  Our mailing list is only for major updates and exclusive content we want to share with our fans only and not post publicly on the web.  If you subscribe to our blog via e-mail updates then every time we write a new post you will get a message with the content of the post in the e-mail. You can subscribe here.

  • Micro-Blogging -This is where you'll get every single last detail about the band. If Shane farts at band practice, you'll know. If Brian is eating a bacon cheese steak from Hoagie Haven, you'll know. If Garrett is drunk...well Garrett is always drunk, so consider that a permanent update. You get the point, we'll put up all the day-to-day stuff we think you might care about, like if we're working on something cool at practice, listening to a song we really like, or watching a cool movie. Right now we use our Twitter page as the foundation for our micro-blogging, so if you want to follow all of our conversations and our updates subscribe there.

    We also have our Twitter account set up to update some of our other social networks. On ReverbNation, all of our tweets will show up there besides replies (i.e. a tweet beginning with @username). Any tweet that we end with #fb will post our Facebook page. And of course MySpace has to be the big pain in the ass, so anything we want to show up as our MySpace mood we will copy and paste there. Sound confusing? Good. Then just go and follow us on Twitter.

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