Housekeeping

How to use 'sections' to better control email notifications

This is a bit of a housekeeping post, to make sure everyone knows how to use some of the features of substack that aren’t instantly apparent.

As those who have followed me on Facebook for the last 2+ years can attest, I tend to post prolifically. This wasn’t so much of a problem on Facebook due to the structure of the notification system and the feed itself. However it does present some problems with substack as notifications are sent via email and it could get quite spammy, quite quickly. Especially as I upload older posts and videos.

In order to prevent out of control email spam and make it easier to navigate to topics of interest, I have used substack’s ‘sections’ feature.

At the top of the Beyond the Data page, you’ll see a number of headers. Clicking on each one will narrow the feed to just those assigned to that section (‘Home’ includes all posts assigned to all section in reverse chronological order).

I have also listed out the descriptors for each section. There will likely be more added in the future as well.

How to limit email notifications

The beautiful thing about the ‘sections’ feature is that it allows you to choose which sections you receive email notifications for. By default when you signed up, you will be subscribed to all. If you do not want to receive notifications for everything, simply unclick what you don’t want. Note: if you unclick all of the boxes you will be automatically unsubscribed from the list entirely and will need to resubscribe again.

I recommend keeping at least the ‘Announcements’ section if you plan on checking the website or app directly, that way you’ll only receive emails in rare instances, but won’t miss important changes.

If you are experiencing any trouble, or have suggestions, I welcome the feedback!

Even if you do generally want to be receiving all notifications, I would still recommend turning off the COVID-19 and Video Podcast notifications for the time being as I start heavily uploading into both of those categories.