Subscriptions, and how to get them  

There are a lot of ways to stay connected here at Mothering, and keep up on your favorite topics, or with your favorite people.

You can Subscribe to Threads, Categories, Products, Articles (Wikis), Users, Brands and Tags.  You can see all of your subscription options by clicking on the Subscriptions link near your User Name in the upper left hand corner:

Once there you will see a list of all your subscriptions, as well as your options for them. You may change the frequency of each individual subscription, or remove a subscription:

Under this list, there is a legend that tells you what kind of items you have subscribed to, based on the icon next to the listing:

Other things you can do while on this page are, change your default subscription preferences:

The options for subscriptions are Immediate (you will get an email notification as soon as the update happens), Daily Digest (You will get an email each day with your subscription updates for that day), Weekly Digest (Same as Daily, only on a weekly basis), Site Only (No email notifications will be sent, you will have to check your Profile to see updates), or Don't Subscribe (This allows you to respond to a thread without getting any further contact from the site.

You can also change your subscription options:

And if you wish to stop email notifications, or are going out of town and want the notifications to pause, you also have that option:

You are able to change this back when you wish, and notifications will resume as updates occur.

You may view all of your Subscriptions and the updates by visiting the My Profile link in the purple navigation bar at the top of each page.

So, now that you know how to control your subscriptions and their options, let's look at how to subscribe to each individual item.

Thread - 

If you have chosen a default option, when you respond to a thread you will be automatically subscribed according to your preferences. You also may change your preferences on each individual thread by selecting an option from the drop down menu located under the reply box:

This will only change the option for the specific thread you are responding to, not your default site preferences.

You can see immediately if you are subscribed to a thread by the icons located under the thread title, as well as how many updates have occurred since you last checked the thread:

Category - 

If you go to the Reviews link in the purple navigation bar at the top of each page, you will be taken to the category listing for our reviews.  You can subscribe to each Category there by clicking the Subscribe button at the top:

Product - 

You can also subscribe to an individual product in the same way.  This will notify you when people update the information or add reviews to this product:

Article (Wiki) - 

Also located in the purple navigation bar is a link to Articles (sometimes referred to on the site as Wikis).  You are able to subscribe to Articles you have written or contributed to. When you write an Article, you will see a drop down menu under the entry field that will allow you to choose notification preferences for that specific article:

You can also subscribe to Articles you are interested in, by clicking the button at the top right:

User - 

This is a great way to keep up with friends, or with people whose input you really appreciate.  You are able to subscribe to each individual member on MDC.  This option is located on the member's profile page, under their avatar: