What is RSS?
RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication.”
Why use RSS, rather than social media platforms to follow articles, news, opinion pieces?
RSS Feed doesn’t have an algorithm, it doesn’t priorities any specific feed, shows them in an order, so you don't have to create any output that is optimized for algorithm behaviours. It is a very direct way to receive information in form of a vertical list. It also ends once you've read all the news/articles for the day, so there is no endless scroll like in social media. Because there are no ads that are waiting for you to consume!
Many websites, podcasts etc. have actually feeds that you can follow them directly. For this, you need a reader to read RSS feed. There are some readers you can use, most of them have monthly subscriptions. Some options here that don't require subscription, either have free versions, or you can buy the app just once in the beginning.
1) RSS Reader App options to use
- Self-hosted RSS feed aggregator FreshRSS: https://freshrss.org/index.html
How to self host RSS reader: https://teqqy.de/freshrss-rss-reader-zum-selber-hosten/
- Reeder Classic - you pay once to buy the app
- Net News Fire, app for iPhone &iPad
- Nextcloud gives you a free reader as a web app
- Opera, Vivaldi, Mozilla Firefox have the use option as RSS reader
- For Linux, you can use the Newsflash
- Capy Reader for Android
2) Turning newsletters into feeds:
With Kill the Newsletter you can create a feed and it provides you with an email address and an Atom feed. Emails that are received at that address are turned into entries in that feed. This way you don’t get bombarded with many e-mails and can read them at a time you choose.
https://kill-the-newsletter.com/
3) Full Text RSS
Some RSS feeds may give you only a short version of an article in your RSS reader, but you want to be able to read them in full length in your RSS reader application and don't want to have to go the source website, so it's better to throw the feed links all first into here : http://ftr.fivefilters.org
This way you can be sure that the article you'll get will be in the original length. At some cases, this may not work. You can preview it and see if it works. And you can self host this one in your home server!
4) Finding out the feed links from different platforms:
Many platforms with good intentions already make the rss feed link visible, unlike Spotify, YouTube etc where you should not be able to reach the link so easily of course to keep you on the platform. That's why sometimes you have to figure out. Here are some examples.
- RSS from Youtube channels:
By copying the channel link to your RSS Reader, you should get the RSS feed link. In case that doesn't work, you can try to get the channel ID with these instructions: https://webschale.de/2024/rss-feed-fuer-youtube-channels/
You can also migrate your existing Youtube subscriptions to your RSS reader with these introductions: https://christophemarois.com/youtube-without-the-feed/
- RSS from Substack
https://your.substack.com/feed
Replace “your” with the name of your Substack publication.
- RSS from Spotify
This website gives you the RSS link from a Spotify podcast profile:
- RSS - Mastadon
(Copy paste from: link)
All Mastodon accounts have an RSS address which can be followed from RSS apps:
Go to a Mastodon account profile’s original page on a web browser.
Copy the web address from the browser’s address bar
Add .rss to the end of the web address to create the account’s RSS address
Add the account’s RSS address to your RSS app
For example, the RSS feed for the FediTips account is https://social.growyourown.services/@FediTips.rss ⧉.
https://rss-bridge.org/bridge01/
5) Using RSS for your DIY website:
You can use RSS to announce your events, exhibitions or anything new happening, without depending on social media, for your announcements where one way communication is sufficient.
To use RSS, you need a xml file, for example with the title RSS.xml In this file you will name every announcement as an item, put the information and image accordingly and upload it into your hosting space.
Option 1: The xml file needs to be updated every time you update the website and every time you put new information into the news part of the website. You can update the xml file manually by yourself by editing the code, or you would need to use some service that does it for you.
An example of a RSS.xml file:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
<title>My Title</title>
<link>https://mywebsite.com</link>
<description>My Description</description>
<item>
<title>Title of the Entry</title>
<link>Link of the Entry</link>
<description>
<![CDATA[ <img src=“Image Link">
My Text here ]]> </description>
</item>
<item>
<title>Title of the Entry</title>
<link>Link of the Entry</link>
<description>
<![CDATA[ <img src=“Image Link">
My text <p>
My text
]]>
</description>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>