Tiny Tiny RSS
2019.05.09 - Nat Tuck - ~2 Minutes
As part of my ongoing effort to decentralize my use of the web, I’m now hosting a web-based RSS feed reader called Tiny Tiny RSS. This post provides setup info if you have an account on fogcloud.org
What is RSS? Why?
RSS is a standard for distributing “feeds” of updates to websites. This makes it easy to follow a bunch of websites that update periodically without having to visit all of them to check for updates.
Examples of things that are drastically improved by an RSS reader:
- Blogs
- Web comics
- News sites
This is great for you as a user, since it allows you to see all the posts on sites you’re interested in without any mediation by a centralized service like Facebook.
It’s also great if you make content yourself, since it gives you a way to push stuff directly to your audience if they subscribe to your feed.
Log In
The reader is hosted at https://feeds.fogcloud.org/
Log in with your fogcloud username and password.
Set Up Your Browser
Browsers used to provide native RSS support, but the major ones have removed this functionality because it “wasn’t sufficiently popular” (read: conflicted with their advertising-based business models).
Luckly, third party addons provide support.
Browser: Firefox
Install these two addons:
- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/awesome-rss/
- https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tiny-tiny-rss-watcher/
Configure both addons with the URL to the tt-rss instance ( https://feeds.fogcloud.org/ ).
Browser: Chrome
Install these two addons:
- https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rss-subscription-extensio/nlbjncdgjeocebhnmkbbbdekmmmcbfjd
- https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tiny-tiny-rss-checker/injnpmieoiaflnemdibhkflicchhaldh?hl=en
Configure both addons with the URL to the tt-rss instance ( https://feeds.fogcloud.org/ ).
For the subscription extension, you want to add a reader and enter this as your subscription URL [1]
https://feeds.fogcloud.org/public.php?op=subscribe&feed_url=%s
References:
Subscribe to some feeds
- Visit https://boingboing.net/
- To the right of the URL bar, you should get an RSS icon (
). - Click that, edit the subscription, set a category (e.g. “blogs”).
- Watch for the icon on other sites, and subscribe when appropriate.
Android App
The official app is available for money on Google Play. No reason not to give them money, but the app is also available through FDroid.
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.fox.tttrss/
Uncooperative Sites
Some sites should definitely be viewed via RSS, but don’t provide native support. The site https://fetchrss.com/ provides the ability to create RSS feeds for some of them, e.g.:
- Public business / group pages on Facebook
- Youtube channels