You🫵🏾 Should Be Using RSS Feeds

[elyusion]

Intro

You've been on the internet a while, right? Maybe during your adventures around the web, you've seen the letters "RSS," or seen this symbol: . What the heck does it all mean?

Maybe you're so internet savvy that you have your own website. In theory, people who like your site should check back in intermittently for changes, but people forget and links are lost. Is there a way you could send out site updates to those who care without having to make yourself or your supporters sign up for yet another service?

And maybe you've looked around Dreamwidth, you've scoped the scene, you've went through all the journals and communities with your interests, and you've decided that... you don't like it here. BUT. There's a journal or community or two you wish you could keep tabs on without having an account. Hell, there might be a bunch of sites you want to keep tabs on without having to remember to visit them all. Isn't there a better way?

I'm very happy to tell you: I have the answer to all these questions, and all you have to do to receive them is read my very long Dreamwidth entry.

What the Flip is RSS?

RSS, or "Really Simple Syndication," is a web feed, and if you have an RSS reader you can collect feeds from all over the web and read them in one application. If you get lucky and all the sites you want to subscribe to use RSS feeds, you'll only ever have to check one feed again. It's like your own newspaper that you pick all the sections for. No creating an account, no sign-ins, no ads, no algorithms, no distractions, no infinite scrolling -- just the content you asked for.

If you're the owner of your own site, you can rest easy knowing supporters will never miss an update, as long as you remember to make it and they remember to check their feed readers.

One small negative: They won't show you anything you can't see if you're not logged into a site, so priv accounts and such are a no-go.

So How Do You Use It?

Pro tip: With most readers, you can just paste the URL of a webpage into the appropriate spot and it will grab the feed for you, no problem. But if that doesn't work even though you're sure a webpage MUST have a feed, or if you just like making things harder for yourself, there's other ways to find the feed.

If a site has a button/icon somewhere that says "RSS" or "Atom*," or if it has that icon with the funny littles waves (), clicking it will lead you to the XML file that is the feed. Most of the time adding /rss or /rss.xml to the end of a URL will lead you to the feed too. Just paste the XML file (feed URL) into the spot your reader requires, and bam! New addition for your personal newspaper. Your mileage may vary; read your feed reader's instructions.

When in doubt (you really can't find that damn feed), try *right click* -> View Page Source -> *press CTRL/CMD+F* -> search for type="application/rss+xml". Somewhere within the same set of brackets (<these things>) will be code that says href="[LINK]," and that link will be the feed for that site/page. Voilà!

No feed reader? No problem. I have recommendations from trusted sources (myself and random people on the internet).

On desktop I use Drop Feeds, which I've never heard anyone else mention. I like it though. It finds the RSS feed for me on most sites and lets me know via an icon in the address bar.

Fluent Reader is another one I hear good things about.

Feeder is available on desktop, Apple, and Android. Another popular choice.

Dreamwidth is a pretty decent feed reader too! Yup, you can subscribe to RSS feeds here and have them appear in your reading page like any other entry. Go here to try it!

Searching "RSS feed reader" on your preferred app store or browser extension... place(? what are they even called) and downloading the first result is fine too; I've never heard of an outright nonworking reader. If you have special concerns, you'll have to do your own research. Please chime in if you know a lot about feed readers and have a bone to pick with specific ones.

*What's the difference between RSS feeds and Atom feeds? Pretty much all relevant feed readers support both, and the differences are a bunch of stuff I don't understand, so it's probably not important. (You're going to have to look into that yourself, sorry.)

But How Do You Make Your Own?

Now that's the tricky part.

Just kidding. It's not tricky. It's tedious for sure, but if you use a site that autogenerates feeds (Dreamwidth, Tumblr, Wordpress, Mastodon & Friends instances) you won't have to worry about that. But if you want a news feed for a site you've coded completely by hand, well...

I was going to include all the code and stuff, but it made me tired just looking at it. I will instead direct you to this simple tutorial, but give you some pointers.

1. Use this site to get the date in the required format for your pubDates and lastBuildDate. The second "Human Date to Timestamp" textbox is autofilled with the date and time in your time zone, in the correct format for xml files :3 But be careful! Make sure it's in English. If it's not, go to the navigation menu, click "Preferences," and change the language.

2. You need the link for each item to be unique. Cheat code!: Just use the current Unix epoch time as the URL. You won't repeat ".../1745392594.html", I guarantee it.

3. The items are HTML files. This means you can code them accordingly. But wait! The items don't really accept normal HTML, and if you type it as usual you'll get a hot mess. What you have to do is copy your desired HTML into HTML entity encoder such as this, and then paste that back into your <description> space.

4. When you think you're done and have updated your site with the new feed update, check your work with the official RSS validator! It's saved my life from my own messy code many times.

5. If you're feeling lazy, there's also RSS Feed Builder Tool. All you have to do is fill in the blanks. Make sure to encode HTML entities in the description!

And there you go! You can make an RSS feed of your very own! Since you have your own site, here's some ways to have a little fun with it: here's a way to make a microblog with RSS, here's a tool that turns XML to HTML so you can display updates directly on a site (often used to display a Dreamwidth blog on a site and such), and here's another cute widget for displaying feeds as well. Note that the first requires making your own feed, but the other two tools can actually display anyone's feed(s) on your site.

By the way, Neocities also autogenerates feeds. The updates that appear on your profile? Those would be what shows in that feed. So if you use Neocities and have your profile on you don't have to make your own feed, but it may be preferable if you want any control over when your subscribers get updates and what said updates contain.

Various Social Sites & Their Feeds

Keeping tabs on someone who uses a social media platform? That's no problem! ... Except for when it is.

Twitter: Killed their own RSS feeds; possibly peak walled garden (meaning, if you don't have an account you aren't allowed to see much). You can use Nitter or another instance to grab an RSS feed for an account, but they don't always work. RSS.app makes it really simple, but you have to *chokes up a little* make an account.
Youtube: youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=[CHANNEL ID]; This site can tell you the channel ID, but I have a feeling that if I didn't have my adblock on I would get 500 viruses. Correct me if I'm wrong. (You can also just paste the channel URL directly into your reader and see what happens.)
Instagram: Doesn't have them, but you can use RSS-Bridge or RSS.app.
Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/[USERNAME]/rss
Reddit: reddit.com/r/[SUBREDDIT]/.rss (with or without the final slash) OR reddit.com/user/[USERNAME].rss
Tumblr: [USERNAME].tumblr.com/rss OR [USERNAME].tumblr.com/tagged/[TAG]/rss
Pillowfort: Doesn't have them, but you can use RSS-Bridge.
Mastodon: [INSTANCE.URL]/@[USERNAME].rss
Dreamwidth: [USERNAME].dreamwidth.com/data/rss
Plurk: plurk.com/[USERNAME].xml
Neocities: neocities.org/site/[USERNAME].rss BUT doesn't work if the webmaster has their profile turned off. Check if someone has a custom RSS on their site first before trying this.

Did You Really Write All This Straight From Your Head?

Some of it, yes. All of it? Absolutely not. Really, I'm not super knowledgeable on this topic. But recently I've become an evangelical for RSS, so I wanted to make my own blog post that combines the knowledge of many other writings. This way I'll have something to link when someone asks me about it, _{even if it's super long. Hey, I added headings!}

I would like to credit Des, Karma Chameleon, PK, and Sqvrltastic. Please click those links for more information on how RSS feeds work! Those are the pages that helped me while I was struggling making my own feed.

...

Now you know how to keep up with news, friends, franchises, webcomics, webnovels, podcasts, fanfiction and more! In one spot!! Not only that, but if you have your own site you now know how to add your own voice to that chaos :~] (Not actual chaos; any good feed reader lets you organize feeds into folders.) Thank you for reading and learning. I hope you have a great day. Please enjoy your new, shiny, no-nonsense news feed. \(￣ω￣)/

Comments

[malymin]

Dreamwidth also (via inheritance from Livejournal) has the ability to inject RSS feeds into your Reading page, which is IMO a feature more social media type sites should have. It's very nice to check my reading page and see that a webcomic I'm following has updated!

[elyusion]

Oh, I think I meant to include that but I forgot! Thank you for reminding me <3 It's a very cool feature, I use it to subscribe to personal blogs outside of DW (also, *tips hat* fellow ex-choster)

[pebbleinalake]

Thank you for this! I've been thinking about creating a rss feed for my site, but never knew how to do it, so that tutorial is a lifesaver. <3

[elyusion]

You're welcome! I'm really glad my post helped someone out a little ^_^

[paperghost]

Neocities also comes with an in-house RSS feed in the form of neocities.org/site/[USERNAME].rss, although if someone's profile is turned off it doesn't redirect to the social feed update.

[elyusion]

That's something else I forgot to mention too. I actually remember thinking about it when I started that section, but by the time I reached the end I forgot.
I will add later that Neocities autogenerates feeds, BUT making your own feed is nice if you want fine control over what appears in people's feed readers. That's what I wanted to say but left out. Thank you so much for reminding me <3