RSS Comprehensive Beginner's Guide - Aggregating Information Sources

RSS, simply put, is a way to aggregate information sources and receive updates, summaries, or even full texts of all the information sources in one place. It is essential for scenarios with multiple information sources.

The most attractive aspect of RSS is that it allows you to see the "unfiltered open Internet" and gives you the opportunity to decide what to read.

What platforms do you frequently use? Do you have any favorite websites? How do you find out when they are updated?

Let me give you an example. I follow some excellent creators on WeChat Official Accounts and Bilibili, and I follow more than 50 independent blogs that continue to grow. Their articles or videos are valuable, and I hope to be able to know about their updates as quickly as possible and easily collect them for unified organization.

WeChat Official Accounts and Bilibili are fine because one is a necessary social app that I open from time to time to get timely updates. The other one can be opened during leisure time. However, their built-in update reminders have some side effects:

For WeChat Official Accounts, I don't like having message notifications that I don't handle, but filtering and collecting them will distract my attention. If there are 7 or 8 new messages, once I open them, all the notifications will be cleared, which means I have to handle them once I open them, otherwise I may forget or keep them in mind. This is fine during leisure time, but it's annoying when I'm busy.
For Bilibili, I open it, the homepage is attractive, I scroll down; or I open it, there are updates, I watch. This kind of temptation in a myriad of choices doesn't need to be exercised all the time, I just want to see if there are any important videos so that I can arrange my viewing time accordingly. (The previous sentence was written 2 years ago, and I have now gotten used to ignoring the recommended videos on the homepage)

However, when the number of information sources I follow exceeds a dozen, it is no longer possible to obtain updates by occasionally opening the apps. It takes time and is annoying. I can either give up, check them all at a fixed time, or use RSS.

Installing Tiny Tiny RSS and its plugins#

To use RSS, you only need a reader.

There are readers available for various platforms (Android, Windows, etc.). My preference is to install the web-based reader Tiny Tiny RSS on a server, use a browser to access it on desktop systems, and connect to the web-based reader using the client app of the same project on an Android phone.

Tiny Tiny RSS official website: Tiny Tiny RSS (tt-rss.org)

Installation process: Tiny Tiny RSS Installation Steps - Technique (vfly2.com)

Usage#

The default username is admin and the password is password. Change the password after logging in.

Apart from the administrator account, it is recommended to create a new regular user for use, which is more secure.

You can then add subscription sources. Click on the "three" in the upper right corner and select "Subscribe to feed" to subscribe to websites.

OPML can be used to save all subscription sources, suitable for regular backups or sharing with friends. You can export it in "Preferences" - "Feeds" - "OPML".

Preferences#

Click on the "three" in the upper right corner to access "Preferences", which is the software's backend where all settings are located. You need to visit it frequently.

Under "Preferences" - "Preferences" - "General", pay attention to:

Enable API. This is required to log in to the self-hosted ttrss account on other platforms.
Always expand articles. It is recommended to disable this.
Set the correct time zone. "Timezone" - "Downward triangle" - "Select your timezone". Automatic is usually fine, but it may not be recognized. For Chinese servers, select Asia/Shanghai. If the time zone is set correctly, the time in the upper right corner of Tiny Tiny RSS should not show 1970.

Under "Preferences" - "Feeds", you can group feeds. "Filters" does what its name suggests and supports regular expressions.

Plugins

Enable the OpenCC and Mercury plugins.

Go to "Preferences" first,

Under "Preferences" - "Plugins", check the boxes for the opencc and mercury_fulltext plugins, and click "Enable selected" in the lower left corner.
Then go to "Feeds" - "Plugins" and enter the addresses, which are service.mercury:3000 and service.opencc:3000. Remember to save.
Use them. Go back to the homepage, and in the feed editor, you can enable the plugins on the plugin page as needed.

Subscription Sources#

There are three different names for the full name of RSS: Really Simple Syndication, Rich Site Summary, and RDF Site Summary.

In a narrow sense, RSS refers to describing website articles using XML. Its working mechanism is as follows: if a website supports RSS, it means that whenever it publishes a new article, it will add a record to a file located at a specific URL (such as https://technique.vfly2.com/feed/ for Technique) according to the RSS or Atom standard, listing the title, author, publication time, and content (which can be the full text or a summary) of the article.

In this way, as long as users collect the URLs of these files provided by all the websites they are interested in and periodically check for updates to these files, they can know whether these websites have published any content and when. The core function of an RSS reader is to store the RSS addresses subscribed by users, automatically check for updates at a fixed frequency, and present the content in a readable format to users.

In a broad sense, RSS refers to aggregating information sources in one place and receiving updates, summaries, full texts, and videos from all information sources.

However, most websites do not provide RSS subscription URLs, so it is necessary to use other tools to periodically scan and automatically record update information in the format required by RSS, etc. Such tools include RSSHub and Huginn, which can be difficult or easy to configure.

WeChat Official Accounts have been one of the information sources for which I have been looking for an RSS solution. (As of early 2024), it has finally been realized. If needed, it can be used for a fee, with a monthly fee of 1 yuan for adding a new Official Account, and existing subscriptions are free but limited.

RSS-enabled Official Accounts: https://git.ahfei.blog/ahfei/mp_rss. To use it, click on the corresponding Official Account and click "Raw" to get the subscription link. For more details, see the blog post.

Websites with Built-in Subscription Sources#

Some websites currently have built-in subscription sources. If you see the yellow background with a white radar pattern on the cover of this article, that is the website's subscription button. RSS for Nodeseek: https://rss.nodeseek.com/

However, searching with the naked eye can be tiring, so you can use two tools to find them.

Browser extension: RSSHub Radar, which can be directly searched in extensions for browsers like Edge and Chrome. If a website has a built-in subscription source or RSSHub supports subscribing to the website, it will display the number of subscription sources.
Tampermonkey script: RSS+ : Show all RSS of the current site (greasyfork.org), in my personal experience, this one is more accurate, it can find what RSSHub Radar cannot find.

To use RSSHub Radar in China, you need to go to the settings and "Customize RSSHub domain" because the default official domain has been blocked. You can enter my RSSHub service domain here: http://rsshub.ahfei.blog:1200/.

You can see that both RSSHub Radar and the Tampermonkey script have a one-click subscription function. If the ttrss URL is http://ccb.ahfei.blog:1181/, you can directly enter it in RSSHub Radar, and for the Tampermonkey script, the URL format is as follows:

http://ccb.ahfei.blog:1181/public.php?op=bookmarklets--subscribe&feed_url=

RSSHub installation and usage process: RSSHub Installation Steps - Technique (vfly2.com)

Some Public Collections#

Podcasts:

Podcast RSS Feed (getpodcast.xyz)

Creating Custom Subscription Sources#

Creating custom subscription sources is suitable for those who have a basic understanding of front-end technologies such as HTML and CSS. You can create them programmatically or use tools such as:

Feed43: Feed43 : Convert web pages into professionally looking RSS feeds
Haven't used RSS-Bridge: RSS-Bridge

Clients#

Make sure to enable "Allow API login" in the web version first.

Tiny Tiny RSS for Android#

Tiny Tiny RSS has an Android client app that is minimalistic and easy to use.

Project homepage: Tiny Tiny RSS / Tiny Tiny RSS for Android · GitLab (tt-rss.org)

You can install it from Google Play or Fdroid

Feedme for Android#

FeedMe itself does not provide subscription services but supports logging in to 8 different reader accounts.

The interface is clean and ad-free. It provides a great reading experience for static content - text and images. It also supports voice reading.

However, for a period of time in early 2023, it did not update the changes in ttrss in a timely manner, which caused it to not be able to fetch the latest content from ttrss. After that, I got used to using Tiny Tiny RSS for Android.

You can search and install it from Google Play.

Original article link: https://technique.vfly2.com/2024/02/rss-beginners-comprehensive-guide/

Copyright notice: This blog post, unless otherwise specified, is original content by AhFei and is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Please indicate the source as Technique (technique.vfly2.com).

Stay updated ٩(•̤̀ᵕ•̤́๑)ᵒᵏᵎᵎᵎᵎ with clear and beneficial practical skills. Feel free to subscribe using RSS or follow @[email protected] on platforms that support ActivityPub to receive push notifications for new articles. It would be great if you could leave comments and interact.