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 information sources in one place. It is essential for scenarios with multiple information sources.

The most attractive feature 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 commonly 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. I also follow over 50 independent blogs and the number keeps growing. Their articles or videos are valuable, and I hope to be able to know about their updates as soon 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 the sea of flowers is unnecessary to exercise 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 certain number, 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 habit is to install the web-based reader Tiny Tiny RSS on a server, use a browser to access it on desktop systems, and use the client app of the same project to connect to the web-based reader on my 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.

Then you can add subscription sources. Click 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 the "three" in the upper right corner to access "Preferences", which is the software backend where all settings are located. You need to visit it frequently.

Under "Preferences" - "General" in "Preferences", 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.
Correct time zone setting. "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 display 1970.

Under "Preferences" - "Feeds" in "Preferences", you can group feeds. "Filters" are self-explanatory and support 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 service.mercury:3000 and service.opencc:3000 respectively. Remember to save.
Use them. Go back to the homepage, in the feed editor, the plugin page can be enabled 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 using XML to describe website articles. 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 what was mentioned earlier: 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 paid for. Adding a new official account costs 1 yuan per month, 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 details, see the blog post.

Websites with Built-in Subscription Sources#

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

However, it is tiring to search with the naked eye, so you can use two tools to find them.

Browser extension: RSSHub Radar, which can be directly searched in browser extensions such as 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), personally, I find this one more accurate. RSSHub Radar doesn't show some sources, but this script can find them.

To use RSSHub Radar in China, you need to set the "Custom RSSHub Domain" in the settings 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 a subscription service but supports logging in to 8 different readers' accounts.

It has a clean interface and no ads. The experience is great. Perfect for reading 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 fail 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 link: https://technique.vfly2.com/2024/02/rss-beginners-comprehensive-guide/

Copyright notice: All articles on this blog, unless otherwise noted, are original works by AhFei and are licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Please indicate the source as Technique (technique.vfly2.com).

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