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RSS 📝
08/22/23
I have added an RSS feed to my site! It's not a super complicated thing to do, especially for a site like mine with statically generated content. The feed itself is actually generated by a small python script I wrote. It's really just taking the raw HTML of my site and parsing it into a proper RSS XML file. The specifications for RSS can be found here. Thankfully my website displays every post inside the index.html file, so I'm able to just use it. We search for id="post inside each line of HTML, and if it is found we have started a new RSS entry. The post ID is set by our markdown_site_generator for custom post header stylings. We then assume we are in that post's content until we hit another post. If you view source of my website, you'll see that this is a pretty valid method. The generator is consistent.
We also are using the id="date string to determine publication dates. Again this ID is generated by our generator for special date subheader styling. The RSS spec doesn't require this entry (pubDate), but most readers use it so it makes sense to include it. We're also not using an XML generator or anything like that to make the file. We're just raw building it, appending strings to strings. This is fine, thanks to the very simple RSS specifications.
And of course this new feature wasn't unbidden. I've just started using RSS feeds personally, and I've really been enjoying it. I've mostly stopped using Reddit with the API changes, and Lemmy is a good alternative but not as up-to-date with news and some other stuff. I've also been finding myself reading more and more personal blogs by other tech nerds, and I've started to not enjoy opening up my list of sites to browse each for new content. I feel late to the party in regards to RSS (like, really really late) but it has truly been a refreshing experience.
The RSS client I've been using is newsboat. It's definitely not for the faint of heart. I enjoy it more than I think I would enjoy something like feedly. Feedly is another RSS reader client, but one that's hosted in tHe ClOuD. It's been around for a long while, so I'm sure their service is well polished. But if we look at their webpage we'll see that RSS is not mentioned once and instead AI is mentioned a ton. They've got to stay relevant, so they try and market their customized content feed and recommnedation AI. That's not what I want. I want my own, custom feed. I'll continue to use newsboat, potentially switching to a different FOSS client that generates static HTML or something. I've read about PlanetPlanet (and then MoonMoon,) which are interesting. I enjoy living on my terminal, tho :)
Here are my current RSS feeds, if you want some potentially good reading: