I've been advocating for RSS support, and you should too • Hacker News Board

Re: I've been advocating for RSS support, and you should too

#31

Post by medhir » Sat, Jan 18, 2025, 9:16 AM UTC

rambambram wrote: post #24

medhir wrote: post #17

I recently had a popular post on HN and several people reached out asking if I had an RSS feed implemented. Was surprised that anyone would be interested in keeping up with my writing, but was happy to oblige the request as it had been on my to-do list for a while. Happy I did do as it seems many people are hitting the RSS endpoint now. Cool to see that RSS is relevant in 2025, and will definitely advocate for its us…

I might have been one of these people, because I was following your site as a bookmark in my RSS reader already. I didn't see any content in your feed so I checked again for a feed endpoint. I found it eventually on your site, but you might consider making it auto-discoverable (see https://www.rssboard.org/rss-autodiscovery ). People only have to enter your domain name into their RSS reader then.

Ah nice, thanks for the heads up! I’ll look into adding this soon.

Re: I've been advocating for RSS support, and you should too

#32

Post by frde_me » Sat, Jan 18, 2025, 9:17 AM UTC

mongol wrote: post #26

palata wrote: post #3

RSS is great. Most blog engines support RSS by default. Podcasts typically use RSS (even if the app goes to great length to hide it). I sometimes wonder why there is so much push for "federation" and so few for... well just simple interoperable solutions that just require a client to connect to whatever server it wants with a well-known protocol.

> Podcasts typically use RSS I would even say that a podcast that does not support RSS is not a podcast, it is something else.

I would be curious why you think the idea of a podcast is coupled to a specific distribution technology

Re: I've been advocating for RSS support, and you should too

#33

Post by oneeyedpigeon » Sat, Jan 18, 2025, 9:18 AM UTC

rambambram wrote: post #24

medhir wrote: post #17

I recently had a popular post on HN and several people reached out asking if I had an RSS feed implemented. Was surprised that anyone would be interested in keeping up with my writing, but was happy to oblige the request as it had been on my to-do list for a while. Happy I did do as it seems many people are hitting the RSS endpoint now. Cool to see that RSS is relevant in 2025, and will definitely advocate for its us…

I might have been one of these people, because I was following your site as a bookmark in my RSS reader already. I didn't see any content in your feed so I checked again for a feed endpoint. I found it eventually on your site, but you might consider making it auto-discoverable (see https://www.rssboard.org/rss-autodiscovery ). People only have to enter your domain name into their RSS reader then.

That might be a useful site, but why on earth is it stuffed full of privacy-abusing, invasive advertising? I'm sure there are better sources for the RSS standard.

Re: I've been advocating for RSS support, and you should too

#34

Post by uzyn » Sat, Jan 18, 2025, 9:18 AM UTC

RSS was a key protocol in syndication a widely free and open web before the domination of big tech/social media. We now have new internet generation that has never known RSS, relying largely on "the algorithm" of the big tech in content syndication.

Thank you for your effort in advocating RSS support. I hope RSS makes a major come back especially with the recent events.

Re: I've been advocating for RSS support, and you should too

#35

Post by rplnt » Sat, Jan 18, 2025, 9:18 AM UTC

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #13

> Please advocate for more RSS support - especially with orgs you want to stay up-to-date with. Also advocate for support with browser manufacturers. It used to be good, then one of them dropped it and the others blindly followed. People clearly want the RSS button, why on earth not provide it?

Most people also decided it's a good idea to use browser from an advertising company. RSS is not good for business and it won't be provided.

Re: I've been advocating for RSS support, and you should too

#36

Post by oneeyedpigeon » Sat, Jan 18, 2025, 9:22 AM UTC

devmor wrote: post #21

grumbel wrote: post #15

If RSS could solve the problem it would have done so a decade ago. The core issue is that browsers have completely failed at offering anything to keep track of websites. Why aren't notifications simply build into the bookmark system? I don't need the website to provide that information via yet another special format, my browser should be able to figure that out itself from plain .html. But bookmarks haven't changed o…

God wouldn't that be simple and novel? Check a box when you bookmark a website and your browser polls it every so often for updates and gives you a little badge like a mobile app icon. No need for JS workers or push servers.

I wouldn't mind if browsers want to offer that feature in addition to RSS. But I also don't want to be forced to use my browser's bookmarking feature - RSS helps to decouple that.

Re: I've been advocating for RSS support, and you should too

#37

Post by rednafi » Sat, Jan 18, 2025, 9:23 AM UTC

RSS is a wonderfully simple solution to get notifications for things I care about.

I came to the software industry a lot later than the inception of Web 2.0 and rediscovered RSS almost accidentally. I advocate for it too.

You’d be surprised how many people still care about this. My static site build broke the RSS[1] once recently, and I immediately got like 5 emails from different people.

[1]: https://rednafi.com/index.xml

Re: I've been advocating for RSS support, and you should too

#38

Post by rglullis » Sat, Jan 18, 2025, 9:25 AM UTC

frde_me wrote: post #32

mongol wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Podcasts typically use RSS I would even say that a podcast that does not support RSS is not a podcast, it is something else.

I would be curious why you think the idea of a podcast is coupled to a specific distribution technology

Because the original idea of what we call "podcasting" is rooted on RSS.

Re: I've been advocating for RSS support, and you should too

#39

Post by almostnormal » Sat, Jan 18, 2025, 9:30 AM UTC

donatj wrote: post #25

defrost wrote: post #8

As a general PSA, youtube channels have an RSS feed to alert you when a favourite creator releases a new video. The form is https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC2wdo5v... where channel_id is the channel hash code which is buried in the source for the "nicely named" channel: https://www.youtube.com/@CuttingEdgeEngineering and can be found without source diving via (say) FeedBro (RSS browser extension)…

That's good to know. The number of times I have subscribed to someone on YouTube only to not see anything from them in years, and then find tens of their videos YouTube never offered is just insane. So many times I can't find anything to watch on YouTube and it just isn't showing me any of my subscriptions, it's ridiculous.

By "subscription" do you only mean subscription? Don't notifications need to be enabled in addition (bell button)?