Subscribe Openly, and (almost) one-click RSS feed subscriptions

23 September 2025

In an ideal world subscribing to a website/blog’s RSS feed should be as simple as following a page on the socials. Simply click the follow button, and that’s it. In the case of, say, Instagram all future posts of whoever you started following will be visible — algorithms permitting — in the main/home feed.

Of course, subscribing to a RSS feed isn’t difficult. If you know what you’re doing. But to those to don’t know much about RSS, clicking the subscribe button might result in confusion and frustration, and see them abandoning the process all together.

Sometimes clicking the subscribe button might only open the URL of the RSS feed, leaving a budding subscriber wondering what to do next. “Am I meant to bookmark this link?” they might wonder.

But before we ask people to subscribe to a RSS feed, we need them to understand they first need a RSS reader. A RSS reader is an app that allows people to subscribe to, and read, RSS feeds. But to the uninitiated, the process of installing a RSS reader might present another confusing hurdle, only further complicating matters.

Subscribe Openly, however, created by James, is a step in the right direction.

Instead of presenting a would-be RSS subscriber with a screen filled with the raw data of a RSS feed, when they click on the subscribe button, they are presented with a list of RSS readers they can install. Here’s what you’d see if you were subscribing to the RSS feed for my website this way.

Next it needs to be made understood to prospective RSS subscribers that setting up a reader app is not that difficult. They doubtless have numerous apps on their device already, a RSS reader would simply be just another app they need to install. Let’s get to it.

Perhaps though styling feeds so they’re coherent in a web browser is something publishers who syndicate content to RSS should consider. Having a RSS feed that renders like a webpage — that could be bookmarked like any other website — does of course seem like it defeats the purpose of having a RSS feed.

But, if people new to RSS see a coherent looking webpage when clicking the URL of a RSS feed, they might have more incentive to find out more about RSS.