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

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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.

Bloggers might have been syndicating content with ICE not RSS

11 September 2025

Ryan Farley, writing at Buttondown:

Not many people talk about how or why RSS won the content syndication war because few people are aware that a war ever took place. Everyone was so fixated on the drama over RSS’s competing standards (Atom vs RSS 2.0) that they barely registered the rise and fall of the Information and Content Exchange (ICE) specification, which had been created, funded, and eventually abandoned by Microsoft, Adobe, CNET, and other household names.

Here’s a slice of web history I was unaware of until now: an alternative blog content syndication specification that was — for a short time — in competition with RSS.

That Microsoft, as one of the backers of Information and Content Exchange (ICE) syndication, quietly began using RSS, says a lot. A lot about RSS, and Microsoft.

Threads to allow extra long posts, does this really mean blogging is back?

9 September 2025

Jay Peters, writing for The Verge:

Meta is adding a new feature to let you add a bunch of extra text to Threads posts — no screenshots of text blocks required. Starting today, Meta is rolling out a tool that lets you attach up to 10,000 characters of text to Threads posts, giving you a way to build upon the 500-character text limit already available when making a post.

The feature will certainly appeal to people looking for a platform that allows them to publish blog-like posts with ease.

What really caught my eye though was the “blogging is back” byline appended to the Verge article. I’m not sure who would have written that, Peters, or an editor. Is blogging really back? Did blogging ever really go away? Is the Verge trying to suggest this new Threads feature will bring about a blogging resurgence? Surely the Verge, and their writers, are aware of Indie/Small/Open web?

Blogging has been back for sometime, if it even went away.

RSS is so awesome it made the front page of Hacker News

1 September 2025

Some Hacker News (HN) members were astonished that a relatively concise blog post, written by Evan Verma, spruiking the merits of RSS, reached the front page of the news aggregator recently.

There’s probably not too many people on HN who don’t use RSS, but more generally, uptake is not particularly high. On that basis, any publicity is helpful. Let’s keep encouraging the adoption of RSS.

What is RSS? Read all about it here.

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blogs, RSS, technology, trends

Blog publishing platform TypePad closing 30 September 2025

29 August 2025

TypePad is/was up there with the likes of WordPress.com and Blogger.com. The publishing platform stopped accepting new members about five years ago, so some warning, I guess, of what’s just happened was there. Still the four to five weeks notice they’ve given doesn’t seem like much, especially for long term, or prolific writers, who will have large databases they need to download.

And then find somewhere new to migrate to. If you’re a displaced TypePad writer though, do consider obtaining your own domain name, and a self-hosted solution to publish future work to.

TypePad was originally created by California based software development company Six Apart. In 2011 the company was sold to Infocom, a Tokyo, Japan, based IT operation.

Six Apart also created the once popular LiveJournal (since sold to SUP Media, a Russian company), and Movable Type, a weblog publishing system developed in 2001, and still going strong.

Another remnant of the early web going, along with dial-up internet access, which AOL, one of the last major providers of the service, said they would be shutting down, also at the end of September.

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blogs, self publishing

Reasons to leave Substack, how to leave Substack

5 August 2025

The question is — before giving any thought to some of the objectionable content they host — what are you doing there in the first place? Why would you allow your brand to be assimilated by another?

American economist Paul Krugman’s decision to set up shop on Substack, after he stopped writing for The New York Times, plain baffles me. With a profile as impressive as his, Krugman could just as easily started publishing from his own website, with a ready made audience.

He didn’t need to go to a third party publishing platform. Certainly Substack publishes writer’s posts as email newsletters, but if someone wants to syndicate their work by newsletter, there are other options. Writers can earn money through Substack, some do very well apparently, but high profile writers have a number of ways of generating revenue through their own, self-hosted, websites.

You Should Probably Leave Substack goes through some of the options available to writers who want to leave Substack (and preferably publish from their own website).

Had a website since the 90’s? You’re an internet person

4 August 2025

Kris Howard writing at Web Goddess:

I’m not sure if this is a generational thing, or just different cultures and social norms. Rodd’s theory is that we are Internet People — those who grew up with the dawn of the modern Internet and have strong feelings about keeping information free and decentralised — and that not everyone working in tech is an Internet Person.

The excerpt is from a post Kris wrote marking her tenth anniversary using WordPress, although she’s been online far longer. But I like the positive context in which the term internet person is used.

Because usage is not always complimentary. But people who have had a website since the turn of the century, or prior, can adopt this term, own it.

An internet person’s values are of course similar to indie web principles. While in some senses I am considered part of the indie web, I don’t always feel that way, given I somewhat predate the movement. Internet person it is then.

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blogs, history, IndieWeb, trends

Personal websites are the place for comments, not social media channels

22 July 2025

Ava, writing at Ava’s blog:

It’s a bit of a meh look that one of the biggest Indieweb personalities (that I think does an amazing job!) with her own Bearblog and website is not sharing this discussion on them, but on social media instead, limiting its reach to those users. At least POSSE was an option. And that leads me back to what I said above — what’s the point of going here if people are also resorting to Twitter but with different look, but without the numbers and archive built up over years?

Ava’s post is in response to a question posed by xandra, asking what the Indie Web needs the most now. But the matter of hosting discussions with blog posts is something I’ve been grappling with.

It doesn’t seem right that anyone reading one of my website posts has to go elsewhere to make a comment, when that should be happening right here. Because I was thinking, why do I need multiple social media pages, so that all bases are covered should someone not be on this social, but on that social? And what if a person wishing to comment on a post doesn’t have any Fediverse presence?

After years of having post comments switched off, I recently re-enabled them. The reply-guys and spammers arrived within minutes of course, but my CMS has tools to help filter a lot of this junk out. Plus, I still approve all comments before they go public. Bringing comments back achieved two aims, in theory. For one, all discussion is centralised (mostly) on my website, and not spread across multiple social media platforms.

Two: people who don’t have social media presences can still take part in any discussion, because all they have to do is type out a comment. No membership of anything, expect an email address, is needed. Yes, that sets the bar low for junk, but in filters I trust.

One of the things I enjoy about leaving a comment on other people’s posts — though I’m hardly a prolific commenter, because overworked introvert — is including my website on the reply form, where the option is available.

To my mind, it’s always been about the website, not some “outpost” page on a social media platform. I’m not saying everyone should shun social media, because it’s a great place for chit-chat, and having conversations that are only hosted on someone’s socials page.

Of course, to somewhat contradict my argument, I recently federated disassociated, meaning posts go out to the likes of Mastodon, and people can reply there if they want. But then again, those comments ping back to the post in question, so any discussion would be seen in full here.

POSSE is great, but when it comes to discussion on blog posts, let’s also remember KISS: Keep It Simple Sayang. Yes, sayang, because I don’t like calling smart people stupid.

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blogs, IndieWeb, Small Web, trends

The near demise, and comeback, of Medium, an online publishing platform

17 July 2025

Tony Stubblebine, CEO of online publishing platform Medium, writing at Medium:

I’m gonna write the wonky post of Medium’s turnaround. I’m not sure if a company is allowed to be this blunt about how bad things were. But it’s very much of the Medium ethos that if something interesting happened to you, then you should write it up and share it. So hopefully this will give some inside info about what happens to a startup in distress, and one way to approach a financial, brand, product, and community turnaround.

Like many online writers I signed up for Medium — which is similar to Substack — a couple of years after its 2012 founding. A few people I knew were publishing there, and I was curious to see what it was about. I’m yet to post anything though.

But Stubblebine’s account of Medium’s ups and downs is, at times, astonishing. Particularly the amounts of money, both as investments, and in debt, that are involved. Of course, there will be plenty of people who’ll call those sums a pittance, but speaking as a boot-strapping independent online publisher, they are incredible.

The lure of publishing your work on a platform such as Medium, lies in the opportunity to be paid for it. And no doubt, some writers posting on Medium do well.

For my part, the prospect of publishing there (or on similar platforms) is tempting, but doing so just isn’t in my DNA. I’ve never liked the idea of assimilating my brand into someone else’s, something I’ve said before. Anything you do on a third-party publishing platform is doable on your own website/blog, if you are prepared to persevere.

That’s not to say I wouldn’t ever post there, and for someone like me, a platform such as Medium might be comparable to a social media channel.

IndieWeb is Punk, you have the blog, now here is the t-shirt

25 June 2025

Jamie Thingelstad recently suggested IndieWeb is to the web of today, what punk rock was to music of the 1970’s. IndieWeb is Punk, he said.

In a comment on Thingelstad’s post, Robert Birming said the slogan would look good on a t-shirt.

Not long after, Jim Mitchell unveiled a line — one black, one white — of t-shirts emblazoned with the words IndieWeb is Punk, which are available for purchase.

Never mind the bollocks, here’s the bloggers…

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blogs, design, IndieWeb, SmallWeb

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