Tuesday, May 26, 2026
It’s about time we had a website like About Feeds
Of course, there is a subreddit for RSS. Of course, someone there was able to provide me a link to the kind of explainer page I was musing about just a few days ago.
To quote myself:
I almost think it might be worth creating a one-page website that anyone with RSS could link to. “Welcome to RSS. Here’s why you should use it and how.”
Matt Webb saw the same need and went ahead and did it with About Feeds, a web page whose sole purpose is to give beginners the why and how of RSS. I sent him an email giving my thanks.
Matt also has a blog post explaining how RSS could be improved, and I found myself agreeing with pretty much all of it, especially this part:
If you don’t know what RSS is, it’s really hard to start using it. This is because, unlike a social media platform, it doesn’t have a homepage. Nobody owns it. It’s nobody’s job to explain it.
With help from Claude, I was able to create a nicely formatted preview of the Newsonaut RSS feed, along with basic instructions on how to subscribe. And, for the uninitiated, a link to About Feeds
Unfortunately, the technology used for styling feeds is no longer supported by Chrome and will likely be deprecated soon by all the major browsers. They give technical reasons, but it really does feel sometimes like RSS is being marginalized in favour of silos inspired by the profit motive.
Not to be deterred, I created a modal instead. It doesn’t have a preview of the feed, but it has the same simple instructions plus a link to About Feeds. Click the RSS button in the top navigation to see it in action.
I would like to see other creative efforts to make RSS more approachable. This is my humble attempt. Maybe there are better ideas out there.
More posts in the RSS category
