I have been using FreshRSS for a while as reader. I am interested in adding additional functionality to it. E.g. pushing entries from my reader to my clippings in Obsidian, or like Peter does, being able to push the things I favourite to my blog. Basically I am after the ‘social reader‘, where I respond to things and collect things directly from my reader. However I’m nowhere near capable enough to roll my own stuff building on existing IndieWeb tools. For now I’m therefore trying to add a few simple things on top of the reader I already use.

However it turned out, my FreshRSS set-up on a domain I have didn’t even have all functionality working properly. For instance starring an item results in a call to a URL that runs afoul of the filtering rules of my hoster. It gets blocked.
My feed reading is always ever on my main device, meaning I don’t really need to have it on an external webserver. Today I created a local install on my laptop, using the laptop’s (MAMP) webserver. Now everything works, and as a bonus I have direct access to the database behind FreshRSS which means I can do things as Peter describes in his posting linked above, run local queries on the database.

I should also try again to get Aperture running locally once more. That somehow never really worked out yet. The upside of Aperture is that it can parse not just existing RSS feeds but also other things as feeds.


My FreshRSS instance on localhost

4 reactions on “”

  1. Doesn’t installing such things as FreshRSS onto localhost defeat the whole purpose? I mean, why even have a complex piece of PHP software with its database dependencies and the need for a running webserver instance for something that can be done in a standalone RSS client with nice desktop integration and no multi-user overhead?
    I understand running it on a server somewhere and being able to access it from anywhere you please without losing track of what’s read and what isn’t; I do it the same way myself. But for localhost — why even bother?

    • Mostly because having it in php and mysql opens up its back-end to me, in ways that a standalone client doesn’t. E.g. now I can run queries on its database from other scripts. It allows me to access, manipulate and/or view the retrieved RSS information. And at least in php and mysql I have some bare bones skills to be able to do such things.

    • Oh, and thanks for commenting Evgeny. I just went to your site and read your story of your illness. What a harrowing experience!

  2. In reply to https://www.zylstra.org/blog/2021/11/19711/.
    Just thinking out loud … The main difficulty, I think, would be IndieAuth. Might depend on the provider. Plus, I think Monocle (or whatever reader you choose) looks at the rel="microsub" link in your personal site’s head as well, and a local domain probably won’t cut it.

    I should also try again to get Aperture running locally once more. That somehow never really worked out yet.

    Makes me think about adding password authentication to my own feed reader …

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