Tag: readwriteweb

I read lots of RSS feeds, for which I use a FreshRSS instance that is hosted on a VPS I rent from Hetzner.
To read I can use the FreshRSS’s own web interface, but on my laptop I use a personal interface.
That personal interface allows me to not just read, but respond while reading.
This is the original vision for the World Wide Web, in which you don’t just read, but write too, and where reading and writing are part of singular experience.

What my personal interface does / allows:

  • Show me my folders of feeds (the folders are in FreshRSS, and named / sorted according to my ‘reading by social distance‘)
  • Click open a folder to load unread items in that folder (using the FreshRSS API)
  • Click open an unread item if the title catches my eye.
  • Clicking on a ‘Respond’ button reveals a (larger) response form to fill out
  • Submit the response form, calling a processing script on my local machine in the background, and continue reading
  • Mark a folder or all feeds as read (using the FreshRSS API)

The response form allows me to do several things, both individually or simultaneously

  • Post a bookmark, favourite or reply to my blog, my company’s website and other WordPress sites I control (using IndieWeb micropub)
  • Create a note in my Obsidian vault (by writing to the filesystem directly)
  • Create a page annotation in Hypothes.is (through the Hypothes.is API)
  • Post to one or both my Mastodon accounts (through the respective Mastodon instance API)

I am in the process of slowly adding additional features from my list of ideal feed reader capabilities. Currently I am working on being able to tag feeds (readers usually only allow adding tags to items), so I can not just have folders but also subsets based on tags (e.g. coders in Berlin).

Screenshots (status February 2026):


The general overview of my reader, listing the folders in my FreshRSS instance. Clicking one reveals unread items.


Every unread item has a Respond button beneath it.


The response form allows various texts, and has a selector for bookmark, favourite or reply type of responses.


A response can have one or more destination: blogs, local notes, hypothes.is annotations, or Mastodon accounts.

Dave Winer asks for two-way RSS. He says publishing platforms usually do provide feeds for readers, but writers usually have to use the platform itself. This while Dave, and I presume many other writers, as well as me, do their writing preferrably outside the place where we publish. Dave suggests for platforms to be able to import feeds, not just generate them. That way there is no need to use the platform’s back-end.

I am not sure if RSS is the most flexible solution, although it is entirely possible. In fact, I publish on micro.blog/ton by sending an RSS feed from this site to Microblog. Currently it’s the main feed of this site, but it used to be a different one, and it could be a fully separate one. If your own writing tools are already good at generating RSS feeds from what your write there, then sure using that is fine. Like on Microblog, all it takes is to log into the publishing platform and add the feed URL in your settings. This works well in a one-to-one setting, connecting a writing tool to a publishing platform.

Another option is using Micropub. It’s a bit more complicated to initiate, as it requires a workflow authenticating oneself to the platform, and in 2 steps obtain a token to be authorised to send content to the publishing platform’s micropub endpoint. But once you’ve done that, you’re basically talking to an API. This allows not only creating, but also updating or deleting earlier posts. It also supports uploading media to the publishing platform itself and manipulate it there, thus allowing media to be hosted with the publisher as well.

This is what I do mostly these days. I write in my own writing tool (Obsidian currently), and run a script that looks up the items ready to publish and pushes them one by one to one or more of 4 sites. I use the same solution to also directly post from my feed reader, and using a simple form for the most basic of posts. I imagine in Dave’s use case that would entail multiple feeds to have the publishing platform subscribe to, or merging multiple streams first into a single RSS feed.

The web wasn’t intended as a reading only space, but as a read and write space. Whatever makes writing easier, whether it’s original texts, responses and dialogue, multi author edits, or annotations, is useful.