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Show HN: Refeed.to: Replay blogs and RSS feeds (refeed.to)

2 points by jayemar ↗ HN
ReFeed.to, a service to replay blog feeds from the beginning. What does that mean? Well, let me tell you why I built it.

I've often been recommended blogs that are many years old and/or have become dormant. The sites are still active, so I could binge read all of the posts at once, but I'd much prefer the articles to be incrementally added to the feed that I read each day from my feed reader. But if I just added the RSS feed directly from the blog, I'd miss all of the original content up to that point in time.

So I build refeed to as a way to ingest the blogs via my daily newsfeed. Enter the URL for a site, and an atom feed is created that adds posts starting from the site's first post. You can select whether a new post is added daily or weekly, and a new post will be added with that cadence.

I initially didn't think that it'd be very useful for more time-sensitive sites, but I ended up using trustedreviews.com as a test site and was suprised how fun it was to get a daily review of technology from 2008!

This is very much a "scratching my own itch" service, but I thought there might be some RSS aficionados here that might like such a service. Thanks, and I'd love to hear what you think!

10 comments

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webspinner
Oh yeah, I'm definitely an archivist. I'm between RSs readers right now, trying to find a screen reader accessible web-based one. I'll have to give this a try when I do. The feed says it isn't valid though, can you fix that?
jayemar
Sorry, what do you mean "the feed says it isn't valid"? Which feed are you trying to use that isn't working?
webspinner
OK, it was this one. https://refeed.to/feeds/CIipRO1b.xml When I pull it up in an RSS extension it doesn't come up either, just the XML comes up.
jayemar
The XML is the feed, so many feed readers will accept the XML link. I tried it in Feedly, elfeed, and NewsBlur and they all accept the XML link, but Inoreader and Feedbro don't see the feed. I'd like to get the working with as many feed readers as possible so I'll look into what I need to change to get it working with those two. Which reader are you currently using?
webspinner
Sure, I understand the XML is the feed. I just have a feed preview extension installed so I can look at RSS feeds in the browser. They help with accessibility at times, as I do use a screen reader. I set up The Old Reader so I could give myself back some feeds! I was in between readers, as I was testing a bunch. It was The Old Reader that said it was invalid.
jayemar
Okay, I made some changes that should make the format a little more universal. And thank you very much for your patience with this while I work out some kinks. The initial link you had may still work, or you can try this new one:

https://refeed.to/feeds/4rVrwlAG.xml

webspinner
If you have any suggestions for a better and accessible feed reader, I'd certainly appreciate them! I've been looking for exactly 11 years now!
jayemar
Unfortunately, I doubt I have anything useful to suggest. I've been a very happy use of Feedly for years, but I don't know how well they do with accessibility or how screen reader-friendly it might be. The best I can offer is a list of web-based readers that I used to test that my links could be read, but if you've been on the hunt for that long then I'd guess you've already looked into all of these, and I don't know how accessible any of them are, either. But just in case it's at all helpful:

  - https://feedly.com
  - https://www.inoreader.com
  - https://www.newsblur.com
  - Feedbro, a Firefox extension
  - https://theoldreader.com (mentioned by you)
  - elfeed (an Emacs package, so not web-based)
webspinner
I haven't looked into Feedly lately. When I tested Feedbro, I wasn't able to access it at all, unfortunately! I suppose I could try again.