Andrew Shell

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 14:43:36 GMT

Here is the thread to discuss on GitHub: https://github.com/scripting/rss.chat/issues/13

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 12:13:31 GMT

When we're talking about the rules for interop with rss.chat, is there a specific name we're using? Like, would it be an "rss.chat" WordPress plugin?

I read the interaction here: https://demo.rss.chat/?id=57 and the part where you said "treat comments as blog posts with their own permalinks" made me wonder, because this is not a rule from Textcasting.

For instance, I could in the main feed add `` and link to a comments feed (like https://test.geekity.com/2026/07/16/hoopla-world/feed/), but those comments don't have permalinks, just an anchor tag to the main post. So this wouldn't be compatible?

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 12:03:28 GMT

Right now, I'm figuring out what might be the best way to implement rss.chat standards in WordPress without reinventing everything that comes with WordPress. As I've been going through the elements, I've been thinking, "How would a consumer use this?" and this was one of my questions.

So if I were a feed reader and I pulled in the feed from demo.rss.chat and I had an item with `<source:account service="demo.rss.chat">dave</source:account>` I'm trying to think through what I'd do with that.

The first thing that comes to mind would be linking to the user's profile page, but we don't have an html profile as far as I can tell. We do have the user's RSS feed, and it's in the `<source>` element. The feed, interestingly enough, uses the user's homepage as the channel `<link>` and not a URL where you'd see the user's posts.

So right now I have more questions than answers, but this is where my line of thinking is going.

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 18:20:48 GMT

I've been thinking about the source:account element. Having service as a string like "instagram" makes sense because it's a single instance. For "mastodon" it's okay because the domain of the service is in the username. But I'm wondering if this will become an issue as more small services get spun up.

Should service be a URL to the service homepage? Maybe the service is on a specific port or running from a folder on the server. I know there isn't anything in the spec that says it can't be a URL, but would it be useful, since this is being parsed by a feed reader?

If we want to keep it just a label for the service, should there be an optional url or href element linking to the service homepage?

Sat, 11 Jul 2026 15:29:26 GMT

That's cool. The interesting thing is that what tags or discovery method you use is actually irrelevant to my server. You could try putting it in without the namespace and we could test out different feed readers and see what is supported.

Fri, 10 Jul 2026 23:03:38 GMT

That’s fine. It’s all 100% opt in. :-)

Fri, 10 Jul 2026 18:38:49 GMT

Services that support WebSub have specific requirements. The link elements or the HTML headers are what they require. I think the best solution might be to use inline namespaces like we talked about and just put them at the bottom of the channel contents (after the items).

We still need the URL namespace with Atom in it, but at least it's not at the top of the feed. We might lose some parsers that are just looking for atom:link elements and not doing proper namespace resolution, but I think it's the best middle ground. Maybe ask the braintrust?

<link xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" rel="hub" href="https://rpc.rsscloud.io/websub"/>

<link xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" href="https://feed.example/rss"/>

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 14:03:47 GMT

You say:

> There isn't very much I'd have to do beyond adding two Atom elements to my feed, and an Atom namespace declaration in the top line of the file. So it's not an easy thing to do.

Did you mean to say "it's not an easy thing to do" or was that a typo? I'm hoping the changes were easy. :-)

Sun, 05 Jul 2026 02:10:27 GMT

If you see anything wrong, please submit an issue here: https://github.com/rsscloud/rsscloud-server/issues

Sun, 05 Jul 2026 02:00:16 GMT

Yay! rssCloud Server 4.0 is now live and running on my new server. This is a major upgrade/rewrite of most of the server. I'll write a full blog post tomorrow, but the killer feature is that the server now fully supports WebSub. That means anyone using rssCloud with my server can add an extra line to their RSS feed and automatically support WebSub without any other changes. An rssCloud ping will send notifications to any rssCloud (post or XML-RPC) or WebSub subscribers. https://rpc.rsscloud.io/docs/quick-start

There is also a new debug app for testing all the different flows. It can also be used to test other rssCloud and WebSub servers/hubs (like WordPress sites), although I'll probably need to record a video demo for it. https://debug.rsscloud.io/

Sat, 04 Jul 2026 00:45:18 GMT

I'm moving rpc.rsscloud.io to a new server this weekend. Shouldn't have any downtime. I have the new server proxying to the old server right now while DNS propagates. Tomorrow, I'll get the new server running, copy over the data, and perform a real-time switchover. When the new version is live, I'll announce a new feature I've been working on. 😊

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 17:34:59 GMT

Not too shabby! 😜