[](https://app.netlify.com/sites/bubo-rss-demo/deploys)
# 🦉 Bubo Reader
Bubo Reader is a hyper-minimalist feed reader (RSS, Atom, JSON) you can deploy on your own server, [Netlify](https://netlify.com) in a few steps or [Glitch](https://glitch.com) in even fewer steps! The goal of the project is to generate a webpage that shows a list of links from a collection of feeds organized by category and website. That's it.
It is named after this [silly robot owl](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYSeCfo9-NI) from Clash of the Titans (1981).
You can read more about this project on my blog:
- [Introducing Bubo RSS: An Absurdly Minimalist RSS Feed Reader](https://george.mand.is/2019/11/introducing-bubo-rss-an-absurdly-minimalist-rss-feed-reader/).
- [Publishing Bubos RSS to Netlify with GitHub Actions](https://george.mand.is/2020/02/publishing-bubos-rss-to-netlify-with-github-actions/)
## Get Started
- Clone or fork the repo and run `npm install` to install the dependencies.
- Update `feeds.json` to include categories and links to feeds you would like to see.
- Run `npm run build:bubo`
That's it! You should now have a static page with links to the latest content from your feeds in the `public` folder, ready to serve.
Anatomy of Bubo Reader
The static pieces:
- `conf/feeds.json` - a JSON file containing your feed URLS separated into categories.
- `config/template.html` - a [Nunjucks](https://mozilla.github.io/nunjucks/) template that lets you change how the feeds are displayed. This can be changed to anything else you like— see below.
- `public/style.css` - a CSS file to stylize your feed output.
- `public/index.html` - The HTML file that gets automatically generated when Bubo is run.
The engine:
- `src/index.ts` - The primary script you run when you want to build a new version of Bubo. It will automatically fetch the latest content from your feeds and build a new static file at `public/index.html`.
- `src/renderer.ts` — The renderer that loads Nunjucks, the template and understands how to process the incoming feed data. Prefer something else? This is the place to change it!
- `src/utilities.ts` — A variety of parsing and normalization utilities for Bubo, hidden away to try and keep things clean.
Throttling
In the main `index.ts` file you will find two values that allow you to batch and throttle your feed requests:
- `MAX_CONNECTIONS` dictates the maximum number of requests a batch can have going at once.
- `DELAY_MS` dictates the amount of delay time between each batch.
The default configuration is **no batching or throttling** because `MAX_CONNECTIONS` is set to `Infinity`. If you wanted to change Bubo to only fetch one feed at a time every second you could set these values to:
```javascript
const MAX_CONNECTIONS = 1;
const DELAY_MS = 1000;
```
If you wanted to limit things to 10 simultaneous requests every 2.5 seconds you could set it like so:
```javascript
const MAX_CONNECTIONS = 10;
const DELAY_MS = 2500;
```
In practice, I've never _really_ run into an issue leaving `MAX_CONNECTIONS` set to `Infinity` but this feels like a sensible safeguard to design.
Getting Started
- [Deploying to Glitch](#glitch)
- [Deploying to Netlify](#netlify)
- [Keeping feeds updated](#updated)
## Deploying to Glitch
The quickest way is to remix the project on Glitch:
[https://glitch.com/edit/#!/bubo-rss](https://glitch.com/edit/#!/bubo-rss)
There is also a `glitch` branch on this repo if you'd prefer to start there.
Just change some feeds in `./config/feeds.json` file and you're set! If you'd like to modify the style or the template you can changed `./public/style.css` file or the `./config/template.html` file respectively.
## Deploying to Netlify
- [Fork the repository](https://github.com/georgemandis/bubo-rss/fork)
- From your forked repository edit `config/feeds.json` to manage your feeds and categories
- [Create a new site](https://app.netlify.com/start) on Netlify from GitHub
The deploy settings should automatically import from the `netlify.toml` file. All you'll need to do is confirm and you're ready to go!
### Keeping Feeds Updated
#### Using Netlify Webhooks
To keep your feeds up to date you'll want to [setup a Build Hook](https://www.netlify.com/docs/webhooks/#incoming-webhooks) for your Netlify site and use another service to ping it every so often to trigger a rebuild. I'd suggest looking into:
- [IFTTT](https://ifttt.com/)
- [Zapier](https://zapier.com/)
- [EasyCron](https://www.easycron.com/)
#### Rolling Your Own
If you already have a server running Linux and some command-line experience it might be simpler to setup a [cron job](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cron).
## Demos
You can view live demos here:
- [https://bubo-rss-demo.netlify.com/](https://bubo-rss-demo.netlify.com/)
- [http://bubo-rss.glitch.me/](http://bubo-rss.glitch.me/)
## Support
If you found this useful please consider [sponsoring me or this project](https://github.com/sponsors/georgemandis).
If you'd rather run this on your own server please consider using one of these affiliate links to setup a micro instance on [Linode](https://www.linode.com/?r=8729957ab02b50a695dcea12a5ca55570979d8b9), [Digital Ocean](https://m.do.co/c/31f58d367777) or [Vultr](https://www.vultr.com/?ref=8403978).
## Showcase
Here are some websites using Bubo Reader:
- [Kevin Fiol](https://kevinfiol.com/reader/) ([repo](https://github.com/kevinfiol/reader))
Please share if you would like to be featured!