Feed Reader Central
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What

Feed Reader Central is an RSS feed reader designed to be hosted by a user on their own network. It supports a single-user mode, where all the application's features are available to whoever accesses the site; the application can also require a password in this scenario. It also supports a multi-user mode, where each user must present an e-mail address and password.

It is currently in alpha status; if current plans hold, it should reach initial beta by the end of May 2024. It is usable now, though!

How

Download the source from the release page (note that this release page has an RSS feed you can follow!). Then, check out the installation instructions to learn how to set it up. Once it is running, the rest of the documentation is at the “Docs” link in the header; if you can read HTML source, you can also read the source code for the docs in the project repository.

Why

Google Reader (RIP) was an amazingly useful tool. You could subscribe to any feed you wanted, read those subscriptions from whatever device you were using, and secure the whole thing behind your Google log on. When it was decommissioned, this author acquired a domain (newsosaur.us) for an application that would replace it ("Newsosaurus: Devouring Your News Feeds!"). Sadly, this Philosoraptor-inspired application never came about.

Recently, an acquaintance mentioned that they would love to read the same feeds from multiple devices on their home network. If they read an item on one, it wouldn't show up as new on the other. This was the inspiration for this project. Other requirements were that it be easy to throw on a server that already had PHP installed, that it use SQLite (so that it would not require any other database software to be installed), and that it not require Docker. Feed Reader Central fulfills these requirements; its aim is to require as little setup as possible, while running as securely or as wide-open as the user desires.