September 9, 2026 — Admin — Reading time: ~1 minute

I've ditched my RSS reader for WebSite-Watcher from Aignesberger Software. It's not the first time. I've used the program on-and-off for years. It just seems to me it's better to have something to monitor anything with than be restricted to the usual limited RSS reader offerings.

You see, WebSite-Watcher can keep up with just about everything.

X, Facebook, Instagram, RSS, eBay, regular web pages, it's all there. If you find something you can't put into the program then you may be doing something wrong. For example, record a macro for X in order to keep up with X.

You know, stuff like that.

Bottom line, there's nothing I've thrown at WebSite-Watcher it hasn't been able to work with, and that's quite amazing. For roughly half the price of Feedly, what are you waiting for?

EDIT

Yes, so WebSite-Watcher does not monitor email boxes. I completely forgot about that. I can see how such a thing would be extremely beneficial to users, in order to allow them to track alerts.

Maybe it will be added at a future date?

Category: Blog and Feed Related — Tag: software, rss reader,

September 6, 2026 — Admin — Reading time: ~1 minute

For now, anyway.

xsukax X RSS Generator

A lightweight, self-hosted RSS 2.0 feed generator for public X (formerly Twitter) profiles, built entirely as a single PHP application with SQLite caching.

xsukax X RSS Generator fetches publicly accessible X profile HTML, extracts posts and media, stores them locally, and exposes the results as standards-compatible RSS feeds that can be consumed by RSS readers, automation platforms, monitoring systems, and other feed-aware applications.

No Composer packages, X API credentials, external database server, or cURL dependency are required.

I had to up my PHP version to 8.4 but that's all it took. Just put it in a directory, load, and use. It couldn't be easier.

Category: Blog and Feed Related — Tag: rss, x,

August 17, 2026 — Admin — Reading time: ~1 minute

So I installed Glean, a self‑hosted feed reader, and I think it has the best approach to handling Read Later items I’ve seen yet. There’s an auto‑cleanup option that removes entries after 1 day, 7 days, or 30 days. You can also set items to never expire if that’s what you prefer. Additionally, the remaining time you have to read each entry is displayed right in the Read Later list.

These are powerful options, people.

Category: Blog and Feed Related — Tag: rss reader, read later,

August 6, 2026 — Admin — Reading time: ~1 minute

I don't know what's going on with WordPress. The themes are so ugly these days.

Of course, you may think my theme is ugly. I don't really care.

Then there's the WordPress backend, which at one time was perfect.

Why’d they have to go and mess it up?

I know—I’m echoing what’s probably been said a million times over. And yeah, I know I can install plugins and use the Classic Editor, Classic Widgets, or just bypass it all and install ClassicPress.

It just feels like it’s not blogging software for bloggers anymore. Almost any other platform would fit the bill better.

Whatever. There are options, you know?

Feel free to choose yours.

Category: Blog and Feed Related — Tag: blogging,

July 30, 2026 — Admin — Reading time: 2 minutes

I've finally got FreshRSS looking somewhat pleasant after a long stretch of not being happy with any of its default themes. I don't know what it is about them — a lot of people say they're just ugly. I'm not sure I agree, but there's definitely something going on that has always had me thinking, these could be better.

And it wouldn't take much.

What I've arrived at is a combination of settings, theme enhancement and plug‑in, just enough to make things easier on the eyes. So, go ahead and apply it to your own instances, and let me know what you think.

And by all means, submit your own improvements of themes. If you think you can do better, well, let's see it.

Theme: Dark
Content Width: Narrow
Website: None
Thumbnail: None
Article Icons: Top star selected only

Extension: Three Pane Reader

User CSS:

body img, body video {
    filter: brightness(.8) contrast(1);
}
img.favicon {
    background: none;
    border-radius: 2px;
}
html, body {
    color: #aab;
    font-family: "OpenSans", "Cantarell", "Helvetica", "Arial", "PingFang SC", "Microsoft YaHei", sans-serif;
}
.day .name {
    padding: 0 10px 0 0;
    color: #aab;
    font-size: 1.2em;
    opacity: 100;
    font-style: italic;
    text-align: right;
    text-shadow: 0px -1px 0px #333;
}
.day {
    font-weight: bold;
    line-height: 2em;
}
 .flux .item {
         line-height: 30px;
 }
 .tree-folder-title {
         font-size: 1rem;
         line-height: 2.1rem;
}
.flux_header .item.title a {
color: #e3e3e3;
}
.flux_header .title {
font-size: 0.8rem;
}
.flux.not_read .item.title,
.flux.current .item.title {
font-weight: normal;
}
.flux.not_read:not(.current) {
background: #141414;
}
.flux.not_read {
border-left-color: #ff5300;
}.header > .item {
padding: 0px;
}
h1 {
font-size: 1.25em;
line-height: 1.6em;
}
.header {
height: 5px;
}

Category: Blog and Feed Related — Tag: rss reader,