RSSReader is now in version 0.3.

This version brings the following changes:

• favourites: allows you to save entries, which won’t be deleted by the cleaning task, and will be accessible via the “Favourites” link in the feeds menu,
• feed edition: edit a feed URL or title,
• category entries: list all entries from a category, refresh a whole category, mark category as read/unread,
• mobile website: mark entries as read/unread, list all entries from a feed or only the unread categories,
• UI: several changes in the general design.

RSS Reader is now in version 0.2.0.

The new version brings the following changes:

• mobile website: I’ve created a mobile version of the website by using jQueryMobile. The mobile version can only be used as read-only (you can’t add new feeds or make any change on the existing ones).
• sortable feeds list: by using the sortable widget from jQuery UI, you can now re-order your feeds, drag and drop them to another category…
• when you decide to read an article as the original webpage in an iframe, or as the feed content, your choice is saved for the next times you open this feed.
• you can now navigate through entries with your keyboard (“N” for the next entry, “P” for the previous one).
• the application cleans old entries: each time the feeds are updated, it deletes old entries from the database: a maximum of 300 entries / 100 read entries is kept for each feed.

The next functionalities I’d like to implement are:

• list the entries from a whole category
• more functionalities on the mobile website (mark as read, unread…)
• edit an existing feed (change the feed link, the name…)

Don’t hesitate to download, test, fork, and comment on this project, which is released under the MIT License.

A few weeks ago, Google announced they would stop their service Google Reader on July 1, 2013 (original post). I have never used this service to read my RSS feeds, prefering to use Netvibes, mainly because it’s been developed by a French company, but also because I like the UI better.

But this announce has made me think. Every now and then, we hear about another service being shut down. Google, which regroups a huge part of the webapps used in the world, has his traditionnal Spring Cleaning. Other companies have closed worldwide-used websites. You can never know how long you’ll be able to use a specific service.

This is the reason I’ve decided to develop my own RSS aggregator and reader, to allow me to take control over my personnal data.

The project is named RSS Reader (not very original). It’s a PHP based project, that you can deploy on a personnal server, or self-hosting service. It’s released under the MIT License. It uses 2 external libraries: Propel ORM (an open source ORM for PHP5, released under the MIT License), and SimplePie (an open source feed parser, released under the BSD License).

The installation process is described on the documentation page.