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RSS readers are a dime a dozen.  My personal favorite is Google Reader.  It’s got great integration and support which makes keeping up on news all the more easy.  But to me, that’s a whole lot of data that I could use more efficiently if it was on my own server!

Today, we’re going to show you how to set up your very own server-side RSS reader.  It’s going to poll the feed list every 30 minutes and display the new items in a nice, ajax style list so you can get through them quickly and efficiently.  It will also have a search function so if you forget a piece of news, you can search for it.

The open source software that we’re going to use is Rnews.  Its a feed aggregator that works really, really well.  There is a Firefox plugin available at Sourceforge so you can post any blog or RSS feed directly to your server.

The concept is relatively simple through the web installation wizard…  Here’s the install instructions:

  1. Untar (unzip) rnews into a folder on your web-server. (E.g., /somedir/rnews)
  2. Browse to install.php in that folder on your web-server. (E.g., http://your.site/somedir/rnews/install.php)
  3. Enter the database and configuration information as prompted and follow the instructions.
  4. After successful installation, two files must be protected:
    1. install.php
      — remove read permissions from this file, since it exposes your
      database and add-user information. You can remove it completely, remove
      world read permissions, or deny access to it using Apache’s .htaccess
      file.
    2. inc/config_user.php — remove write permissions from this file, which holds your configuration data.
  5. Add a user account and you’re ready to add/import feeds!

If you have any thoughts or questions, please let me know!

JD

About the author: Jason Drohn is a social media strategist and web publisher who loves teaching people how to build successful businesses and blogs online. Follow him on Twitter to find out more!

 

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