Subscribing to the Ridván Reflect

How to subscribe?

Download a RSS reader app for android, iOS or desktop. Then add reflect.ridvan.org to your feeds.

What is RSS?

From Wikipedia, RSS (RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many different websites in a single news aggregator, which constantly monitor sites for new content, removing the need for the user to manually check them. News aggregators (or RSS readers) can be built into a browser, installed on a desktop computer, or installed on a mobile device. RSS (RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many different websites in a single news aggregator, which constantly monitor sites for new content, removing the need for the user to manually check them. News aggregators (or RSS readers) can be built into a browser, installed on a desktop computer, or installed on a mobile device.

Why RSS?

For website subscriptions where the content is publicly available I think RSS is built in a way that is a little healthier for everyone than having an emailing list. First off, email lists require additional infrastructure to run, basically more computers for the same job, similarly as far as I can tell it would produce more files, a copy of the email on the mailserver, and downloaded to the device. In the case of RSS the website creates a single file ending with .rss or .atom, and this file gets updated with info for new articles each time one is added. A RSS reader, just checks regularly for updates to that file fetching new articles when they are found. in order to send out large mailing list emails these days you are basically required to use an emailing service which has an associated cost per email and they are quite frustrating to set up.

Further, subscription and unsubscription is all handled on the receiving end, so there is no spam, except in the case of ads being built into the RSS reader.

Where can I find a RSS reader app?

For android a good choice is Feeder which can be installed on F-droid or Google Play Store. On iOS a good option is NetNewsWire; the last time I used NetNewsWire it had a few websites pre-subscribed, and it took a moment to unsubscribe from them, afterwards it was smooth sailing. For desktop one option is Raven Reader, it works for linux, windows and macos.