Andrew Shell
@andrewshell.org
A hoopy frood that really knows where his towel is. #fedwiki
Hey this is pretty exciting! How can we work with @scripting.com to bring RSS and @standard.site closer together?
Dave Winer@scripting.com · 3d agoI wrote this yesterday about how I want to hook RSS up to standard.site. I'd love to see my posts on their feed reader, and vice versa. scripting.com/2026/08/02.h...
I’ve been using FreshRSS for a while as a backend for NetNewsWire and decided to finally create an extension to add rssCloud support. This not only does what you’d expect: subscribe to feeds that support rssCloud elements. https://andrewshell.org/2026/08/enhancing-freshrss-with-rsscloud-support/
rssCloud Server 4.0 Now Supports WebSub Notifications The rssCloud Server now features WebSub support, an alternative protocol for notifying subscribers of real-time updates. Following Dave Jones' 2020... https://andrewshell.org/2026/07/rsscloud-server-4-0-now-supports-websub-notifications/
rssCloud Server 4.0 Now Supports WebSub Notifications
The rssCloud Server now features WebSub support, an alternative protocol for notifying subscribers of real-time updates. Following Dave Jones' 2020 suggestion, the integration allows compatibility between rssCloud and WebSub, enabling apps to use either protocol for publishing and subscribing to RSS feeds seamlessly.
andrewshell.org
andrewshell.org/2026/07/anno...
Announcing the rssCloud Server 4.0 Release
I have released the 4.0 rewrite of the rssCloud Server, following a prior version 3.0 aimed at updating the old codebase. The new version features a pnpm monorepo, TypeScript packages supporting both ESM and CJS modules, and is designed to enhance support for RSS in Node applications while preventing server siloing.
andrewshell.org
A First With Claude Code I've been downloading public-domain books for a project, and many of them are kindof bad OCR scans. A lot of the work I was doing was in Claude Code. I created a skill where it would look online for the text I'm seeking and download it into a sources folder with a certain…
A First With Claude Code
I've been downloading public-domain books for a project, and many of them are kindof bad OCR scans. A lot of the work I was doing was in Claude Code. I created a skill where it would look online for the text I'm seeking and download it into a sources folder with a certain naming convention. At one point, I asked, "What options do I have to clean up files downloaded from Project Gutenberg OCR scans into nicely formatted markdown files? Ideally, tools I can download that won't burn through tokens," and I was surprised by its suggestion.
andrewshell.org
Radical Speed Month: Opa.blog This month I'm working with Marjorie R. Asturias to build something new with WordPress. I'll be sharing my work as I go on my blog, Substack, and here on LinkedIn. I had worked out an idea initially to build a… https://derekhanson.blog/radical-speed-month-opa-blog/
Untitled Another exciting project from Radical Speed Month! Jeremy Herve and Matthias Pfefferle are working on the WordPress Reader feed aggregator. The first thing mentioned is something I'm very excited about. They are adding the Google Reader API so you can use third-party reader apps to view…
Untitled
Another exciting project from Radical Speed Month! Jeremy Herve and Matthias Pfefferle are working on the WordPress Reader feed aggregator. The first thing mentioned is something I'm very excited about. They are adding the Google Reader API so you can use third-party reader apps to view your subscriptions. I use NetNewsWire with FreshRSS as the backend sync system. This means I'll be able to add WordPress Reader to NetNewsReader as an additional source. I'm not going to recap everything in the post, but I'd recommend you check it out. 🙂 #WordPress
andrewshell.org
Blurt Marketing Gone Wrong I think the marketing for this new theme missed its mark. Dave thinks this is a new short-form blogging app when it's really just a new theme. I was able to post to it from WordLand with no issues. It's still a regular WordPress.com website. This is just a new theme…
Blurt Marketing Gone Wrong
I think the marketing for this new theme missed its mark. Dave thinks this is a new short-form blogging app when it's really just a new theme. I was able to post to it from WordLand with no issues. It's still a regular WordPress.com website. This is just a new theme built in a week by two devs as part of Radical Speed Month.
andrewshell.org
All bloggers eventually want to build their own blog software. All feed reader developers want their own sync platform. All blog hosts want a feed reader. In 2026, I predict approximately thousands of niche open web apps, each with a small number of users who wouldn’t want to use anything else.
I had a great time working with @itsdavemartin.bsky.social on a building a new way to use WordPress.com to easily start a private social network just for friends & family - or for those that really appreciate the short form blogging experience - wordpress.com/blog/2026/04... #wordpress
A New Theme for Short-Form Blogging on WordPress.com
At WordPress.com, we believe short thoughts deserve a real home. Today we’re introducing a new theme built for quick posts, replies, and reblogs: the kind of writing that lives somewhere betw…
wordpress.com
My Take on WordPress Social (Blurt) There is a new short-form blogging theme for WordPress.com called Blurt. I have a few opinions about this, so I figured I'd chime in. This is one of the hopefully many things we'll see come out of Radical Speed Month at Automattic, which only started a week ago.…
My Take on WordPress Social (Blurt)
There is a new short-form blogging theme for WordPress.com called Blurt. I have a few opinions about this, so I figured I'd chime in. This is one of the hopefully many things we'll see come out of Radical Speed Month at Automattic, which only started a week ago. For those of you not following Automattic too closely, it's essentially a month-long hackathon where pairs of Automatticians get to ship something with no oversight.
andrewshell.org
Where’s the AI Max Headroom? With all the advances in AI, I'd have thought someone would have created an interactive AI Max Headroom by now...
Where’s the AI Max Headroom?
With all the advances in AI, I'd have thought someone would have created an interactive AI Max Headroom by now...
andrewshell.org
I've been making many gradual changes to the RSS Cloud server over the last few months. Things have stabilized enough that I feel comfortable sharing now.
Updates to RSS Cloud Server
I've been making many gradual changes to the RSS Cloud server over the last few months. Things have stabilized enough that I feel comfortable sharing now. New Logger The first big change was a revamp of the log page for debugging. I found that the way it was before made it almost impossible to debug your subscribers/publishers, so I wanted to change it to be more like Loggly, which was a tool I used at my last job.
andrewshell.org
Working on the RSS Cloud WordPress Plugin I've been continuing to work on the modern testing infrastructure so I can make sure the RSS Cloud plugin for WordPress is up to date. The maintainer rightfully wants to keep it as simple as possible, so I want to respect his wishes. The default settings…
Working on the RSS Cloud WordPress Plugin
I've been continuing to work on the modern testing infrastructure so I can make sure the RSS Cloud plugin for WordPress is up to date. The maintainer rightfully wants to keep it as simple as possible, so I want to respect his wishes. The default settings for PHPCS (linting) for WordPress Coding Standards would change almost every line in the plugin.
andrewshell.org
Defending the Open Web Is Not Enough This article really gave me food for thought about what's required to support the open web. 77% of news publishers now focus on subscriptions. Independent journalists are fleeing to Substack. Podcasters signed 9-figure Spotify exclusives. Not because they…
Defending the Open Web Is Not Enough
This article really gave me food for thought about what's required to support the open web. 77% of news publishers now focus on subscriptions. Independent journalists are fleeing to Substack. Podcasters signed 9-figure Spotify exclusives. Not because they opposed openness but because openness stopped paying the bills. The thing we actually cared about, independent publishers reaching audiences on their own terms, isn’t coming back by being defended harder. It comes back, if it comes back at all, by being rebuilt on better foundations.
andrewshell.org
Learning Modern WordPress Plugin Development I've been out of the WordPress plugin game for a while now. I closed my Nofollow Links plugin back in 2021 and haven't kept up since then. However, now I'm running WordPress again and looking to get back up to speed. Since I built and maintain the…
Learning Modern WordPress Plugin Development
I've been out of the WordPress plugin game for a while now. I closed my Nofollow Links plugin back in 2021 and haven't kept up since then. However, now I'm running WordPress again and looking to get back up to speed. Since I built and maintain the RssCloud Server and wanted to make sure my blog supports RssCloud, I installed the…
andrewshell.org
It gives me hope in these dark times to know that Taco is still putting out new music.
A new study from MIT and Columbia found something pretty shocking. Readers actually prefer content written by AI, as long as they don't know it's AI. In the study, people read articles and rated them on how clear, helpful, and engaging they were (though notably not "entertaining"). AI-generated-
As a liberal who frequently disagreed with Charlie Kirk I always enjoyed his videos. I appreciated his skill and patience in debating people who did not show up with the same good faith he did. This is a major loss for all of America.
"It's so much harder finding good marketing channels for SaaS companies today than it was." In 2024, the main theme of my newsletter will be running real-world marketing experiments and sharing the results with subscribers. Get on the list here: justinjackson.ca/newsletter
justinjackson.ca
Say hi & make sure to follow @davew.bsky.social who gave us podcasting, RSS early on and a host of other things in his career. Also read scripting.com for great insights into everything & great recipe for potato lakes. I have learned so much from over the years since I received davenet on apple link
Okay it does look jarringly like Twitter. Here's a picture from my blog. I like that there was a hat/tip to RSS on their home page. Does this mean that they will support RSS in both directions? If so, let's work on getting that just right.
