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FreshRSS

Introduction

A while back I was using a RSS reader and I wanted to find a self hosted solution to get news from websites I am interested in.
I find it easier to use a RSS reader rather than going to every website or using something Google news. Oh. There are no cookie walls.
Besides that you also can Youtube channels to the feed by using their channels URL, (collections of) Subreddits among other things.

Deploying

  1. Navigate to your Portainer instance
  2. Select your environment and navigate to Stacks
  3. Click on Add stack
  4. Give the stack a name select the Web editor as build method
  5. Paste the Docker Compose configuration in the Web editor
    FreshRSS Config
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    services:
  freshrss:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/freshrss:latest
    container_name: freshrss
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=Europe/Amsterdam
    volumes:
      - ./config:/config
    ports:
      - 8686:80
    restart: unless-stopped
  6. Then click on Deploy stack

Post deploying

First go to your FreshRSS instance and walk through the installation process.
Then login where you see the feeds about FreshRSS.
You can your own websites with an OPML file or add your RSS subscription manually.

Importing your OPML, JSON or ZIP file

  1. Click on Subscription management
  2. Navigate to Import / export
  3. Then browse for your file and click on Import

Adding your feeds manually

Before it is a good idea to add a category.

  1. Click on Subscription management
  2. Navigate to Add a feed or category
  3. First add a category by inserting a category name
  4. And click on Add
  5. Then you are ready to add a feed by inserting a Feed URL
  6. Click on Add to add the URL to your feed
  7. Review the page of the added feed and click on submit
  8. Click outside the box to close it

Third party apps

This part is completely optional if you have your FreshRSS behind a reverse proxy you can access that URL from everywhere.
Before you choose any (mobile) app you need to enable Allow API access within FreshRSS.

Enabling API access

  1. In FreshRss click on the setting icon in the right corner
  2. Go to Administratation -> Authentication
  3. There you tick the box Allow API access and click on Submit
  4. Then go to Profile to create the API login
  5. Create a strong password and insert under External access via API -> API password and click on Submit
  6. Then click on the link after Check API status via:
  7. On that page you can check your API status for Google Reader and Fever
    You may see the following message: WARN: Probable invalid base URL in ./data/config.php. This is not mean the API does not work.
  8. To check if the APIs are OK you can do the following
    • Google Reader API: https://freshrss.yourdomain.com/api/greader.php When the page say OK all is well.
    • Fever API: https://freshrss.yourdomain.com/api/fever.php If you see a JSON page with api_version shows a version and auth show 0 then everyhting is alright.

After the setting up the API access your use your username, API password and API URL to feed your subscription to your preffered apps.

On mobile I used Feedme, but I ended up liking Readrops more.
Both apps have the option to select FreshRSS as a service and setting it up is really easy.

On my Linux desktop I use the Newsflash app to read my subscriptions from FreshRSS.

Resources