reader
A reader in the context of the indieweb is either a feature integrated into an indieweb site or a separate site or piece of software that provides a way to read content from indieweb sites and sometimes respond (like, comment, repost, etc).
Two-way readers that have features to respond (like, comment, repost, etc.) are typically known as:
If you’re looking for pre-indieweb one-way read-only sidefile readers (e.g. like the defunct Google Reader) see:
Social Readers
The latest exciting development in readers is easy to set-up interactive Social Readers built on top of the emerging Microsub standard that builds on the openness of yesterday’s feed readers, modernized with interactivity everyone now expects from social media.
- 📃 Read
Aaron Parecki's An IndieWeb reader: My new home on the internet for an introduction - 🆕 Sign-into Aperture (https://aperture.p3k.io/) and try one of these social readers!
IndiePass
Eddie Hinkle and 
Kristof De Jaeger are working on IndiePass, which is a set of native iOS, Android and desktop reader apps.
Monocle
Monocle is a web-based reader (desktop and mobile, see above) that is a generic Microsub client and can be used with any Microsub server, written by Aaron Parecki.
See the Social Readers page for more examples and deatils!
Why
Why integrated personal reader
Reasons to have a personal reader (a reader integrated into your site for you to use)
- If you had reading built into your own site, would you ever need to visit Twitter or touch a Twitter client again? (since you can presumably already post from your site and POSSE to Twitter, including replies)
- Your own site can provide you with a superset of Twitter-like functionality, assuming you're already
- posting notes,
- POSSEing them to Twitter,
- backfeeding replies/favorites/retweets onto your original notes (e.g. using Bridgy).
- Add to that:
- following others
- reading others' notes
- inline favoriting, retweeting, and replying to others' notes
- Filter and prioritize posts from others using algorithms of your own choosing.
That's just the beginnings of what an indieweb reader can enable.
IndieWeb Examples
In datetime order of implementation (earliest first).
Note: 2018-11-19 some of these may be out of date, need to review them to see which are still active and move others to a former examples subsection.
Ashton McAllan
Ashton McAllan developed a Wordpress plugin, WhisperFollow, which aggregates RSS/Atom and Microformats2 data from the pages linked to in your blogroll and displays those updates in a private page in your wordpress blog. It currently defaults to RSS/Atom only attempting to read MF2 if the separate feed isn't found. It also allows updates to be reblogged, replied to, favourited, and commented on etc.
Barnaby Walters
Barnaby Walters developed Intertubes, an experimental indieweb-oriented flow-based programming + feed reader UI parsing microformats and shimmed twitter.com microformats.
- simple feed demo and associated source
- more complex example and source
- sandbox for experimenting — try making your own feeds!
Barnaby is using and developing Shrewdness, a multi-column feed reader as of at least 2014-08-04
Amber Case
Amber Case also uses selfoss with the Microformats2 plugin on caseorganic.com since 2014-02-13.
See: http://caseorganic.com/articles/2014/02/13/1/indiereader-subscribe-to-people-from-your-own-site
Andy Sylvester
Andy Sylvester also uses selfoss with the Microformats2 plugin on http://andysylvester.com/selfoss/ since 2014-03-01.
See http://andysylvester.com/2014/03/01/howto-setting-up-the-selfoss-feed-reader-with-microformats-support/ for instructions on how to set up the Selfoss reader.
IndieReader
At IndieWebCamp 2014, Ben, Aaron, and Emma built an IndieReader demo/prototype in PHP reusing components from their personal site implementations.
Features:
- allows authoring comments and liking posts via micropub
- reads microformatted subscription list from a URL
- supports mf2 h-feeds as well as RSS/Atom feeds
Emma Kuo
Emma Kuo used an experimental reader in neonblog since 2014-7-26.
- reply/like/repost buttons link to posting UI
- only supports mf2
- requires manual polling
thready, a thread reader created for Indieweb Summit 2016 hack day.
- proof of concept of thread-crawling algorithm
Kyle Mahan
Kara Mahan is developing Woodwind, a simple reader in Python/Flask, with an instance running at [1] since 2015-02-01. It includes:
- Sign up/login via indieauth, open to anyone.
- Supports h-feed via mf2util and XML feeds via Python's excellent feedparser.
- Support different strategies for posting responses -- micropub, indie-config, and custom URL endpoints.
Aaron Parecki
Aaron Parecki is developing Monocle, a simple reader in PHP built as part of p3k, and is running it at https://monocle.p3k.io since 2015-03-16. It includes:
- Sign up/login via IndieAuth, open to anyone
- Supports subscribing to h-feed URLs
- Supports posting "likes" and "bookmarks" back to your site
- Subscribes to PuSH hubs of URLs that are added
Malcolm Blaney
Malcolm Blaney has added microformats support to the SimplePie feed parsing library, which is available at https://github.com/simplepie/simplepie. This library is used in conjunction with dobrado to provide an easy to use reader. It is deployed at https://unicyclic.com and includes:
- Sign up/login open to anyone via traditional username/password with email confirmation.
- Login is also publicly available via IndieAuth, and posts created via Micropub in this case.
- When IndieAuth is used but Micropub is not available, indie-config is used for actions.
- Supports displaying previous actions made by using the indie-config status protocol.
- Supports multi-feed discovery via link tags or rel=feed.
- Supports subscribing to any page containing h-feeds or h-entry's (as well as xml feeds).
- Supports in-line posting, likes, shares and replies.
- Update notifications from both PubSubHubbub and rssCloud.
- Imports a list of feeds (OPML) from many other readers including: Google Reader, Feedly, Newsblur, inoreader.
Chris Aldrich
Chris Aldrich installed the WordPress plugin for PressForward to create an integrated feed reader into his WordPress site. While IndieWeb in flavor it could still stand to add a few pieces of additonal functionality. In conjunction with the Post Kinds plugin, the two together allow for a more coherent self-contained workflow. Features include:
- The ability to privately bookmark posts (PressForward calls this functionality "nominate")
- Easily reposting stories (including the full contents, photos, etc) or posting them as read, bookmark, like, favorite, etc. posts (one could also mark them as read privately).
- Canonical URL use allows for the option of redirecting posts to the original story to properly attribute credit to the originating site
- A bookmarklet for easily adding individual stories and or saving sources for subscribing to at a later date.
- An integrated clean reading interface courtesy of Mercury (fka Readability).
- The ability to save a full archival copy of the posts within the reader.
Additional details can be found here.
Yarns Indie Reader
Yarns is a reader that is built for use with WordPress as a plugin. It supports microformats and micropub. Built by Jack Jamieson and announced on his site on 2018-02-08. It's based in part on Ashton McAllan's WhisperFollow with inspiration by Woodwind. Development and distribution of the project is done on Github.
Kicks Condor
fraidycat created in late 2019 is a browser extension for Firefox or Chrome that lets you follow people, see a summary of who has recently posted instead of a news feed, and expand the summaries to see recent titles/excerpts. It was created by Kicks Condor. Use it to follow people (hundreds) on whatever platform they choose — Twitter, a blog, YouTube, even on a public TiddlyWiki.
Previous Examples
Aaron Parecki selfoss
Aaron Parecki developed a Microformats2 plugin for selfoss, and ran it on a subdomain of aaronparecki.com around 2014-02-13. The reader polls the subscriptions at a predefined interval looking for new h-entry posts on each person's home page.
Here's a screenshot of a following list:
Here's a screenshot of a reading window:
For more on this see: https://aaronparecki.com/2014/02/13/13/microformats-selfoss-indieweb
Artemis by capjamesg
Artemis is a calm web reader developed by capjamesg that updates once a day, has a minimal UI, and is free to use at https://artemis.jamesg.blog.
