Seriously — RSS Aggregator

A self-hosted RSS aggregator with a beautiful reader UI, full-text search, social sharing, and an admin CMS. Deploy anywhere with PHP, or run locally with Python.

Live examples:

• Seriously Photography — 90 photography & filmmaking feeds
• Seriously VC — 120 venture capital & startup feeds

Features

• Reader — sidebar layout with single-column feed, pagination, dark/light theme toggle
• Search — full-text search across titles, summaries, authors, tags
• Filters — by publication, author, date range, and tags
• Social sharing — X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram (copy link), Email
• RSS output — Atom feed at /feed for subscriber syndication
• Admin CMS — login-protected site settings, feed management, OPML import
• Auto-refresh — batched incremental refresh with conditional GET (ETag/Last-Modified)
• Image extraction — 9-source chain including og:image fallback and YouTube thumbnails
• Audio/video — inline players for podcast and video enclosures
• PostgreSQL — optional, with full-text search vectors and automatic triggers
• Legacy URL support — 301 redirects for WordPress /category/, /author/, /YYYY/MM/DD/ patterns

Quick Start

git clone https://github.com/kteare/seriously.git mysite
cd mysite
./setup.sh

The setup wizard will ask for your site name, admin password, and optional PostgreSQL credentials.

Local Development

pip3 install feedparser
python3 seriously.py

Opens http://localhost:8420. Go to the admin (click + icon in sidebar), add some feeds, and hit Refresh.

Deploy to a Web Server

Upload these files to your web root (public_html/):

File	Purpose
aggregated_feed.html	Reader page (served as index)
admin.html	Admin CMS
api.php	PHP API backend
cron_refresh.php	Cron job script
.htaccess	URL routing + security
.env	Credentials (blocked from web)
site_config.json	Site settings
team_feeds.json	Feed list

Set file permissions for PHP to write:

chmod 666 site_config.json team_feeds.json feed_data.json

EC2 / Ubuntu / Nginx

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y php php-pgsql php-xml php-mbstring php-curl \
                    postgresql python3 python3-pip nginx
pip3 install feedparser

git clone https://github.com/kteare/seriously.git /var/www/mysite
cd /var/www/mysite
./setup.sh

# Copy and edit the Nginx config
sudo cp nginx.conf.example /etc/nginx/sites-available/mysite
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/mysite /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
sudo nginx -t && sudo systemctl reload nginx

# SSL (optional)
sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-nginx
sudo certbot --nginx -d yourdomain.com

# Permissions
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/mysite
sudo chmod 666 site_config.json team_feeds.json feed_data.json

# Cron
echo "*/30 * * * * /usr/bin/php /var/www/mysite/cron_refresh.php" | sudo crontab -

SFTP Deployment

Generate a deploy script for your server:

./make-deploy.sh
./deploy.sh --all

Cron Job

Set up a cron to refresh feeds every 30-60 minutes:

/usr/local/bin/php /path/to/public_html/cron_refresh.php

Uses conditional GET to skip unchanged feeds — most runs take seconds.

PostgreSQL (Optional)

Without PostgreSQL, data is stored in JSON files. With PostgreSQL:

• Full-text search with weighted ranking (title > summary/tags > author)
• Atomic writes — no data corruption from timeouts
• Concurrent read/write safety
• Automatic search vector triggers

Setup:

# During ./setup.sh, answer "y" to PostgreSQL
# Or manually:
php db_setup.php

Configuration

All settings are editable in /admin:

Setting	Description
Title / Accent	Site name (e.g. "Seriously" + "Photography")
Tagline	Subtitle shown in sidebar
GA4 Measurement ID	Google Analytics tracking
Auto-refresh interval	Minutes between cron refreshes
RSS Feed URL	Path to Atom feed (shows subscribe icon)

Architecture

Reader (aggregated_feed.html)
  ├── Sidebar: logo, search, filters, tags, share
  └── Main: single-column article cards

Admin (admin.html)
  ├── Site Settings (title, tagline, GA, refresh interval)
  └── Feed Manager (add, remove, OPML import, refresh)

API (api.php)
  ├── /api.php?action=data          → article feed (JSON)
  ├── /api.php?action=config        → site config
  ├── /api.php?action=feeds         → feed list
  ├── /api.php?action=add-feed      → add feed (admin)
  ├── /api.php?action=remove-feed   → remove feed (admin)
  ├── /api.php?action=refresh-batch → incremental refresh
  ├── /api.php?action=auth-login    → admin login
  └── /feed                         → Atom feed output

Storage
  ├── PostgreSQL (if configured)
  └── JSON files (fallback)

License

MIT