Reading is a big part of my daily workflow. Between technology newsletters, industry blogs, forums, and independent websites, I have to keep up with a lot of news quickly to stay on top of everything happening in the world of tech. Most of my consumption has traditionally happened through RSS readers, but some of the best RSS readers on the market, like InoReader, have been raising their subscription costs to the point where I don't feel comfortable paying that much just for the privilege of accessing news.
I've dabbled in FreshRSS as well, and it's great, but I wanted something a little simpler and accessible from anywhere. Going down this rabbit hole led me to Liveboat. This open-source project turns RSS subscriptions into a static website and publishes it anywhere static files can be hosted. As simple as that. In my case, that meant GitHub Pages, which makes the entire setup free to run. I've now got a personal news hub that updates automatically, works on virtually any device, and gives me an easy way to browse everything I'm following without relying on any free or paid RSS app.
A browser-friendly alternative to traditional feed readers
At its core, Liveboat is actually a very simple app. It takes RSS subscriptions and converts them into a static website. Instead of refreshing a feed reader, I can just open a browser and immediately see the latest stories from all the sources that I've followed.
The project is designed to work with Newsboat, a popular terminal-based RSS reader, but it's easy enough to import your OPML feed from any newsreader, so your subscriptions can easily come with you. Installing Liveboat is straightforward using the process described on GitHub. The developer has provided a binary, so you don't even need to compile anything from source, though you can deploy a Docker container if you choose.
Moreover, Liveboat preserves many of the features that make RSS readers useful in the first place. For example, it supports Newsboat's feed structure, query feeds, and filtering options, which allow me to keep the same workflow for sifting through thousands of feeds a day. I don't need to rebuild my reading setup from scratch. It's just a more browser-friendly layer on top of it, and that's particularly useful if you want to catch up on your feeds from a smartphone.
Free hosting with GitHub Pages
Access your feeds from any browser
Earlier, I mentioned that I host all these feeds for free so I can access them from anywhere. The other half of the equation is Github Pages. Hosting static websites is exactly what Github Pages was designed for, and combining it with Liveboat creates a surprisingly practical solution that is easy to get up and running and easy to access.
Once Liveboat generates the site, you just simply publish the output to a Github repo. Github Pages then serves the files publicly without requiring a VPS or a Docker container or a self-hosted web server. The entire site runs from static assets, which means there is very little maintenance needed.
For me, the biggest advantage here is accessibility. By publishing it to Github Pages, my feed collection is available from any browser on my desktop, laptop, tablet, or even my phone. If I want to quickly check headlines while using a device that doesn't have FreshRSS or any other RSS app installed, I can simply open the website.
This ingenious solution addresses a problem that many self-hosted services encounter. Tools tend to require constant maintenance, and things like reverse proxies or figuring out remote access to your local self-hosted tool are a task in themselves. Static sites avoid most of those headaches, and Github Pages handles the hosting.
Liveboat has other features too that advanced users might want to take advantage of. For example, it exposes feed data through JSON files. If you want to reuse that data to create a dashboard or a custom homepage, or even integrate it into another tool, it's already available in a structured format. It's not something that I've dabbled with yet, but I can see myself integrating it into my Home Assistant dashboard.
If you are an advanced RSS feed reader user, Liveboat might not be the best solution for you. It doesn't have all the features of something like FreshRSS, but if your goal is simplicity and ease of catching up on your news feeds, it handles the job just fine. It can take your existing subscriptions and make them available through a clean browser-based interface.
When combined with GitHub Pages, it gives you an almost completely automated news aggregator that costs nothing to host and requires little to no maintenance. That simplicity is a big selling point for me because it helps me spend less time managing my feeds and self-hosted tools and services and more time actually reading them.
Liveboat
Liveboat is an open-source app that turns your RSS subscriptions into a static website.