A (web) feed is a data format used for providing users with frequently updated content. It is a way to easily distribute a list of headlines, update notices, and sometimes content to a wide number of people. It has become the internet best way of subscribing and getting update from our favorite websites.
There are basically two feed format: RSS which is an acronym for “Really Simple Syndication” and ATOM in which the initial is the more popular of the two.
To keep yourself abreast on latest update coming from the list of websites you’ve subscribed to, you need a feed reader, which can either be a mobile application, PC software or a website, to fetch and display the contents.
If you are looking to build your own web-based feed reader, here are a list of PHP script to get one up and running for you.
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Lilina
Lilina is a PHP open source feed news aggregator script powered by SimplePie. It uses no database and supports both RSS and Atom feed. You can import feed as OPML, the standard for feed sharing. The minimum requirements needed to successfully run Lilina are: PHP 5.2 or higher, PHP’s XML extension, PHP’s PCRE extension and PHP’s JSON extension.
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FEED ON FEEDS
A feed aggregator script powered by SimplePie. It keeps track of what items you’ve read, and can mark the items as read so they won’t be shown again.
It requires an access to a server running PHP 4.3.2 or later with the PCRE and XML extensions available, as well as MySQL.
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Rnews Feed Aggregator
Rnews is free, open-source PHP script with Atom and RSS feed formats support. It uses OPML import/export for easy sharing of subscriptions between news readers.
Features of Rnews include: supports database table prefixes to accommodate web hosts that provide only one database; supports secure login, user addition, and password change on SSL-capable servers; marking articles as favorites to easily find them later and protect from deletion; feed scoring based on your viewing statistics; and lots more.
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Gregarius
Gregarius is a Web-based RSS/RDF/ATOM news aggregator featuring OPML import/export, XHTML/CSS output and an AJAX-based item tagging system.
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Selfoss
Selfoss is a multipurpose rss reader, live stream, mashup, aggregation web application. It is a lightweight PHP script, mobile friendly (Android, iOS, iPad) with supports for MySQL, PostgreSQL and Sqlite databases.
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Tiny Tiny RSS
Tiny Tiny RSS is an open source web-based news feed (RSS/Atom) reader and aggregator, designed to allow you to read news from any location, while feeling as close to a real desktop application as possible. You will need a dedicated web hosting account or access to a server running generic modern LAMP stack or compatible. Shared hosting account may work but is not supported.
It requires PHP version 5.3 or newer and PostgreSQL or MySQL (InnoDB is required, MyISAM will not work).
Summary
If you ever wanted to build a web-base feed reader without you having to code one from scratch, above are six free open source PHP script that can help you get a web-base feed reader up and running alongside their respective features and server requirement.