SubToMe

From IndieWeb


SubToMe is a button that content publishers can put on their sites which enables users to subscribe to their feed in whatever reader they choose β€” sort of a universal follow button.

Why

If my personal site has both a Twitter "Follow" button and a feed, it’s currently orders of magnitude easier to follow me on Twitter than to add my feed to a reader or any kind.

SubToMe aims at make following open web feeds (whether h-feed, Atom, or RSS) as easy as following a Twitter profile.

It does that by storing the subscriber's preferred subscriptions in his browser's LocalStorage, so that it does not promote service X or Y which may disappear while still making things as easy to use for the subscriber.

Adding a button to your site is quite easy and can be fully customized.

See How below for code to copy & paste!

How

example follow button with Woodwind default reader

This example creates a button, that when clicked subscribes the user to the site "example.com" with Woodwind as a suggested default.

It specifies the following:

  • data-subtome-resource - the site URL
  • data-subtome-feeds - the feed URL for the site ( for Woodwind, which understands mf2, you don't need and RSS/Atom feed )
  • data-subtome-suggested-service-name - this is what specifys Woodwind as a service
  • data-subtome-suggested-service-url - Woodwind internal URL specifying the resource to subscribe for

Code example (assuming https://example.com/ is your home page with an h-feed):

    <a onclick="(function(btn){var z=document.createElement('script');document.subtomeBtn=btn;z.src='https://www.subtome.com/load.js';document.body.appendChild(z);})(this)" 
       value="Subscribe" 
       data-subtome-resource="https://example.com/" 
       data-subtome-feeds="https://example.com/" 
       data-subtome-suggested-service-name="Woodwind" 
       data-subtome-suggested-service-url="http://woodwind.xyz/subscribe?origin={feed}"
       href="#" 
       title="subscribe to https://example.com/">Follow</a>

For details in the button configuration please see subtome.com/publishers.

Indieweb Examples

IndieWeb community members currently using SubToMe buttons on their personal sites:

IndieWeb community members using feed readers with SubToMe support:

Demo

SubToMe can be tried as a subscriber out on the project homepage: SubToMe. Many feed readers already implement it, but you can also pick your favorite subscription tool on the SubToMe store.

FAQ

Is SubToMe another service to depend on

Q: Is SubToMe another service to depend on?

A: SubToMe is just a convenient "domain" used to obtain a 'namespace' in the subscriber's browser when storing their preferred reader. You can host its open source code yourself on your site!

SubToMe is only static (HTML + JS + CSS) and can actually be served from any HTTP server.

  • but should not, because then you lose the shared configuration across all sites

The only constraint is the use of https for security purposes. The code is available as open source on github.

See Also