What is PlainFeeder?

PlainFeeder is a plain text RSS feed reader. It utilizes sane defaults to prevent wasting server resources for website operators while still providing timely updates to their readers. PlainFeeder aims to never be part of the larger web ecosystem problem. You may see requests periodically from us in your web server logs - this service is used solely to fetch RSS feeds to check for new content. Please see this section for details on our User-Agent parameters.

PlainFeeder Defaults

PlainFeeder will utilize a few mechanisms to ensure that it does not waste your resources and time investigating it. Some of the defaults we have in place are as follows:

• Default 6 hours refresh time
• Stores and uses Last-Modified and ETag response headers for Conditional GET requests
• Honors max-age value in Cache-Control response header to adjust polling rate if longer than default refresh time
• Honors Expires response header to adjust polling rate
• Dynamically slows itself down if server errors are returned
• 404 = 3 additional retries after refresh timer, paused after 4 total 404 responses
• 403 = 3 additional retries after refresh timer, paused after 4 total 403 responses
• 429 = Double refresh timer, up to 3 times (6 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours, 48 hours). Paused after 4 429 responses.
• Other 4xx responses = Paused after 2 responses
• Dynamically adjusts feed polling rate based on how frequently the feed is updated
• Updates feed URL if 301 Permanent Redirects are returned

How can I tell a request is from PlainFeeder?

PlainFeeder will always announce itself via the User-Agent request header. You can expect to see a value that follows this format:

User-Agent: PlainFeeder v0.0.1 (+http://plainfeeder.com/about ; Subscriber Count: ###)

The two notable items are the semantic version and the Subscriber Count. The version allows you to contact us if you notice a problem with a specific version of this service (bug reports, inquiries, etc). The Subscriber Count indicates how many users on this service are currently subscribed to your feed. While many users can subscribe to your feed, we will still only need to make one request to provide post content to the subscribers, which offloads your server resources to us.

Do you have a distinct list of IP addresses I can allow?

Yes, you can retrieve our current list of IP addresses that may be used in the feed-ips.txt file.

Can I opt out my website?

If you would like to opt out of this service, please return a 404 response to our requests from the IPs provided above.

How can I provide feedback?

If you have feedback you would like to send along, please email us at contact@plainfeeder.com. Please note, plain text emails are strongly preferred! More details can be found on our contact page.