What kinds of websites can RSS Anything turn into a feed?

Updated

RSS Anything works best on pages that present a list of links, especially older or simple websites that don't publish their own RSS or Atom feed. The deciding factor is the page's structure, not the site's topic: if the page is essentially a collection of links, it's a good candidate. It is not intended for arbitrary dynamic web apps, where content is generated by scripts, requires interaction, or isn't laid out as a link list.

The core requirement: a list of links

RSS Anything describes itself as a way to "transform any old website with a list of links into an RSS or Atom Feed." That single sentence sets the boundary. The tool looks at a page and turns the links it finds into feed items, so the page needs to actually contain a list of links in its HTML.

Good candidates share these traits:

  • The page is a directory, index, archive, or "latest updates" style page.
  • Each entry is a link, usually with a title or some surrounding text.
  • The list is part of the page's HTML, not loaded in afterwards by JavaScript.
  • The page changes over time as new links are added, which is what makes a feed useful.

Examples of pages that fit

The topic doesn't matter. What matters is that the page reads like a list of links. For example:

  • An old news or blog site with a homepage listing recent article links but no feed.
  • A community or club page posting a list of upcoming event links.
  • A personal site with a "links" or "reading" page that grows over time.
  • A documentation or resource index that adds new entries as links.

In each case, the page is simple, mostly static, and organized around links, which is exactly the shape RSS Anything is built for.

What it is not meant for

RSS Anything is not a general-purpose scraper for arbitrary dynamic web apps. Pages are poor candidates when:

  • The content is rendered by client-side JavaScript and isn't present in the initial HTML.
  • The page is an interactive application rather than a list (dashboards, search results behind forms, feeds that load on scroll).
  • There is no consistent list of links to extract.
  • The content sits behind a login or requires interaction to reveal.

If the links only appear after you click, scroll, or log in, expect the conversion to fail or produce an empty or incomplete feed.

How to check whether a page will work

Before converting, open the page and ask:

  1. Is there a visible list of links? If you can't point to a list, the tool likely can't either.
  2. Are the links in the page source? View the page source and search for one of the link titles. If it's there, the page is a strong candidate. If it only appears after scripts run, it's a weak one.
  3. Does the list grow over time? A feed is only worth subscribing to if new links appear.

If all three answers are yes, the page is a good fit. If the list is missing or script-generated, look for another source or a different approach.

Using it

The workflow is deliberately minimal: enter the URL of the page, get a feed URL back. From there you subscribe to that feed URL in your RSS reader. The tool comes from Diffbot, and the page notes it exists "because Jerome wants to read all the things in RSS" — a small, focused utility rather than a full scraping platform.

The practical takeaway: pick pages that are lists of links, ideally older or simple sites without their own feed, and skip anything that behaves like a dynamic app.