My Google Reader Replacement: Tiny Tiny RSS

With the closing of Google Reader, something that I literally used hundreds of times a day, I had to find a replacement. Everyone seemed to jump to Feedly, Flipboard, Digg, the Old Reader or a handful of others that seemed to have sprung up after Google’s announcement.

I’m pretty sure I tried them all. There was always something that was missing or just different about the other clients. I’m also leary of relying on another service provider that others are trying to make work when Google couldn’t. This closure by Google also further raises concerns about other services they offer that they may discontinue in the future. Remember Google Wave? Basically the lesson here is to not rely on a free service for anything you care about.

I ended up on Tiny Tiny RSS which I had tried a couple of years ago. It has a number of things going for it:

• open source
• self hosted
• themeable
• supports plugins

It was fairly straightforward to install on my server. You just create a database, unzip the files and put them somewhere online and run an install script. Once installed, you create an account and import your feed list (from Google’s Takeout) or subscribe to new feeds directly in Tiny.

There are also a lot of configuration options within Tiny’s preferences. A number of different themes and plugins are also available from the community forums. The look is easily changed if you can edit CSS.

I’ve also found a great, free iOS app for connecting to my Tiny installation: YATTRSSC.

So far so good!