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Follow a page without a feed

Available onFreeProResearch

Many pages publish a list of new things but have no RSS feed. Readsira can read such a page, find the repeating list on it and follow that list like a feed. New items arrive in Feeds with their title, link, date and picture when the page shows them.

Before you start​

  • Page feeds count toward the number of feeds your plan includes. See Plan limits.
  • Readsira reads the page like one visitor and respects the site's robots.txt. If the site does not allow it, or turns automated visits away, the page cannot be followed.
  • Only the text that is in the page's HTML is read. A list that a script builds after the page loads is not found.

Steps​

  1. Paste the address of the page into the search field in Discover, or into the Subscribe to a feed dialog described in Follow and manage feeds.
  2. When the site has no feed, Readsira says No feed on this site. Follow the page instead? and shows a choice. Select Follow the page.
  3. Wait while Readsira reads the page. The panel lists what it does: it loads the page, checks for RSS, Atom and JSON feeds, looks for a repeating list and pulls out titles, links, dates and images. This usually takes under 10 seconds.
  4. Check the result. Readsira shows the list it found, outlined on the page's snapshot, with the first items and which fields it found (Title, Link, Date and an image).
  5. Give the feed a name under Name. The page is checked Every 6 hours.
  6. Select Follow page feed.

The feed appears in Feeds with the chip Page feed and a line that shows when the page was last checked.

If the list is not the right one​

  • If the page has more than one list, the panel offers the others under Other lists on this page. Choose the one you want.
  • Select Pick a different list to choose yourself. Click one item in the list you want on the page snapshot. Readsira finds the items built the same way and outlines them. Click an item that was missed, or Alt-click one that should not be there. Start over clears your picks.
  • If the page already has a real feed, Readsira says This page has a feed and offers to follow that feed. A real feed is the better choice. Follow the page instead is still available.
  • If no list is found, the panel says No repeating list found. Readsira looks for three or more items with the same structure, and it does not guess. You can try Pick the list yourself, or choose Watch for changes to watch the whole page instead (see Watch a page for changes).

When a page feed stops working​

Sites change their layout. When Readsira finds no items where it used to find some, the feed shows The page layout changed. Older items stay, and nothing new arrives until the list is found again. Choose Re-detect to look for the list again, or Pick the list again to choose it yourself.

Other messages you can see on a page feed:

  • This page could not be read: the site has not let Readsira read the page for three days.
  • robots.txt disallows this page: the site's robots.txt no longer allows it, so the page is not checked.
  • The page is gone: the page no longer exists at that address.

In every case the items you already have stay in Feeds.

Tips​

  • A page feed carries what the page shows: the title, date, image and first lines. Save an item to your library to keep the full text and highlight it.
  • Unfollow a page feed in the same way as any other feed, on the RSS Feeds page (Manage feeds).
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