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Bulk importing the HN bloggers OPML

2023-07-07 18:00:00 +0700 by Mark Smith

Following on from importing the HN bloggers OPML file, figured I'd quickly document the process.

Here are some screenshots of what that looked like:

Importing OPML - View from Feedly website
Importing OPML - View from Feedly website
Importing OPML - View from Feedly app
Importing OPML - View from Feedly app

A little bit tricky to do from a mobile device. The import OPML button was only just visible on the screen, and didn't appear at all in the iOS app. Importing took a really long time, around 30 mins. I had to restart the import several times, which was a bit annoying, but at least it was clever enough to not add duplicates. Lots and lots of errors, I guess many of feeds didn't validate, or got incorrectly added to the list.

Once all 692 feeds were imported, here's what the combined feed looked like:

Combined feed - english posts
Combined feed - english posts
Combined feed - vietnamese posts
Combined feed - vietnamese posts
Combined feed - german posts
Combined feed - german posts
Combined feed - russian posts
Combined feed - russian posts

The bulk import via OPML is nice but the ability to subscribe to an OPML file would be better. That way when the OPML file gets updated, whichbit likely will, the combined feed in Feedly would stay up to date. Why isn't that a standard feature of RSS readers at this stage?

I haven't had much of a chance to read through many blogs yet. I've been busy getting multi-paragraph linkless linkblog posts working for my static site generator. Oh and installing Meta's new Threads app.

Anyhow it's cool that we have RSS. It's cool that it's permissionless, that you don't need an invite, but I'm OK with having other social media apps too. It's good to have variety, each one has a distinct vibe.

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