selfoss is not a hosted service. It has to be installed on your own webserver. This webserver must fulfill the following requirements (which are available from most providers)

• PHP 5.3 or higher with the php-gd and php-http extensions enabled
• MySQL 5.5.3 or higher, PostgreSQL, or Sqlite
• Apache Webserver (nginx and lighttpd also possible)

Ensure that you have mod_authz_core, mod_rewrite and mod_headers enabled.

selfoss supports all modern browsers, including Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, Opera and Internet Explorer. selfoss also supports mobile browsers on iPad, iPhone, Android and other devices.

selfoss is a lightweight php based application. Just follow the simple installation instructions:

1. Upload all files of this folder (IMPORTANT: also upload the invisible .htaccess files)
2. Make the directories data/cache, data/favicons, data/logs, data/thumbnails, data/sqlite and public/ writeable
3. Insert database access data in config.ini (see below — you have not to change anything if you would like to use sqlite)
4. You don't have to install the database, it will be created automatically
5. Create cronjob for updating feeds and point it to https://yoururl.com/update via wget or curl. You can also execute the cliupdate.php from commandline.

Configuration is optional. Any settings in config.ini will override the settings in defaults.ini. To customize settings follow these instructions:

1. Copy defaults.ini to config.ini.
2. Edit config.ini and delete any lines you do not wish to override.
3. Do not delete the [globals] line.

Sample config.ini file which provides password protection:

                    
[globals]
username=secretagent
password=5d95c032abce4865d49ee225d28a8a939ea39a924a158f0056ebb1880d9
salt=1291929@9394$95%939201098*61234324(@#$(!*@#981923123
                

Sample config.ini file with a MySQL database connection:

                    
[globals]
db_type=mysql
db_host=localhost
db_database=selfoss
db_username=secretagent
db_password=life0fD4ng3r
db_port=3306
                

Read carefully following instructions before you update your selfoss installation:

1. Backup your database and your "data" folder
2. IMPORTANT: don't delete the "data" folder. Delete all old files and folders excluding the folder "data".
3. Upload all new files and folders excluding the data folder (IMPORTANT: also upload the invisible .htaccess files).
4. Rename your folder /data/icons into /data/favicons
5. Delete the files /public/all-v*.css and /public/all-v*.js
6. Clean your browser cache.

selfoss offers the following configuration parameters. You can set the config parameters in the config.ini file.

selfoss offers some keyboard shortcuts. They are very similar to the google reader shortcuts.

You can easily add your own data sources. Spouts (aka plugins) fetch the content from the different sources. Some spouts are included:

• RSS Feeds
• Images from a RSS Feed
• Images from deviantArt Users
• Images from tumblr
• Your twitter timeline
• Tweets of a twitter user
• heise News with full content
• golem News with full content
• MMOSpy News with full content
• RSS Feeds with readability

If you want to get the newest entries from your own source (e.g. an IMAP Email Account, Log Files or any data from your own application), you can include a new spout in your selfoss stream by writing just one php class (saved in one php file).

Create a new php file under /spouts/your_spouts/your_spout.php (choose a name for your_spouts and your_spout). The easiest way is to copy the /spouts/rss/feed.php and to modify this file.

Member Variables

Set the $name and $description variable with the name and description of your spout. The $params contain the definition of the input fields which a user will have to fill to add a new source of your spout (e.g. username and password for accessing the source data).

A simple example for the member variables of a spout for accessing an IMAP email account:

        <?PHP
        namespace spouts\mail;
        class imap extends \spouts\spout {
            public $name = 'Email';
            public $description = 'email imap account as source';
            public $params = array(
                    "email" => array(
                    "title"      => "Email",
                    "type"       => "text",
                    "default"    => "",
                    "required"   => true,
                    "validation" => array("email")
                ),
                "password" => array(
                    "title"      => "Password",
                    "type"       => "password",
                    "default"    => "",
                    "required"   => true,
                    "validation" => array("notempty")
                ),
                "host" => array(
                    "title"      => "URL",
                    "type"       => "text",
                    "default"    => "",
                    "required"   => true,
                    "validation" => array("notempty")
                )
            );
        }
                

Methods

Your source will have to implement a few methods. Following UML diagram shows the inheritance structure:

The class has to implement three things:

• A load($params) function will be executed by selfoss when the content will be updated (the https://your-selfoss-url.com/update will be executed). This load function has one parameter $params which contains the user defined parameters (e.g. username, password or anything which the user has configured (as you can define in the members variable $params). This function contains your source code for fetching the data (e.g. loading the emails from an IMAP email account).
• You have to implement the Iterable interface. selfoss will use it to iterate over all single entries of your source (e.g. the emails which were fetched by the load function). See php.net manual (OOP5 iterators) for more informations about this iterator functions.
• selfoss iterates over all the entries by using the iterable interface. selfoss will receive all information about the entries by using the functions defined by the abstract class \spouts\spout (e.g. it will get the email subject by executing the getTitle() method).

Thumbnails

If you would like to show thumbnails instead of text, you have to implement the optional method getThumbnail(). This method have to return the url of the image. selfoss will load and generate the thumbnail automatically. See \spouts\rss\images.php for an example. This spout searches for an image in an rss feed and returns it.

Your Spouts

Feel free to send us your own spouts. We are really happy about new sources we can add to further versions of selfoss. You can send them by email to tobias.zeising@aditu.de.

selfoss offers a restful JSON API for accessing or changing all selfoss data. Just use this API for your selfoss App or any other programm or plugin. Visit this github wiki page for a detailed API documentation.

selfoss is licensed under the GPLv3 license.

You are allowed to use, modifiy or study this program completely for free. If you need any other licence than GPLv3 then feel free to contact me!

selfoss is a project of Tobias Zeising (tobias.zeising@aditu.de).

More information about selfoss can be found on my german speaking blog http://www.aditu.de. The icon was created by Nadja (ArtCore), thanks for licensing it as CC.

Selfoss is named by the wonderfull waterfall in Iceland (see Wikipedia). Many single waterfalls converge to produce one big fall. This seems to be a good metaphor for the many sources from the web which will be shown in one stream.

FancyBox on this page is from fancyapps.com.