Only 3 weeks of history?

question
#1

I know that for commonly updated things Newsblur will keep only up to 200 posts.
That’s plenty for me.
The issue I have is for webcomics/stories that use rss where they update rarely.

For example, WuxiaWorld updates only a few times a week.
The history only seems to be kept for 2-4 weeks (3?) and then the old chapters disappear unless I manually “save” them.

This is something that updates quite rarely… so this is just 10 entries for that RSS feed.
What I like to do with webcomics and stories is wait for a while (sometimes a week, sometimes a few months) so I can read a whole bunch at once, and use my RSS reader to keep my spot.

Because it deletes history older than that, I end up missing chapters/images when I come back to catch up.

Can you increase it to hold the last N (200? 100?) things per feed so that I don’t lose my place all the time?

#2

See screenshot, this updates several times a week but only keeps history back to December 19th… even though I haven’t read it in months.

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#3

I don’t work for NewsBlur, just a (premium) user/fan, but I have some ideas, based in part on my own experiences catching up with serialized fiction, long-running webcomics, etc.:

For WuxiaWorld specifically, I wonder if something changed with the feeds when they were acquired by Kakao Entertainment/Radish Media. The post I linked to is dated December 16 and it looks like the earliest item in your feed is from December 19, so if this hasn’t been an issue for you before and just started, that might explain it.

For NewsBlur, are you a free user or a premium one? I think premium users get a longer history, but I’m having trouble finding current information on the specifics. I found a blog post from 2013 saying the limit for premium users’ unread stories had been increased to 30 days and free users were limited to 14, but I’m not sure if either limit has changed since then.

Maybe your best option would be to save the most recent chapter you’ve read, so you know where you left off and can catch up through the comic’s site rather than the RSS feed when you’re ready. Alternatively, instead of using the RSS feed, maybe it would be best just to read on the WuxiaWorld site and use their built-in bookmarking system (assuming you have an account and are logged in). If you think you’ll forget to go back to it without the RSS feed as a reminder, you could keep the feed (even if you don’t actually use it for reading) or set a reminder in Google Calendar (or whatever you use) for once every month or whatever schedule you prefer.

Another option would be to use something like IFTTT to have your WuxiaWorld RSS items automatically go to something like Instapaper or Pocket for you to read later. I use Instapaper, and it lets you save your chapters/articles offline on your phone or tablet – handy for reading if you commute by public transportation (like I did, pre-pandemic) and don’t always get a good signal. I’m not sure about Pocket (or other alternatives besides Instapaper), but Instapaper lets all users save an unlimited number of articles. It looks like the maximum amount you can download offline at once is 500, but you can still have more than that saved on their site. There is a premium account option with some additional features related to things like taking notes/saving highlighted sections and more thorough search options, but it doesn’t affect how many chapters/articles you can save.

#4

One other thing I’ve used, but more comic-specific is Comic Rocket. (Even though Overgeared isn’t a comic, Comic Rocket’s help page says it’s for if “you want to read a webcomic, serial story, or other serialized work online,” so it might still work for you. Even if it doesn’t work for Overgeared, maybe you have some webcomics that you’re also catching up on that would work well with Comic Rocket.) I’m not affiliated with them and this isn’t an ad; I’m just a fan. It’s completely free. You can donate if you want, but it’s not required to unlock any features. I’ve used it to help me catch up on long-running comics like Order of the Stick. There are two main ways to use it:

  • Read comics through the Comic Rocket site:

    • It will show you the original comic page, but in a Comic Rocket “frame” that shows you your progress (Chapter X of Y) and a bookmark of where you left off. That way, if you haven’t read it in a while, you don’t lose your place.
    • Unlike browser bookmarks, the Comic Rocket one doesn’t have to be updated manually. If you read a comic through the site, the bookmark will automatically update to the last chapter you read. (It’s my understanding that WuxiaWorld has a similar feature, but I’ve never used that site, so I’m not sure if it works differently.)
    • If you’re not reading something for multiple months, and then catching up all at once, this might be the better option than an RSS feed. If not, Comic Rocket also offers a…

  • Custom RSS feed for each series (that works great with NewsBlur, in my experience):

    • Can set a custom schedule for which day(s) you want to read the comic and how many comics to get at once – for example, one every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday or 10 every Saturday or whatever works best for you.
    • It also lets you set the starting point for the feed, so you don’t have to start with the very first one (or the most recent one) for comics you’re already in the middle of.
    • Once you’re caught up, it will keep sending you the new comics on the schedule you indicated. (So if a new chapter comes out on Wednesday, but you set it to only send you comics on Saturdays, you’d see the new one in your feed on Saturday.)
    • You can edit your feed preferences any time, changing the day(s), number of comics per day, setting a new starting point (useful if you read multiple chapters on the comic’s site rather than through your feed), or pausing it if you’re not planning to read that comic for a while (or if you’re only going to be reading it through the site rather than the RSS feed).

For any comics that aren’t already listed on Comic Rocket, it’s usually pretty easy to add them to the site yourself, as long as the comic uses a sensible numbering system.

#5

Thanks for the suggestions… I was trying to illustrate a general problem as opposed to this site specifically, but I’ll respond to each point. I also realize you don’t work for NewsBlur, the questions are either rhetorical or meant for them as opposed to you.

For NewsBlur, are you a free user or a premium one

I’ve been a premium user since Oct 2010.

I found a blog post from 2013 saying the limit for premium users’ unread stories had been increased to 30 days and free users were limited to 14, but I’m not sure if either limit has changed since then.

  1. I don’t think that actually works (or has since changed) despite being a premium user.
  2. 30 days isn’t nearly enough for “rare” feeds. Some feeds update 10 times a year. Assuming the databases are set up with reasonable indexing, the performance should be based on number of items, not the actual number of days. If the limit was the newest 200 (100?) entries per feed I would be sufficiently happy. Keeping around days instead of number of stories is clearly more based on news/topical items rather than RSS in general. As long as it’s a serial (webcomic/webstory/…) things only become irrelevant when they’re read.
  3. What used to happen a while ago (perhaps before that post) is that NewsBlur would keep history around even though it forcibly marked it as “read” once it was old enough… I think even if the feed itself deleted the old link.
  4. If I had the ability to mark a feed as “important, rarely updates, keep up to N items” and I had some max total N allotted to me as a premium user I would be happy with that.
  5. I completely understand not keeping long histories for NEWS stories or anything that updates frequently… but the performance modifiying thing should be number of elements not days anyway (unless the db uses (to me) a surprising index/schema). , but 30 days really isn’t enough for feeds that update rarely or are serial (webcomic, webstory, …) Sometimes I stop reading stories for a full year and want to catch up but that will still only be 20-100 “stories”.

For WuxiaWorld specifically…
This wasn’t really about WuxiaWorld, it was just an example. There are many places that have feeds but don’t have their own system.

Maybe your best option would be to save the most recent chapter you’ve read, so you know where you left off and can catch up through the comic’s site rather than the RSS feed when you’re ready.
Alternatively, instead of using the RSS feed, maybe it would be best just to read on the WuxiaWorld site and use their built-in bookmarking system

I tried “saving” first, but that really doesn’t work because I just need to forget once and then I’ve lost my place in a story/comic/etc that has thousands of chapters/images.
Actually for WuxiaWorld I already gave up using NewsBlur entirely… I will not remember to “save” every time so that doesn’t help. I do use their bookmark system. If I’ve been gone a long time on a story (like months), I can’t even use NewsBlur to tell me that there ARE new chapters, because the story could be on a 2 week hiatus.
So in this case I’ve stopped using NewsBlur entirely. Yes I can use WuxiaWorld’s site directly but that reduces the value of NewsBlur. The whole point of using NewsBlur is (was) that I can have one place that shows me all my updates. If I have to check a dozen different places then there’s no value in NewsBlur for me.

If you think you’ll forget to go back to it without the RSS feed as a reminder, you could keep the feed (even if you don’t actually use it for reading) or set a reminder in Google Calendar (or whatever you use) for once every month or whatever schedule you prefer.

Appreciate the suggestion but the point of NewsBlur (for me) is that I don’t have to poll 20-50 different sites… I can just look in one place. Reminders (or whatever) don’t work because I eventually give up on them.

Comic Rocket

Yeah I’ve used Comic Rocket and am aware of all the features you described… they’re just not sufficient for my purposes. They’re not bad for comics but they’re not particularly great either. The UI especially.
I also used all the different methods you mentioned to read there. Unfortunately ComicRocket isn’t exactly based on RSS feeds or anything and I’ve definitely seen it fail to update for literally over a year. When I have an rss feed, it’s possible the author forgets to update, or misses a comic, but that’s a lot closer to a guarantee that I get everything than ComicRocket.

#6

Hi, I believe you’re only looking at Unreads. If you click on the Unread Stories filter in the top right, you’ll be able to see All Stories, which goes back some number of stories. That number depends on if the feed has any premium subscribers and how often it publishes. Premium users get to enjoy a longer feed archive, but it bottoms out at 100 stories. So the stories are there, they are just unread.

I’m working on a pro tier of premium accounts that has unlimited unreads and an unlimited archive, as well as boosted feed fetch frequency. It’ll probably be $19/month, but that’s also not out of the range of an enthusiast reader.

1 Like
#7

Well… unreads is the important part for me.
Having history (but not “unread” status) be unlimited would only be worth something to me if it had the full history of the entire… e.g. webcomic. But that would only work if I started an rss feed early enough that everything was kept.
Having “Unlimited” unread history on all my feeds would be great for the webcomics…and stories… but actually terribly annoying for the blogs I follow. Some of those blogs update 50 times a day and I generally only read the 10-20 newest.
It’s really just the disconnect between “frequently updated” you’ll store 200 and even keep unread status, and infrequent status you keep … ??? and maybe a month?

If I actually got 100 stories (with unread status) for all of my infrequently (Less than once a day) updated things I’d be delighted.

(For me)… just to be able to get 100 stories per feed with unread status… which I DID get when I first signed up… $19/month feels rather steep. At that price I could get off my butt and find a webhost and (troubleshoot and) run https://github.com/dhasenan/pierce (I came to Newsblur cause it was the closest to that and didn’t want to set it up myself)

In theory you support unlimited on my feeds already if I went around and signed in and clicked “save” on every story until I read it. But there’s no automation for it.

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I know about unread vs all stories, but that doesn’t really help.
Here’s sorted by newest/ALL instead of just unread, scrolled to the bottom.
It’s still only storing 16 stories and looks like 1 month of data.
I’m premium… but that’s much less than 100 stories.
Is there a bug perhaps? The RSS feed itself does not show that many at a time (they trim the “older” ones frequently)

For frequent things (update dozens of times a day) I actually get 200 stories even with “unread” status, but for the infrequent things I get nowhere near 100 stories.

#8

I guess my major point, is when I signed up… this was by far the best “RSS Reader” available anywhere I could find. (Pierce had some bugs, and I couldn’t figure out how to get it to run… ).
It also had a ton of things I didn’t care about and explicitly wanted off, like social network, sharing, machine learning, suggestions, etc.

But the RSS Reader part slowly is getting more bugs and less functional over time :frowning:

#9

I suppose I should point out… as one data point I would be willing to spend $5-$10 a month to get the features I needed mentioned above… but at $19/month I’d be looking for a new RSS reader.

#10

I might consider a Premium Archival tier, which would be at $10/month, and give the archival and unread features but not the other upcoming pro features:

#11

That would be perfect for me… I’d definitely sign up!

#12

I just want more than a month of unread feeds and the Story feed to be fixed…