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RSS Feeds, Countless Clicks, One Bullet Point

So much dumb shit I had to try ...

April 17, 2025

Maybe a structured roadmap would be a good idea.

Spoiler: It isn’t. I work best in dumpster fires. For example …

It’s a simple plan

I wanted my blog to show up on my WordPress site. Not a copy-paste brute force, not screenshots. Just … magic. Just like every article online I could find promised if I just follow “five easy steps”.

Yeah, ok. Five steps don't work if you're using free versions of anything, and unsure whether a plugin is about to brick your whole days work.

My “five”-ty actual steps:

  • Get a nice polished xml link like /feeds/wtf-am-i-doing.xml

    • Great! XML. Things look promising.

  • Install a plugin that says they’re the #1 RSS solution.

    • They all say that. Mathematically - that just seems off.

  • That plug in then creates a page called Feeds.

    • Which feels both helpful and passive-aggressive. Because when opened … nothing appears. Which of course, wouldn’t if you haven’t actually published a post. Shoulda guessed that one - that’s on me.

  • So, published a post.

  • Then waited.

  • Then clicked "Fetch Now."

    • Then clicked it again. Then repeat “waited, fetch” about 20 times. Because I am that person that will also push the already lit elevator button to make it arrive faster.

  • Then hovered over settings galore and debated whether to change the feed type to SimplePie.

    • I don’t know what that means or care. All I know is that I just wanted some pie.

  • But … six years later - it really was magic! The post counter ticked to 1. Oh my.

What did I get?

A bullet point. No layout, no thumbnails, no banners … just one sad little bullet point. But in the world of plugins, broken feeds, and conflicting settings across three platforms, a single working bullet point was a goddamn miracle.

Since then, things have actually moved. Not perfectly. Not logically. But forward, sort of.

I’ve been building. The homepage is no longer an idea. It’s a thing. It exists. And it’s pretty damn close to something I can look at. I wouldn’t call it a brand yet.

But it’s more than I had yesterday.