Hello friends, We continue our Umbraco Bristol events with two hands-on talks, hosted by the team at [manifesto](https://manifesto.co.uk/) at Runway East in central Bristo

RSS feeds are simple, easy-to-use feeds of content from the internet, such as news articles, videos and podcasts. You can use RSS apps to follow Mastodon accounts, and use Mastodon accounts to follow RSS feeds. ## What is RSS? RSS is basically just a special kind of internet address that tells an RSS app where to find content. The apps used to follow RSS feeds are often called “feed readers” or “news readers”. When you enter an RSS address into an RSS app, the posts made by that address are shown in a chronological list. RSS feeds can work for all kinds of content including blogs, news sites, podcasts etc. (Most podcast apps are powered by RSS, even if they don’t publicly state this.) ## How to follow Mastodon accounts from an RSS feed reader app All Mastodon accounts have an RSS address which can be followed from RSS apps: 1. Go to a Mastodon account profile’s original page on a web browser. 2. Copy the web address from the browser’s address bar 3. Add .rss to the end of the web address to create the account’s RSS address 4. Add the account’s RSS address to your RSS app For example, the RSS feed for the FediTips account is https://social.growyourown.services/@FediTips.rss ⧉. Note that the RSS feed of a Mastodon account only shows posts with public visibility, you will not see replies or posts with other visibilities. ## How to follow Mastodon hashtags from an RSS feed reader app The RSS feed of a hashtag on a server can be found by doing the following: 1. Go to the server’s website 2. Search for the hashtag 3. Click the hashtag from the suggestions list 4. Copy the hashtag’s web address and add .rss to the end to get its feed ## How to follow RSS feeds from Mastodon You can also now do this the other way around, and follow RSS feeds from your Mastodon account, thanks to a service called RSS Parrot ⧉: 1. Create a new post but don’t publish it yet 2. Mention the RSS Parrot Fediverse account _@birb@rss-parrot.net_ 3. Mention the RSS address you want to follow 4. Publish the post (it doesn’t have to be a public post, DMs will work as well) 5. RSS Parrot will create a new Fediverse account that mirrors the contents of the RSS address you provided, and then reply to you with a link to the new account 6. Follow this new account to follow the RSS feed This method works for any Fediverse platform that supports microblogging, including Mastodon and many other Fedi platforms. ## How to follow PeerTube Channels and Accounts from RSS apps You can follow any PeerTube accounts or channel through RSS apps: 1. Go to the channel’s or account’s profile page on PeerTube 2. Click the channel’s or account’s _Subscribe_ button (if you are logged in on that PeerTube server, click the little arrow on the right of the subscribe button instead) 3. There will be an RSS subscription option at the bottom of the subscription menu, click this to go to the RSS feed (which may look a bit crazy but don’t worry!) 4. Copy the address at the top of the browser to get the channel’s or account’s RSS address 5. Paste the RSS address into your RSS app This feed will deliver embedded videos to your feed reader and you can watch them there. ## Friendica: Champion of RSS The Fediverse platform Friendica has probably the best RSS support on the Fediverse, including a built-in feed reader which doesn’t need any third party services or apps. To follow an RSS feed in Friendica: 1. Paste the RSS address into the search box in Friendica 2. The RSS feed’s profile page will appear, click Follow 3. The RSS feed’s contents will start showing up in your main timeline as it is published, and will look like normal account posts Friendica also lets you turn RSS feeds into Fediverse accounts that people can follow from other Fediverse platforms. ↩ Back to the front page

Kalvebod Brygge waterfront is Kalvebod Bølge (Kalvebod Wave) that entices relaxation, activities and fun.

Wow, hasn't time flown?! This weekend I'll be boarding my plane to Denmark ahead of Codegarden 2026 so it's about time we thought about packing our bags! But what to bring? If you've not been before, or if you're forgetful like I am, I've written you a packing list...

Hello fellow Umbracians, In the greatest redemption story of all time Carl Sargunar will be sharing his demo from Umbraco Spark, hosted by Gibe at their offices in Paintwo

An episode of the Backstage with Fred video podcast: During Umbraco Spark, Fred had the opportunity to discuss with Joe Glombek, Umbraco MVP & Umbraco Developer at Bump Digital. Taking advantage of the beautiful weather in Bristol to record the interview outside, Joe told us a bit more about the conference, and gave us the main take away from his talk titled “Developers, Assemble! Community is your team's superpower”. It prompts a great discussion between the two about the importance for individuals but also for companies, to give back to the tech and open source communities out there.

The Energy Secretary outlines measures to protect consumers and make Britain energy secure.

Are you heading to Umbraco Spark and hoping to explore Bristol while you're here? I live near Bristol and now consider myself a Spark veteran, so thought I'd share my insights!

Have you ever wondered why news articles around the web have buttons to share to some of those other social sites, but not on Mastodon? There used to be a legitimate reason for this: unlike legacy social, Mastodon isn’t a single monolithic website you can link to; there are over 8,000 places where a person could have a Mastodon account! Their account could be on `mastodon.social`, the large, official server run by us. Or `hachyderm.io`, a sizeable server for tech enthusiasts operated by Nivenly. Or `social.coop`, a Mastodon server operated like a co-operative, where all members pay towards the costs and vote on decisions together. Some people run their own Mastodon servers, on their hardware at home. The distributed nature of the network is the greatest strength of Mastodon, but it also means that having a share button that takes you to the “correct” Mastodon server for your account, is a lot more involved than a simple hyperlink. Third party solutions have existed before now, but none of them have become ubiquitous, or easy to discover for website owners. This changes today, with our new official Share tool. If you are a website owner, you can go to share.joinmastodon.org to find instructions describing how to integrate this on your website. Of course, we’ve also made the code available and open source, the same as the rest of Mastodon’s code. That means you can check how it works, and even host a share page of your own (you don’t need to host anything, but you can, if you don’t want to use the version that we’re hosting - it’s your choice). To try out what sharing something looks like right now, click “Share on Mastodon” on this very blog post (there’s a button to do it, at the top right of the page). The tool itself works entirely in your browser: there is no tracking data, and it does not store any information on the server. If you have multiple Mastodon accounts, you can add more than one, and choose which one to share to when you post. One more thing to mention here: back when we released Mastodon version 4.4, tucked away in the release notes, we mentioned that server administrators have the option to send a referrer header when a link is clicked. If the owner of your server has enabled that setting, then websites whose links get shared will see traffic coming from Mastodon - yet another way to share how the community is growing. We’re looking forward to seeing the Mastodon logo on more websites - possibly, alongside other social media platforms; and maybe even as the “main” sharing link, like here on our blog.

Act is a fantastic tool for testing GitHub actions locally instead of pushing that 10th commit in a row called Testing GitHub Actions (again) but configuring it to work correctly can be a balancing act, so here are some tips for getting Act working with your .NET CI/CD flows.