Some WebSub-Atom observations

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As part of testing my WebSub changes for FoF, I decided to switch to a WebSub hub for myself that provides some subscriber analytics and so on. One neat thing about how WebSub works is that the “hub” layer is completely modular and it really doesn’t matter at all which one you use, and if the one you use has problems you can switch to another one just by changing the URL in your feed and all subscribers will eventually seamlessly migrate (at their next normal polling interval); if anyone even notices a problem it will just be that they don’t receive a push update during that polling interval. (Which, let’s be honest, is incredibly unlikely for most RSS feeds.)

Anyway, because of these new analytics, as well as information I gathered from my new WebSub-supporting reader, I now know a bit more about the state of WebSub.

Update: A lot more supporting readers have shown up in my stats in the two years since I published this article! Please see this entry for a list.

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