A new year is coming. It's still a little jarring to realize that 5785 will be a year without Cohost. Using this website has been a genuine delight, and it's changed the way I interact with the Internet as a whole.

But Rosh Hashanah has always been a time to change. A time to reflect on the past, and look to the future. As the seasons change, and the leaves begin to fall, it feels... right, that if Cohost must go, it goes at this time. An end of an era, and the beginning of a new one, coinciding with a new year.

RuSShdown

What is RuSShdown?

RuSShdown is a free, open-source, entirely browser-based RSS feed generator for non-coders. RuSShdown takes the Posting experience like you'd find on Cohost, where you type your gay little jokes and hit the button, and translates that into an RSS feed you can slap on your personal site. The whole site runs entirely client-side, so literally nothing ever leaves your browser to some server somewhere, it all runs on your computer, and it has zero tracking cookies or anything of the sort.

How do I use RuSShdown?

It's pretty simple. You go to RuSShdown's deployment page at https://chaiaeran.github.io/RuSShdown and simply fill out the form. If you're making an RSS feed for the first time, you use the Create New RSS Feed tab. If you already have one and want to Post to it, you use the Add Post tab. Either way, when you're done, you'll receive an RSS file that you can then put wherever you like, such as a Neocities page.

It's really that easy?

Well, yeah! RSS-posting isn't super technically difficult to begin with, and the purpose of RuSShdown is to simplify it even further so you don't have to touch a single line of XML or HTML code. The site does all that for you.

Can I use Markdown?

That's what the "down" in RuSShdown stands for! Standard Markdown is supported using Showdownjs. You can even input raw HTML if you wanna do CSS Crimes™! There's a live preview right beside your input box, so you can see what your Post will look like.

Why did you make this?

Because fuck social media, that's why. With Cohost shutting down, it feels like the last big space made for actual human connection is going away, and I have no desire to go back to the Tweet Zone, be it Twitter itself, Bluesky, or even the Fediverse. RSS feeds are really powerful, useful tech that lets you keep Posting the way we do here (minus likes and comments, admittedly), and I found there really wasn't a good tool to make them easier, so I did it myself.

Can I see the code?

Yep! Here it is! https://github.com/ChaiaEran/RuSShdown
It's honestly not very complicated, either.

OK but is there Eggbug

I hope you all enjoy using RuSShdown.

Happy Posting!

I'll be honest, this was the only social media I used anymore.

If you want to find me, though, you can do so at my website, or on my Youtube channel and Twitch stream. I'm also @ChaiaEran on Discord.

I'm also on the Website League!

EDIT: Check out my Cool RSS Feed!