blog.cemunalan.com.tr

Custom Reddit Newsletters – readigest.co

24 Temmuz 2019


TL;DR: I have created a service to create your own custom newsletters from Reddit subreddits. Check it out here: https://readigest.co


Click here to read the Turkish version of this post.

I love the hackernewsletter. It has been the staple of my Fridays for more than a year now. The sole reason being, even though I want to visit Hacker News and I want to read all the discussions, I simply forget. So hackernewsletter solved that problem pretty gracefully. Every Friday, around the time I leave the work and head off for the weekend, I get my weekly digest.

I looked around for the same solution for the Reddit as well. There are some such as Unreadit, reddit.cool, Orangered. But none of the were just right for my taste. Some were not weekly, some were not customizable enough.

So I created one for my own use. It’s called Readigest. Here are the selling points.

There is a simple dashboard to manage things

Dashboard for the Readigest service.
Here is the dashboard.

Some of the services I quoted above did not have a dedicated dashboard to manage your settings. So in practice, If you were unhappy with your current selection, you should unsubscribe and create a new newsletter from scratch.

I did not want that.

So I created a basic dashboard. You can add subreddits, remove subreddits change your newsletter day and etc. Even pause the newsletter if you want.

No Reddit account needed

You can add whatever subreddits you like, no need for a reddit account. Just search them in the dashboard.

Select your newsletter delivery time slot

Delivery time selection in the Readigest dashboard.

I like the idea that at the end of the week you get your “digest” so to say. So I have opted for providing three different days to get your newsletter. These are obviously Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

There are also three different time slots within the day: morning, afternoon, evening.

Timing is very important when it comes to newsletter. So I wanted everyone to receive newsletters in their desired time, no matter which timezone they are in. So when you select morning you will get your newsletter in your morning. Not according to an arbitrary server time.

No Google Analytics, no cookies

I hate the cookie notices. I now we weed them for legal reasons but I hate them anyway. In past, I have read a post about simply not having any cookies on your project and reminded maybe I can do without them.

Turns out you can do without them. There is no Google Analytics or any other third party tracking tool installed on the website. I basically rely on the server logs and actions logged by the back-end.

Also reading the privacy page of the overcast.fm was very influential. I tried to do the same. I wrote my own privacy policy.

Currently free for all

To be honest, currently it does not cost a lot to run the website (If you ignore the couple of months I’ve spent designing and coding).

If the service becomes a hassle to manage (which I hope it would with lots of users) I may start thinking about charging a small amount.

But for now it’s all free.

Also I am very lazy to come up with a payment solution for the launch.

So feel free to enjoy readigest. Any sort of feedback is welcome.