FreshRSS
FreshRSS •
Since 2013
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Official Docs
What is FreshRSS?
FreshRSS is a popular self-hosted RSS/Atom feed reader and aggregator written in PHP. It fetches subscribed feeds on behalf of users who host their own instances. The bot respects robots.txt directives and identifies itself with version information in its user agent string. Since FreshRSS is self-hosted, the bot may appear from various IP addresses corresponding to individual user installations.
User Agent String
FreshRSS/1.25.0 (Linux; https://freshrss.org)
How to Control FreshRSS
Block Completely
To prevent FreshRSS from accessing your entire website, add this to your robots.txt file:
# Block FreshRSS
User-agent: FreshRSS
Disallow: /
Block Specific Directories
To restrict access to certain parts of your site while allowing others:
User-agent: FreshRSS
Disallow: /admin/
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Allow: /public/
Set Crawl Delay
To slow down the crawl rate (note: not all bots respect this directive):
User-agent: FreshRSS
Crawl-delay: 10
How to Verify FreshRSS
Verification Method:
Check user agent string for FreshRSS identifier
Check user agent string for FreshRSS identifier
Learn more in the official documentation.
Detection Patterns
Multiple ways to detect FreshRSS in your application:
Basic Pattern
/FreshRSS/iStrict Pattern
/^FreshRSS/1\.25\.0 \(Linux; https\://freshrss\.org\)$/Flexible Pattern
/FreshRSS[\s\/]?[\d\.]*?/iVendor Match
/.*FreshRSS.*FreshRSS/iImplementation Examples
// PHP Detection for FreshRSS
function detect_freshrss() {
$user_agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ?? '';
$pattern = '/FreshRSS/i';
if (preg_match($pattern, $user_agent)) {
// Log the detection
error_log('FreshRSS detected from IP: ' . $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']);
// Set cache headers
header('Cache-Control: public, max-age=3600');
header('X-Robots-Tag: noarchive');
// Optional: Serve cached version
if (file_exists('cache/' . md5($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) . '.html')) {
readfile('cache/' . md5($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) . '.html');
exit;
}
return true;
}
return false;
}
# Python/Flask Detection for FreshRSS
import re
from flask import request, make_responsedef detect_freshrss():
user_agent = request.headers.get('User-Agent', '')
pattern = r'FreshRSS'
if re.search(pattern, user_agent, re.IGNORECASE):
# Create response with caching
response = make_response()
response.headers['Cache-Control'] = 'public, max-age=3600'
response.headers['X-Robots-Tag'] = 'noarchive'
return True
return False# Django Middleware
class FreshRSSMiddleware:
def __init__(self, get_response):
self.get_response = get_response
def __call__(self, request):
if self.detect_bot(request):
# Handle bot traffic
pass
return self.get_response(request)
// JavaScript/Node.js Detection for FreshRSS
const express = require('express');
const app = express();// Middleware to detect FreshRSS
function detectFreshRSS(req, res, next) {
const userAgent = req.headers['user-agent'] || '';
const pattern = /FreshRSS/i;
if (pattern.test(userAgent)) {
// Log bot detection
console.log('FreshRSS detected from IP:', req.ip);
// Set cache headers
res.set({
'Cache-Control': 'public, max-age=3600',
'X-Robots-Tag': 'noarchive'
});
// Mark request as bot
req.isBot = true;
req.botName = 'FreshRSS';
}
next();
}app.use(detectFreshRSS);
# Apache .htaccess rules for FreshRSS# Block completely
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} FreshRSS [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]# Or redirect to a static version
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} FreshRSS [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/static/
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /static/$1 [L]# Or set environment variable for PHP
SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "FreshRSS" is_bot=1# Add cache headers for this bot
<If "%{HTTP_USER_AGENT} =~ /FreshRSS/i">
Header set Cache-Control "public, max-age=3600"
Header set X-Robots-Tag "noarchive"
</If>
# Nginx configuration for FreshRSS# Map user agent to variable
map $http_user_agent $is_freshrss {
default 0;
~*FreshRSS 1;
}server {
# Block the bot completely
if ($is_freshrss) {
return 403;
}
# Or serve cached content
location / {
if ($is_freshrss) {
root /var/www/cached;
try_files $uri $uri.html $uri/index.html @backend;
}
try_files $uri @backend;
}
# Add headers for bot requests
location @backend {
if ($is_freshrss) {
add_header Cache-Control "public, max-age=3600";
add_header X-Robots-Tag "noarchive";
}
proxy_pass http://backend;
}
}
Should You Block This Bot?
Recommendations based on your website type:
| Site Type | Recommendation | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| E-commerce | Optional | Evaluate based on bandwidth usage vs. benefits |
| Blog/News | Allow | Increases content reach and discoverability |
| SaaS Application | Block | No benefit for application interfaces; preserve resources |
| Documentation | Selective | Allow for public docs, block for internal docs |
| Corporate Site | Limit | Allow for public pages, block sensitive areas like intranets |
Advanced robots.txt Configurations
E-commerce Site Configuration
User-agent: FreshRSS
Crawl-delay: 5
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /*?sort=
Disallow: /*?filter=
Disallow: /*&page=
Allow: /products/
Allow: /categories/
Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml
Publishing/Blog Configuration
User-agent: FreshRSS
Crawl-delay: 10
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /drafts/
Disallow: /preview/
Disallow: /*?replytocom=
Allow: /
SaaS/Application Configuration
User-agent: FreshRSS
Disallow: /app/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /dashboard/
Disallow: /settings/
Allow: /
Allow: /pricing/
Allow: /features/
Allow: /docs/
Quick Reference
User Agent Match
FreshRSSRobots.txt Name
FreshRSSCategory
otherRespects robots.txt
Yes
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