NOTE, July 2 2026: MonkeyChow has not been updated since 2014. While it would be an interesting exercise to bring it completely up to date using any of the AI tools at our disposal, there are a lot of tools already out there that do an amazing job of serving these RSS needs. MonkeyChow was born in an era before mobile and was being adapted for that use in its later years. In the end, while running your own server to collect your own news is important, and certainly more relevant today with the need to control your own context, there are so many ways to do this better. My primary way of consuming RSS these days is with NetNewsWire, which lets me run a mobile iOS app and a desktop macOS app that are always in sync through iCloud and remain private. This works very well for me and keeps me off companies like Feedly. I recommend that path if you have not already moved to a model where you own your data.
MonkeyChow is an open-source web based RSS feed reader with social networking built in. It is a knowledge aggregator, bringing streams of updates and news together to help you absorb today’s fast moving information flow. It is a living project that grows as you, the users, request features and as I scratch my own itch.It is whatever you want to take it and make it. Originally based on Feed-on-Feeds, which has stopped and restarted and stopped development many times over the years, MonkeyChow is free for you to download via Sourceforge download, Sourceforge svn or my tarballs page. The next version of MonkeyChow, to be released as 1.0, is due to be released in late May or early June. Currently it is undergoing user testing for query optimization, and more functions are being added as the weeks go by. The following are planned features.
Social networking support – MonkeyChow now has a Twitter username and password field in the user preferences, allowing you to publish feed articles in your Twitter feed. It also allows you to publish articles in WordPress, a personal RSS feed of select republished articles, as well as Delicious, Digg, Ping.fm, Friendfeed, Blogger, and email. After 1.0 I plan on adding Facebook support.
Multiple Users – In recent versions of MonkeyChow, multiple users were allowed to log in, but everyone was limited to the same feed list. Now, everyone using MonkeyChow can have their own feed, starred favorites, and published articles reblog feed.
Plugins – Much of the social networking functionality displayed for articles is being moved into plugins, including the above Twitter support. Don’t like a certain feature? As admin, you will be able to uncheck a box and it will no longer appear on the site. Community written plugins will now be available to customize article bodies, such as adding an advertisement to every 10th viewed article, or provide functionality in the viewing panes. Have required feeds such as corporate or educational alerts to make sure everyone is up to date. I plan on making as much of the interface as modular as possible after the 1.0 release.
Themes – For some time now the spartan default style for MonkeyChow has put some people off. Now, as admin to your site, you will be able to choose from the default style sheet or one of your own design. Community written style sheets should then be available for you to adopt for your site’s needs. I plan to write more themes after the 1.0 release.
International Languages -MonkeyChow is already in use around the world, but why limit yourself to just US English? MonkeyChow currently has North American Spanish support. Have a language you would like to see added to MonkeyChow? Simply add the appropriate translations to the included .po files and send them to me for compilation and inclusion in the post 1.0 versions. MonkeyChow makes it easy for you to use as an educational tool in your land.
Playing with Sharp Objects. 