Installing FreshRSS on Windows 10

FreshRSS is a free, self-hosted RSS feed aggregator that lets you fetch content from multiple RSS sources and presents them in a clean and minimalistic interface. In this tutorial, we will guide you through the steps to install FreshRSS on Windows 10.

Prerequisites

Step 1: Install PHP and MySQL/MariaDB

Before we proceed to install FreshRSS, we need to install PHP and a database server, such as MySQL or MariaDB. Here's how to do it:

  1. Download the latest version of PHP from the official website: https://windows.php.net/download/. Choose the appropriate version (x86 or x64) and the Thread Safe version.

  2. Extract the contents of the downloaded ZIP file to a folder of your choice. For instance, let's say you extract it to C:\PHP.

  3. Next, download the installer for MySQL or MariaDB from the official website.

  4. Run the installer and follow the on-screen instructions to install the database server on your system.

  5. During the installation, you will be prompted to set the root password for the database server. Make sure to remember this password as we will need it later.

Step 2: Install Git

Next, we need to install Git on our system. Git is a version control system that allows us to download and manage the FreshRSS source code.

  1. Download the latest Git installer for Windows from the official website: https://git-scm.com/download/win.

  2. Run the installer and follow the on-screen instructions to install Git on your system.

Step 3: Download and Install FreshRSS

With PHP, MySQL/MariaDB, and Git installed on our system, we can now proceed to install FreshRSS. Here's how to do it:

  1. Open a terminal or command prompt on your system.

  2. Navigate to the web server's root directory. For example, if you are using Apache, the root directory is typically located at C:\Apache24\htdocs.

  3. Clone the FreshRSS repository using Git. Run the following command:

git clone https://github.com/FreshRSS/FreshRSS.git
  1. After cloning the repository, rename the FreshRSS directory to something more meaningful (such as freshrss). You can do this by running the following command:
mv FreshRSS freshrss
  1. Next, navigate to the freshrss directory and copy the sample configuration file:
cd freshrss
cp config.default.php config.php
  1. Open the config.php file using a text editor of your choice and edit the following configurations:

    • url: Set this to the URL of your FreshRSS installation, eg: "http://localhost/freshrss"
    • db_host: Set this to the hostname/IP address of your MySQL/MariaDB server
    • db_user: Set this to the username for the MySQL/MariaDB server (typically "root")
    • db_password: Set this to the password for the MySQL/MariaDB server (the one you set during the installation)
  2. Save the changes and close the text editor.

  3. Next, import the database schema by running the following command:

mysql -u root -p < sql/freshrss_mysql.sql
  1. Finally, navigate to the URL of your FreshRSS installation in a web browser (such as http://localhost/freshrss) and follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation.

And that's it! You've successfully installed FreshRSS on your Windows 10 system. Enjoy your new RSS aggregator!

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