A self-hosted IndieWeb feed reader built with Django. PADD connects to your personal website's Microsub endpoint and lets you read, interact with, and publish content — all from one place.
- Read your feeds organized into channels via Microsub
- Publish notes, articles, photos, and check-in posts via Micropub
- Interact with posts — like, repost, and reply — through your Micropub endpoint
- Authenticate with your personal domain using IndieAuth (PKCE flow)
- PWA-ready with a service worker for offline support and installability
- LCARS-themed UI (yes, like Star Trek)
- Python 3.14+
- PostgreSQL 14+
- uv for dependency management
- A personal website with IndieAuth and Microsub endpoints (e.g. powered by Aperture)
git clone https://github.com/CrowderSoup/PADD.git
cd PADD
uv synccp .env.example .envEdit .env with your settings. At minimum you need a secret key and a database URL.
uv run manage.py migrateuv run manage.py runserverVisit http://localhost:8000 and log in with your personal domain.
Open a channel and choose Follow feeds from its menu, or use the same button on an empty timeline. Paste a site or feed URL, search, then Follow. The feed is added to that channel. Settings also imports an OPML file.
| Variable | Required | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
DJANGO_SECRET_KEY |
Yes | change-me-in-production |
Django secret key. Use a long random string in production. |
DJANGO_DEBUG |
No | False |
Set to True for local development. Never enable in production. |
DJANGO_ALLOWED_HOSTS |
No | localhost,127.0.0.1 |
Comma-separated list of allowed hostnames. |
DJANGO_CSRF_TRUSTED_ORIGINS |
No | (empty) | Comma-separated list of trusted origins for CSRF (e.g. https://yourdomain.com). Required in production behind a proxy. |
DATABASE_URL |
No | postgres://padd:padd@localhost:5432/padd |
PostgreSQL connection URL. |
PADD_ADMIN_URLS |
No | (empty) | Comma-separated list of user URLs with admin access (e.g. https://yourdomain.com/). |
A docker-compose.yml is provided for production and a docker-compose.dev.yml for local development with Caddy as a reverse proxy.
docker compose up -ddocker compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml upThe dev setup uses Caddy for automatic TLS, which is useful for testing IndieAuth flows that require HTTPS.
uv run pytestreader/ Django project settings and root URL config
microsub_client/ Main application
api.py Microsub protocol client
auth.py IndieAuth / PKCE helpers
micropub.py Micropub protocol client
middleware.py Session-based authentication middleware
models.py Database models
views.py View functions
utils.py HTML sanitization and formatting helpers
templates/ Django templates (base + partials)
static/ CSS, JS modules, service worker, PWA manifest
PADD implements the following IndieWeb protocols as a client:
- IndieAuth — authentication via your personal domain
- Microsub — reading feeds from a Microsub server
- Micropub — publishing posts to your site
PADD does not include a Microsub server. You'll need a separate server such as Aperture or Ekster configured on your personal site.
MIT — see LICENSE.