At Linelab we recently asked ourselves a question that had been bothering us as developers for some time: Where is the open web disappearing to, and why are we giving up on technologies like RSS?
Remember when every town, municipality, theatre or local fire brigade had a clear RSS or Atom feed and information was instantly available to everyone? Today the reality is sad. Classic RSS feeds are quietly disappearing, and public and local institutions have effectively become captive to private companies and closed social networks. More about RSS.
News from town halls, the municipal police or local culture often ends up in the algorithmic bubbles of social networks, where you need an account and have to hand over your data just to find out what is happening in your area.
We decided to do something about it as a practical experiment. We combined our Joomla experience, brought RSS feeds back to life, took artificial intelligence on board as a partner and built Vokoloko.cz, a new aggregator of local Czech news on a single timeline.
This is what the development looked like under the bonnet.
Why build on RSS feeds in 2026?
Many people told us that building a new project on RSS today is outdated, because the technology is fading into the background. For us, that was exactly the main reason to do it.
We wanted to show that open web standards still make enormous sense. Vokoloko works as a non-commercial signpost: it does not rewrite articles or try to replace the original media. It simply monitors and processes existing RSS and Atom feeds, extracts the headline, place and time, and sends readers quickly straight to the original author's website.
It is our attempt to bring visitors back from closed social networks to independent local websites and to create a working alternative to today's fragmented internet.
Joomla 6 and PHP 8.3: no expensive cloud, just a clean application
When people hear "an application developed with AI" today, most imagine exotic cloud architectures or expensive external SaaS services. We took a completely different route.
The whole of Vokoloko runs on Joomla 6 and PHP 8.3. But we did not use Joomla as an ordinary content management system for writing a blog. We used it as a fully fledged application framework:
- Custom component: We wrote a bespoke extension that manages the feeds, generates the timeline and handles search and the archive.
- Scheduled tasks (cron): We use Joomla's native scheduled tasks to automatically visit and download data from hundreds of RSS feeds.
- Maximum performance: We make full use of the built-in cache, the category system, access permissions and SEF URLs.
It turned out that with the right architecture you do not have to reinvent the wheel from scratch. A traditional open-source CMS in its latest version has huge potential for building specialised web applications.
What did the fusion of developer and AI look like?
No, we did not press a "Generate website" button and go to the pub. For us, AI was not a replacement for the programmer but an extremely fast development partner.
Developer (Architect)
Defined the brief, the database architecture, the clean code rules and security, and kept the overall ethical concept of the application on track.
AI (Coder)
Helped write routine parts of the code, suggested alternative solutions, sped up debugging and helped with testing.
The biggest challenge: not falling for the illusion of correctness
AI can generate code in a second that looks stunning at first glance but hides a structural or security flaw. Today a developer's job does not end with writing code themselves. Their main role is to understand, test and verify the generated code and decide whether it belongs in the project.
Zero AI costs in everyday operation
One thing was essential for us from the start: sustainability. Vokoloko was built with the help of AI, but it needs no artificial intelligence at all in everyday operation.
No language model is called when a page loads, no expensive API is consumed and there is no cost per reader. In the background the data is automatically downloaded, processed, sorted by region and stored in the database. As a result, Vokoloko runs lightning fast on standard web hosting.
Local news without tracking and without ads
Since we were fighting for the open web, we had to be consistent in everything:
The service is clean, with no banners and no forced account creation.
No Google Analytics, no Meta Pixel and no storing of visitors' IP addresses.
We do not connect to third-party servers for fonts, icons or maps.
Settings (such as hidden feeds) stay exclusively on your own devices.
Vokoloko as practical proof that there is another way
Vokoloko.cz was created at Linelab as a practical experiment. By combining our own know-how, modern Joomla 6, open RSS data and AI tools, we very quickly built a useful and fairly complex application, and without a huge budget. Running costs are €40 per year.
It is our small contribution to a return to the roots of the web. To an internet that serves people and does not make access to information conditional on giving up your privacy.
Try the local news aggregator: