Best of 2013

The blog posts Hacker News loved most in 2013. 497 posts.

Web & Frontend
430

The RSS Apocalypse

Aldo Coresi explains: “The truth is this: Google destroyed the RSS feed reader ecosystem with a subsidized product, stifling its competitors and killing innovation. It then neglected Google Reader itself for years, after it had effectively become the only player. Today it does further damage by buggering up the…

439

The Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet 2.0

You’re an SEO. You’ve mastered Moz’s starter guide to Search Engine Optimization . You deal with botched site migrations, messy title tags across thousands of pages, earth-shaking Google algorithm changes, and more on the daily. Who would have thought that one of the toughest parts of your job would be getting your…

440

Where did all the HTTP referrers go?

Good (and bad news): the general consensus in the web developer community is that any and every website should be HTTPS by default. Why? HTTP by itself isn't encrypted, leaving it open to eavesdropping, message tampering, and man-in-the-middle attacks. HTTPS, if you use it consistently , prevents these issues.