Planet is a feed aggregator that runs on a

web server A web server is computer software and underlying hardware that accepts requests via HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, commonly a web browser or web crawler, initi ...

. It creates pages with entries from the original feeds in chronological order, most recent entries first.

Etymology

In online media a planet is a feed aggregator application designed to collect posts from the

weblog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

s of members of an

internet community A virtual community is a social network of individuals who connect through specific social media, potentially crossing geographical and political boundaries in order to pursue mutual interests or goals. Some of the most pervasive virtual commu ...

and display them on a single page.

History

Planet was written in Python and maintained by Jeff Waugh and Scott James Remnant. There are several successors: Venus - started by Sam Ruby, Pluto - started by hackNY, a second project also name
Pluto
by Gerald Bauer, and most recently Moonmoon.

Design

Planet uses Mark Pilgrim's Universal Feed Parser to

process A process is a series or set of activities that interact to produce a result; it may occur once-only or be recurrent or periodic. Things called a process include: Business and management *Business process, activities that produce a specific se ...

feeds in RDF,

RSS RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many di ...

and