13 Feet Ladder

A site similar to 12ft.io but is self hosted and works with websites that 12ft.io doesn’t work with.

What is this?

This is a simple self hosted server that has a simple but powerful interface to block ads, paywalls, and other nonsense. Specially for sites like medium, new york times which have paid articles that you normally cannot read. Now I do want you to support the creators you benefit from but if you just wanna see one single article and move on with your day then this might be helpful

How does it work?

It pretends to be GoogleBot (Google’s web crawler) and gets the same content that google will get. Google gets the whole page so that the content of the article can be indexed properly and this takes advantage of that.

How do I use it?

Using Docker

Requirements:

• docker
• Docker Compose (available as docker compose)

First, clone the repo to your machine then run the following commands:

git clone https://github.com/wasi-master/13ft.git
cd 13ft
docker compose up

The image is also available from DockerHub or ghcr.io so the command docker pull wasimaster/13ft also works.

Standard Python script

First, make sure you have python installed on your machine. Next, clone the git repo. Then go to a terminal (Command Prompt on Windows, Terminal on Mac) and run the following command:

From the git cloned directory on your computer:

cd app/
python -m pip install -r requirements.txt

If that doesn’t work retry but replace python with py, then try python3, then try py3

Then run portable.py, click this link for a tutorial on how to run python scripts.

python portable.py

Then open the link shown in the terminal in the browser and you’ll be able to use this

Installation using venv and running under specific bind address / port

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
python -m pip install -r requirements.txt
FLASK_APP=app/portable.py flask run --host=127.0.0.1 --port=9982

Using as a Bookmarklet in Chrome:

You can create a bookmarklet that performs the URL transformation by writing a small JavaScript snippet. Below is the JavaScript code for your bookmarklet:

javascript:(function(){window.location.href='https://13ft.wasimaster.me/'+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href);})();

You can replace https://13ft.wasimaster.me with your own 13ft instance if desired.

Steps:

Open Bookmarks Manager: 1.

Click on the three dots (menu) in the top-right corner of Chrome. Go to Bookmarks > Bookmark manager, or simply press Ctrl+Shift+O on Windows/Linux or Cmd+Option+B on Mac. Create a New Bookmark: 1.

In the Bookmark Manager, click the three-dot menu in the top-right corner of the window and select Add new bookmark. Enter Bookmark Details:

• Name: Enter a name for your bookmarklet, such as "13ft-ize". This name will show as a bookmark title in the bookmarks bar
• URL: Paste the JavaScript code provided above into the URL field.

Click Save.

Using the Bookmarklet:

Navigate to the page whose URL you want to use 13ft on.

Click on the bookmarklet you saved in your bookmarks bar. The browser will redirect you to the 13ft version of the URL using your service.

To show Bookmarks in Chrome, click the icon with three horizontal bars in the top right corner to open options. 2. In options, hover over "Bookmarks" to display a second menu where you can click the "Show bookmarks bar" text to toggle the bar on or off.

Instructions courtesy of @barakplasma

Customizing listening host and port, Systemd / Reverse-proxy example

Systemd Service

/lib/systemd/system/13ft.service

[Unit]
Description=13ft Flask Service
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=simple
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=10
User=www-data
Group=www-data
Environment=APP_PATH=/var/www/paywall-break
Environment=FLASK_APP=app/portable.py

ExecStart=/bin/bash -c "cd ${APP_PATH};${APP_PATH}/venv/bin/flask run --host=127.0.0.1 --port=22113"

# Make sure stderr/stdout is captured in the systemd journal.
StandardOutput=journal
StandardError=journal

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Reverse Proxy

<VirtualHost *:22114>
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/13ft-error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/13ft-access.log combined

ProxyRequests Off

SSLEngine on
SSLCertificateFile      /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key
Header always set Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=63072000"
SSLProtocol             all -SSLv3 -TLSv1 -TLSv1.1

SSLHonorCipherOrder     off
SSLSessionTickets       off

Protocols h2 http/1.1

<Proxy *>
Order deny,allow
Allow from all
</Proxy>


ProxyPass / http://127.0.0.1:22113/
ProxyPassReverse / http://127.0.0.1:22113/


</VirtualHost>

Screenshots

Step 1

Go to the website at the url shown in the console

Step 2

Click on the input box

Step 3

Paste your desired url

Step 4

Voilà you now have bypassed the paywall and ads

Alternative method

You can also append the url at the end of the link and it will also work. (e.g if your server is running at http://127.0.0.1:5000 then you can go to http://127.0.0.1:5000/https://example.com and it will read out the contents of https://example.com)

This feature was implemented by @atcasanova