This site is currently struggling to handle the amount of new users. I have already upgraded the server, but it will go down regardless if half of Reddit tries to join.
However Lemmy is federated software, meaning you can interact seamlessly with communities on other instances like beehaw.org or lemmy.one. The documentation explains in more detail how this works. Use the instance list to find one where you can register. Then use the Community Browser to find interesting communities. Paste the community url into the search field to follow it.
You can help other Reddit refugees by inviting them to the same Lemmy instance where you joined. This way we can spread the load across many different servers. And users with similar interests will end up together on the same instances. Others on the same instance can also automatically see posts from all the communities that you follow.
Edit: If you moderate a large subreddit, do not link your users directly to lemmy.ml in your announcements. That way the server will only go down sooner.
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First post for me!
Sorry, I applied and got approved here. Still waiting to hear back from beehaw…
I’m really digging this UI compared to Reddit, but I am 99.9% a mobile user via the native Reddit app (don’t @ me!)
I am very tempted to setup my own instance. Wondering what resource usage looks like for an instance.
Yeah, I think I have two accounts (I registrated in a community and then came here and had to create another one because I couldn’t log in). It’s kind of confusing for people who are not as tech savy as myself.
Well, my understanding is your user exists on whatever instance you signed up on. You could technically create users on every single instance, but that is not necessary. You only need one user to exist somewhere, and then you can subscribe to, and post to communities on other instances.
For example: from lemmy.ml, if you search for
!gaming@beehaw.orgyou can then open the sidebar and subscribe to, and post to, the gaming community on beehaw.org with your lemmy.ml user.[email protected] is not the same community as [email protected]
For example: from lemmy.ml, if you search for [email protected] you can then open the sidebar and subscribe to, and post to, the gaming community on beehaw.org with your lemmy.ml user.
This was really helpful, thank you!
An easy way to understand this is that instances are like email providers. You can sign up on Gmail, but still email someone using Outlook or something else.
That analogy makes a lot of sense. Very helpful to new users
I applied for a few other instances but this one came through first. Your downfall is being too good compared to the competition.
This is one of the biggest hurdles to get into Lemmy. I consider myself quite tech savvy but I am at a stage of my life that I cannot read hundreds of page of documentation just to use a forum.
There need to be a way to seamlessly move people from instance to another without them having to do it themselves or at the least a way way shorter documentation that goes to the point in one page.
I’ve only been here a day or so, but having to search for the community doesn’t seem that bad? It’s almost exactly like searching for a subreddit to join.
/r/subredditturns into!community@address, like [email protected]And once you are on that community you can open the sidebar and subscribe (join in Reddit terms).
I just created https://lemmy.film if that would be useful for anyone.
You might wanna consider temporarily closing sign-up requests on
lemmy.mlsimilarly to howmastodon.socialdid it during its large influx. Making a sign-up request and just receiving an infinite loading icon is a very frustrating experience.Similarly, you want to make it as easy as possible to financially contribute to lemmy, even if it means using proprietary platforms like Patreon.
Overall, the current Reddit API change is probably one of the largest opportunities for lemmy right now, so smoothing over the user experience as fast as possible in the coming days will be of atmost importance if we want lemmy to become a viable Reddit alternative…
I would be happy to use another instance but my account is on this one. Is there a way to migrate an account, or perhaps “link” accounts on multiple instances somehow?
AFAICT no. There is an open issue on the Lemmy GitHub repo. In general, all ActivityPub services I’ve used have this same account stratification problem.
I think this is key. Have the possibility to move an account to another instance or have it spread out somehow. This would also secure the account in case an instance dies for some reason.
I would appreciate this as well. Besides the flood of users issue, this server’s theme (Marxist-Leninist) doesn’t mesh with my politics. I created my account in the early days of Lemmy, so I have an extensive history that I am loath to sacrifice.
Wait isn’t lemmy.ml a general purpose server?
It is, but unlike elsewhere, ML folks are usually not banned or defederated here, only if they break rules (like insulting other users).
IMHO, selecting an instance is definitely the biggest user experience problem Lemmy has at the moment. New users who are unfamiliar with the platform are going to pick the biggest instances, and that’s going to create performance problems.
We’ll need to prioritize work on instance browsing. Lemmy has outgrown the experience over at join-lemmy.org. If I could wave a magic wand, instance browsing and onboarding would have a way to show instance capacity / performance, a way to categorize and filter instances, and a way to recommend instances based upon interests. That would probably help to spread people out more evenly.
No problem just make a pull request with your changes.
You probably don’t want my code if you want a stable platform. ;)
That said, I dig what y’all are doing, and I’m veteran experience / interaction designer who’s been around the block for a few decades. So I might be able to find some time to mockup some experience concepts and or help to run user tests with audiences that your curious about.
I’m more of a backender myself, but I think some UX mockup would go a long way in getting this improved.
There’s a website I highly recommend called fediverse observer, it doesn’t really go based on interest, but it has some other factors it uses and I really like it.
I think that there should be some meaningful way to “preview” aspects of one instance that may make it more attractive than another instance to a new user. I just joined lemmy.world today simply because it seemed the most generic. Onboarding process could use some work; https://lemmy.world/post/37906 is great at explaining it but people will only really see it for the first time once they join…
Also I have no clue if that second link works. ¯\(ツ)/¯
I’m going to set up a general purpose instance tomorrow with the intention of handling a relatively large number of users. The main problem is choosing a domain!
Naming things is one of the two most difficult issues in IT, alongside cache validation and off-by-one errors.
choosing the name for my instance was easy. programming related? programming.dev it is!
I’m getting the following error reading this post: “item at index 2 does not exist”
Should I post this on stack overflow or some other Lemmy help community?
Which frontend are you using?
There are only two hard things in CS: naming things, caching, and off-by-one errors.
I already said that
Look at that, you sure did. I missed the “two hard things”. Wasn’t even drunk. 🤷
I name everything as var1 var2 etc.
var37.social incoming
I was also contemplating setting up a new instance for this. I have 100s of gigs of unused ram, CPUs on idle and a 10gbit connection looking for something to do. The only issue I couldn’t figure out was the name. I own itjust.works was thinking of something clever subdomain to use with it. I’m glad I’m not the only one with this issue
sh.itjust.works
I did it! https://sh.itjust.works
Credits go to you for the naming
Dude killer url, nice one! Question for all, I clicked their link and went there and it’s an instance, surely. I tried to comment on their post, but was required to sign in… I’m already signed in over here, I gotta sign in there, too? Anyhow I tried to sign in with my lemmy.ml creds but that didn’t work. How can I interact with posts there?
When you open a post it should show you instructions on the right: use the search bar in lemmy.ml to search for
!main@sh.itjust.works
Lol awesomesauce. I just made an account, I’ll use it as my main instance for a while. Let’s hope we can survive reddit hug of death 2.0 in July!
@autisticaudioguy lol same, just signed up today.
This is a great one! Might use it
can’t wait for fedd.itjust.works to go online!
Keep it simple with
lemmy.itjust.works.If you get this going or need a hand then let me know.
Do you also have a few million dollars under your mattress? 😁
I’d like to tell myself that if it got to the point where it started to cost a few million that i would be able to have it pay for itself!
It’s a week later, but I did get this done finally. I’ve set up https://lem.monster/ . Still doing some tweaking, but it’s open.
If this is the Mastodon moment, ho boy. Don’t envy the sysadmins.
Is scaling the server a largely financial issue, or not? @[email protected]
could you reasonably confidently say that you could 10x the amount of users for something like 1000$/mo on liberapay?
If so, would you mind setting a “goalpost” for the community to help lift the financial burden?I think they said they’re at the highest tier of their provider. May need to migrate to a different provider and get a beefier setup.
Do Lemmy instances not scale horizontally?
They do, but I’m not sure how well, I’m not a dev, and have no programming knowledge, so looking at the documentation looks like arcane hieroglyphs.
I’m pretty sure I read a comment about it from one of the devs, but can’t recall the fine details of the conversation.
In theory, they can. But it depends on how it’s deployed.
From my cursory look at the deployment docs, Lemmy’s default deployment option is via docker. It relies on a postgreSQL server, which may or may not scale horizontally depending on the admin’s choice of implementation. For example, a deployment on AWS using Aurora would theoretically utilize auto-scaling.
I haven’t personally deployed an instance so, grain of salt.
EDIT: A good discussion about DB scaling here: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3005
I like to call Lemmy “Feddit”.
If anybody else is lost and wants a basic general-purpose home for their account, https://lemm.ee is on good hardware and open for signups.
I applied for behaw about 24 hours ago without response nor success logging in. Wondering if they have temporarily suspended applications?
It’s been 72 hours now since I applied to beehaw and still radio silence.
I haven’t heard anything either. They are probably slammed. 🤷🏻♂️
You can still subscribe to and post to their communities from here. You don’t actually need a user on beehaw.org
Open the hamburger menu, then click the search icon and put
!gaming@beehaw.orgin the search box and click search. You’ll then be able to look at that community from lemmy.ml, and in the sidebar you can subscribe. You can also up and downvote, comment, etc.Replace gaming with whatever community you are trying to join. Also beehaw.org is just an example. You can “join” any instance that isn’t currently blocked by lemmy.ml AFAIK.
what hamburger menu. right now i’m using the default lemmy.ml website
The three parallel horizontal lines in the top right next to the bell icon.
Ok, in the jerboa app
They might just have a massive backlog. They’re at the top of the “Suggested instances” section.
is it possible to move an existing profile to a new server, like on Mastodon? or I need to create a new one and “start over”?
Right now, there is no import/export. It’s a known useful feature, but the devs have no time to work on it (I’ve been following all the optimization work they’ve been doing on github, I don’t know if they sleep). You’ll have to start over atm, sorry.
thanks for the quick answer!
That’s a bummer but it is good to know.
Currently you have to start over.
lemmy.ml should be a roundrobin dns that sends you to a random instance in the pool. Or else you will re-centralize lemmy and curmble under the IT bill.
Except (as far as I’m aware) your account only exists on one instance. So, if I end up on beehaw.org due to the round-robin, my account on lemmy.ml will not authenticate to that instance. I would have to have a separate account per instance which is hundreds of accounts.
That’s actually a good idea
