The way Lemmy works right now is you search a community in your instance for it to then get shown, so you need to first discover that community from elsewhere. With that in mind, what are some growing communities that you discovered that could get some more love?
mander.xyz has a ton of cool science instances!
Posted this elsewhere, but as people flood in maybe some community promotion isn’t a bad thing…
I’ve setup an instance focused on some niche topics and hobbies, there’s not much there yet but here they are if anyone wants to check them out:
FFXIV → https://possumpat.io/c/ffxiv
Bugs → https://possumpat.io/c/bugmenagerie
Esports → https://possumpat.io/c/esports
Gundam → https://possumpat.io/c/gundam
Star Trek → https://possumpat.io/c/startrek
Xenoblade → https://possumpat.io/c/xenoblade
Here’s some of the communities on lemmy.pineapplemachine.com. They’re pretty small and quiet at the moment, but maybe they’ll grow a little over time:
!dev@lemmy.pineapplemachine.com - For software development
!gamedev@lemmy.pineapplemachine.com - For game development
!compile@lemmy.pineapplemachine.com - For compiler development
!games@lemmy.pineapplemachine.com - For video games
!rns@lemmy.pineapplemachine.com - For Deep Rock Galactic
!fortnight@lemmy.pineapplemachine.com - For Fortnight
!twitch@lemmy.pineapplemachine.com - For twitch.tv
!tech@lemmy.pineapplemachine.com - For general tech stuff
!news@lemmy.pineapplemachine.com - For world newsthanks for making these relative links, so they can work across instances, but… they don’t actually work on a given instance until that community is first accessed there through search.
eg, your dev community worked for me (here on lemmy.ml) because someone else here already accessed it, but your news one was 404 until after I searched for https://lemmy.pineapplemachine.com/c/news on lemmy.ml to make it learn about it.
despite the amazing work over the last years there is still lots more to be improved :)
(i just accepted an invitation to become an admin here to help the two main devs be able to spend more time developing and less time moderating…)
for now, if you want to promote your instances communities to users on other big instances like lemmy.ml, i recommend searching for each community URL on various instances (login is not required for this) to make it easier for newbies there to click your relative links and subscribe.
Something I haven’t been able to wrap my head around, do I need a username on each instance for federated instances? If not, how does one participate in communities in other instances? I’m with lemmy.ml, but if I want to interact with a post on beehaw, how do I do that?
The short answer is no, you dont.
Think of this like email, you sign up to a mail provider (gmail, yahoo, fastmail, etc) or even if you’re feeling up to it run you own email server with you own domain. You can then use that account to send emails to anyone regardless of which provider they picked and anyone can send you email too.
Lemmy (and ActivityPub, the underlying protocol) works the same. ActivityPub under the hood even uses the same concept of an inbox and outbox. You pick your provider and you can comment, post, etc. to anywhere regardless of which instance the other users or community is on.
If you see a post on another instance (e.g. Beehaw) you can just comment in the webui or app and it’ll just work.
But if I want to subscribe to an instance on beehaw or kbin I need to have an account for those correct?
Nope, you only need one account. It works like email, it dosn’t matter if you’re on gmail, yahoo or fastmail, you can still send and receive emails from other providers. You can subscribe to communities on other instances and post comments or submit new posts regardless of which instance the community is on.
Nope, you only need one account
well, almost… your account can only see what its instance lets you, eg from where i’m posting from (lemmy.ml) i can see things on lemmygrad.ml but many instances, including the one you’re on sh.itjust.works, have blocked them.
