I want to welcome you all to the fediverse, piefed and retrofed specifically. If you need help starting out you can either try !newcomers@piefed.zip or you can comment here, post in this community or message me or @Die4Ever@retrofed.com directly. We are here to help.

Some basic things:

Usernames are usually written out as @DosDude@retrofed.com. The @ in front indicates a user. It looks like an e-mail adress by design, Because there can be users with the same name on different instances. For example: @DosDude@retrolemmy.com

Communities are usually written out as !meta@retrofed.com . The exclamation point indicates a community. This also looks like an e-mail address because there can also be communities with the same name on different instances.

Sometimes new communities will not load. This usually means that the community is not yet federated. You can either manually add it to lemmy-federate or you can subscribe. That way the community is federated and posts will show up. If you make a new community it is always good practice to add it to Lemmy federate. To make sure it's federated to all participating instances and maximize your user spread.

This wiki from piefed.social can help out with further questions

Some good resources for finding communities:

https://lemmyverse.net/ - A website dedicated to finding new communities. Be sure to set your home instance using the domain name: for example: "retrofed.com". This is to make sure that if you click a community, it automatically links it through your instance.

!newcommunities@lemmy.world - a community dedicated to promoting new communities.
!newcommunities@discuss.online - same as above.
!newcommunities@yiffit.net - same as above.

Apps

There are loads of apps for your phone on the stores. Many of them were refitted from reddit/lemmy apps to PieFed. Here's a wiki page on apps compatible with PieFed - via piefed.social

We hope you have a good time here!