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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[–] 1 point 3 years ago*

@nutomic@lemmy.ml It might be a good idea to default the Communities page to All instead of Local, to help push users into discovering other instances and promote them.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (1 child)

    Point us to where the coin slot is. E.g. Patreon. We insert coin 🪙, you upgrade.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (1 child)

    I think lemmy will be bitten in the ass by not having considered clustering/horizontal scaling from the start. Federation alone as a scaling mechanism is only feasible for "nerds". But if the network wants to grow, we will need a few scale-able large hosted instances. And if their only choice is to scale vertically, there will be a hard limit (unless we put a good old Mainframe somewhere ^^).

    Another downside of this design is: you can't run it with high availability. If there's only one process per instance, updating it will mean the whole instance is down. Sure, if all goes well this downtime is under a second. But if it doesn't go well or if a migration is needed, this might quickly become hours.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (1 child)

    Indeed. If a big instance like lemmy.ml was to be shut down all the communities would be lost. This is simply not sustainable. Why would users put effort building a community if it could be gone at any time?

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago

    That however would be a different problem. A horizontally scaled instance would be able to cope with more users, but if it shuts down for monetary, personal, or whatever reason, it's still down.

    Protecting a community from this is what the decentralized part is for. That is already in place.

    (Although there is a middle ground where you could design the system in a way that one instance is mirrored and load-balanced across different hosters. That would actually also be quite interesting to have. But that's another layer of complexity on top.)

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (3 children)

    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!

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (4 children)

    Naming things is one of the two most difficult issues in IT, alongside cache validation and off-by-one errors.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    There are only two hard things in CS: naming things, caching, and off-by-one errors.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (4 children)

    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

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (2 children)
  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (2 children)
  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago

    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?

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  • [+] 1 point 3 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)
  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (1 child)

    Nope. You can subscribe/post/comment on any community on any instance. There is one small seam though: if you're the first person to subscribe from your instance, you need to put in the full URL of the community (https://lemmy.ml/c/gaming, for example) to pull it into your instance.

    After that, everybody on the same instance as you will see it when searching for communities just like it was local.

    EDIT: Oh, forgot to mention: make sure the search is set to "All", not "Communities" when you do this.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago* (1 child)

    I'm a noob. I created an account on beehaw and on lemmy.ml. That's because I see communities on one instance that I'm interested in and a different community on another instance. So if there's a technology community on both, how do I get to see all the technology posts without having to have two accounts?

    This is really confusing for noobs like me. I'd just like to see one community to technology, one for Science, one for nintendo etc. I don't care it it's spread out amongst different servers to divvy up the load, but from the user side, it needs to be seamlessly integrated.

    I'm still learning how all this works though. But I don't know how many folks that are more casual than me will be willing to figure it out. I hope they do though! It'll be worth it to leave reddit in the rearview mirror!

    Edit: lawdy, I just figured it out. Local vs all on the communities list. It was right in front of my face. good grief!

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  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    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"?

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  • [–] -1 points 3 years ago*

    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.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Can I login to another instance with my lemmy.ml account? Or do I need multiple accounts?

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  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Edit: If you moderate a large subreddit, do not link your users directly to lemmy.ml in your announcements

    How/which URL should we link to then? Now is the best time to get users to switch to Lemmy so we need to make it as newbie friendly as possible. Already the application process has put off some people (I do like that bit though, keeps away the low effort folks). Thanks.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago

    How/which URL should we link to then?

    My (somewhat) hot take is that large migrating subreddits should probably host their own communities, which is what we did when we told people on r/PrivacyGuides to move to Lemmy. Or at the very least, actually coordinate with instance admins beforehand about all of this, clearly lemmy.ml isn't the ideal choice for this situation.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Hi,

    I setup my account on lemmy.ca. But it seems I cannot sign into lemmy.ml with this account (just getting busy spinning circle. On a high level I want to subscribe to some of the communities on lemmy.ml.

    Thanks

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago

    After watching a video and looking around it looks like I was in error. Pretty much I can be signed into lemmy.ca ... then change he view filter to show all communities and subscribe to technology community on ML. The subscribe button does not always update right away. But in my listing of lemmy.ca I see I am subscribed. Hope this helps someone else.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago* (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (1 child)

    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.org](/c/gaming@beehaw.org) you can then open the sidebar and subscribe to, and post to, the gaming community on beehaw.org with your lemmy.ml user.

    !gaming@beehaw.org is not the same community as !gaming@lemmy.ml

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

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  • [–] -1 points 3 years ago

    Did my part and created an instance in the hopes of offloading some of the bigger instances: https://rammy.site

    No clue if and how I should promote it, though. Looks like it's just me for now.

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