So far for me the process is very convoluted:
- I go to https://browse.feddit.de/ and find the community.
- Then I need to copy it’s name.
- Then I need to go to my particular instance (lemm.ee)
- Then I type manually in my browser address bar lemm.ee/c/<communityname>
- Then I go back to https://browse.feddit.de/ and copy the address of the original instance of the community.
- Then I go back and add the original instance address to already typed thing in step 4 like this lemm.ee/c/<communityname>@<originalinstanceofcommunity>
- Then I can finally subscribe!
Oh my God! Please, tell me there’s a better way of doing this!
EDIT: There is a better way! Solution is to … use the search function in your instances home page and select community (if it exists already) and search. This way I don’t need to go to browse.feddit.de anymore. And links will take me straight the the communities “reflection” in my own instance, where I can subscribe.
I am not sure why? In the app, all communities that are federated to my server are visible when searhching. On desktop, ad in the app, all you have to do is select “all” instead of “local” or “subscribed” and then just search. Half the communities I am subbed in are not from my own instance, for example.
Thank you! The search icon was so small on lemm.ee that I didn’t notice. It actually works much better! You’re a saviour!
How do I properly close this thread? Do I have to? Can I mark it as solved somehow?
Please leave it up. I needed to know this and others will too.
I think you can edit the title. No rules here, but a simple [solved] should do. Also you are welcome, we are all figuring this out!
Correct me if I’m wrong, but that search only exposes the communities that at least one of the servers members is currently subscribed to. It is not a list of all possible communities. This works okay if your server has a lot of members because it will likely surface the main popular communities, but it’s misleading that it’s all communities and someone had to do it the hard way like OP said the first time around.
Huh, I didn’t know this! I think that this could be solved by smaller servers making a bot account that su subsribes to all avaliable communities?
I suppose you could, but it’s done this way on purpose to reduce load on the server. As soon as a user from that instance starts flowing the community from another instance, that server has to keep track of all updates in that community to be able to deliver it to you.
Essentially, if none of the instances users are following that community, why bother with keeping track of it. If you wrote a bot to subscribe to everything your server load would skyrocket and so would the costs.
I think it’s much more likely that a better community browser will be incorporated so that people don’t have to rely on third party sites.
It’s easier to just type/paste in the address of the community on the search page of your instance in the
!name@instan.ceformat.You can then click the result and just hit subscribe.
Would be nice if Jerboa and the web UI just translated links in that format so that theyd just open from your instance and let you sub instantly.
ATM they just open in the browser and display from the hosting instance, preventing an easy sub.
I don’t know how a browser would know to open a link in a different webpage. An extension could possibly do it, an app can if you browse in it or paste into it, but at that point pasting into the search on your instance seems the same to me.
It seems a little too bad they didn’t make it like a different protocol so the browser could send it to an program to handle like a mailto link, but otoh, this would mean it’s not clickable just with a browser, which is less than ideal.
I guess after Mastodon I just got in the habit of copying the link to my instance search field.
The link doesn’t even need to be in that format. Simply copying the link from the fediverse button (the rainbow Pentagon) and pasting that in your instances search will bring it up. It should only be a 3 step process. Although I still feel that can be a little clunky.
For discovery I browse the community list of whichever instance I’m viewing and then link it back to my home instance. I just wish I knew of a way to view the list of communities from an instance directly from my home instance. (Other than selecting the All filter from my home instance community list)
- Go to https://browse.feddit.de/ and find the community.
- Copy the URL for the community - they actually have a copy button right next to the link to make this easier (i.e. https://lemmy.ml/c/asklemmy)
- Go to your particular instance
- Use your instance’s search and paste in the URL from step 2.
- Click the search result that represents that community. You are now viewing and can subscribe to that community from your own instance.
Thanks, but now I got even more efficient method.
- https://lemm.ee/communities
- Switch from Local to All
- Type in searchbar <community>
- Click one of the results (if the community exists already).
- Subscribe.
This way don’t need to go to browse.feddit.de
You can copy the link to the other community in full (something like instance.url/c/community_name) and go back to your community and go into the search menu. Paste the link in and you’ll see the community in the search results. Click that link and you can subscribe
On the top of lemm.ee website there is a button “Communities”. Select “All” instead of “Local” and you can search for any community.
When I add
!privacy@lemmy.mlinto my search field, it doesn’t show anything - in fact, it ends up telling me that there are no results. I have to then go into the Communities tab again, and hope it shows up there.I can see it doing work as I watch the logs. But this is really a little weird/frustrating. I hope this sees improvement eventually! =)
I actually still don’t understand what exclamation mark does.
EDIT: I guess the goal for you would be to get to this page:
Good call! That said, I am still going to have to copy-paste a lot of community handles… Oh well, it works for now, I guess.
Thanks for the idea!
Step 6 will return you a 404 - comunity non existent if your instance is not federating with the instance of the community you’re looking for.
I do:
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Step 1.
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Copy the URL
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In my instance, I use the search fuction. I search for the URL. The community is one result.
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enter the result, the instance has begun federating.
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subscribe.
Wait, you can force your instance to start federation with another instance!? Did I understande you correctly?
Not exactly force. It’s by design. Instances don’t federate with each other unless a user of one wants to communicate with the other (via subscription, or commenting, or whatever).
But instances can block each other and if that happens, there’s no way you can access from your instance.
What usually happens is that big instances (like lemmy.ml), just by the mere fact that they are big, are probably already federating with your instance anyway so you may not have encountered this situation.
Oh, that’s very illuminating. So how is browse.feddit.de different? Or is it different? Can there be communities on some instances that don’t show up even in browse.feddit.de?
I believe browser.feddit.de is not a Lemmy instance per sé (feddit.de is a Lemmy instance) but scrapes basic data from them (communities, subscribers, posts). As I don’t know anything about it’s back-end I cannot tell exactly how it works.
What I know it’s that there is a set of instances it knows (i don’t know how it gets them, probably a list?), and those are the ones it searches for communities. You can even choose for it not to show you communities from some instances by unselecting those instances in the up-left menu.
So my guess is that if an instance is not known by browser.feddit.de their communities will not be shown there. Those are probably private instances that may not be connected to the fediverse anyway.
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if there was kind a data export feature. maybe we could export list of subscription list then we can import to other instance. it could be like mastodon migration.
Do you mean like when creating another account on a different instance?
yes. i know it is not your problem’s real solution. but it could solve someway and cover up another lack of feature. i wanted to draw attention to another problem and make a different aproach for your problem.
