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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I’ve made https://lemmy.antemeridiem.xyz/ to help take off some of that load. New registrations are welcomed and it should be maintained for a very very long time 🎂
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?
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
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.
I use kbin too.
New to this feedverse or how you call it.
Why isn’t there one login that can post on all platforms and I have to signup on each separately?
If there is, you’re not making it obvious I guess.
What happens to the users of one instance when that instance is shut down or deleted? Searching for a url seems way too complicated. Can’t one subscribe to a server or sub category on a server?
This I would really want it to work but it’s much worse to me than forums even.
Fediverse is the reverse of that - you sign up at one instance, and everyone can follow you from wherever they are. So you post in one place, get seen from everywhere else.
Sadly, I feel like the Fediverse, based on ActivityPub, was fundamentally designed wrong for scaling potential. I do like Fedi and I like ActivityPub, but I think instances should not have to be responsible for all of this:
- Owning user accounts
- Exclusively host communities
- Serving local and remote users webpages and media
- Never going down, as this results in users and content becoming unavailable
Because servers “own” the user accounts and communities it’s not trivial for users to switch to a different instance, and as instances scale their costs go up slightly exponentially.
I wish the Fediverse from the beginning was a truly distributed content replication platform, usenet-style or Matrix-style, and every instance would add additional capacity to the network instead of hosting specific communities or users.
I guess it’s a bit too late for a redesign now… Perhaps decentralized identifiers will take us there in some form in the future.
While it might not be too late for that update, it would require some reconciliation to happen. There’s the potential for multiple users and communities of the same name across servers that would need to be considered.
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!
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?
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
Keep it simple with
lemmy.itjust.works.If you get this going or need a hand then let me know.
can’t wait for fedd.itjust.works to go online!
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!
Naming things is one of the two most difficult issues in IT, alongside cache validation and off-by-one errors.
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?
choosing the name for my instance was easy. programming related? programming.dev it is!
I name everything as var1 var2 etc.
var37.social incoming
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. 🤷
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.
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 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).
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.
https://toast.ooo is accepting registrations 🎉
@nutomic lemmy.world is a new instance which can also be used.
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.
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…
For non technical users, the idea of instances can be a very confusing concept (the email analogy is a good one but its still confusing for people). I know you guys have a lot on your plate in terms of development wise, however I hope that prioritizing keeping lemmy.ml up is high up there. I say this because its the instance that most users from Reddit will flock to. And the last thing they need is to create an account then have the site go down for 6 hours. I havent experienced it going down. Although hopefully you have a backup site for when it does (what I mean is just a page that says your down/your working on fixing it… Try these instances instead.)
I applied for a few other instances but this one came through first. Your downfall is being too good compared to the competition.
I’ll be honest. I only applied for this one but that was because I had (still have) no idea what I’m doing lol
Hi, as one of the new people, is there a way to transfer to another instance or would I have to create a new account there?
You have to create a new account. But that’s easy ;)
That’s kind of wrong though, isn’t it? What about stuff like GDPR data exports? Users should be able to export their data, then import it into another instance, effectively migrating instances.
You can on Mastodon, you just export your data, delete your account, create new account on another instance and upload your data and it’s like what you said!
You are free to learn to program and write a user import routine for lemmy: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy
I know how to program, I also know how to wonder how many instances are running off the docker-compose with publicly exposed postgres… that would make import/export really easy, wouldn’t it? 🙄
Anyway, would you say this isn’t the right place to discuss this stuff?
Why would this be not the right place?
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
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.
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)/¯
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.
