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?
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.
On the top of lemm.ee website there is a button “Communities”. Select “All” instead of “Local” and you can search for any community.
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?
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:
Step 1.
Copy the URL
In my instance, I use the search fuction. I search for the URL. The community is one result.
enter the result, the instance has begun federating.
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.