lemmy.ml is overloaded, use other instances instead - eviltoast

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.

  • Bilb!@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    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!

  • jarwinder@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    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”?

    • Barbarian@lemmy.ml
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      1 year 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.

    • Barbarian@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      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.

  • TheYang@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Is scaling the server a largely financial issue, or not? @nutomic@lemmy.ml

    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?

  • lightrush@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

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

  • comfy@lemmy.ml
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    1 year 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.

  • 777@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    I don’t know what happened but in the last half hour the website has become highly responsive again. Thank you admins for your hard work.

  • Gecko@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    You might wanna consider temporarily closing sign-up requests on lemmy.ml similarly to how mastodon.social did 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…

  • ionhowto@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • anders@rytter.me
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      1 year ago

      @nutomic @ionhowto you dont have to sign up on multiple instances. if you want to comment a post on another instance, copy the url and paste in into the search field and then your current instance will fetch the post so you can comment on it.

    • Neil@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      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.

  • aksdb@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • federico3@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      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?

      • aksdb@feddit.de
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        1 year 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.)

    • CannotSleep420@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      An account on a given instance only lets you log on to that instance. You can use that account to interact with people from other instances, however.

  • d3Xt3r@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • jonah@lemmy.one
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      1 year 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.