this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2023
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Asklemmy
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So I am just jumping into it myself (and straight into the deep end with running my own server, lol), so this may not be 100% accurate...
My current understanding is that an instance is where you make your account and log in to. The instance keeps track of all the stuff to show you, including things it gets from other instances.
A "sub" (I think called a "community" in Lemmy parlance) is basically a subreddit, but with the added benefit of being able to subscribe to it from any instance due to the whole "federation" thing. For example, this overall post is on lemmy.ml (in their "asklemmy" community), the comment you replied to is from a user on on the lemmy.world instance, you are a user on the latte.isnot.coffee instance, and I am on the lemmy.nrd.li instance. These instances are all sending messages to each other to keep all of our comments/votes/posts/etc in sync so this can all work (mostly) seamlessly.
Can I visit other instances and view/interact with their local posts from this instance? I'm getting the hang of communities but the instances are throwing me for a loop lol
When you subscribe to a a community you can see all posts to that community. You can think of it as the post getting sent to whichever instance created the community, which then distributes the post to any instances that have users subscribed to that community. AFAIK there is no way to view all posts from some other instance other than visiting that instance directly.
You should be able to see all of the posts from communities that someone on your instance has subscribed to by switching to "All" in the community selector at the top of your feed (Subscribed / Local / All).
For discovering communities right now I am just going to the top instances listed on https://join-lemmy.org/instances and seeing what communities are active and interesting. The flow to subscribe to them kinda sucks (you have to copy the community name "!asklemmy@lemmy.ml" into the search on your instance, wait for it to do some sort of handshake, and eventually you can then click into and explore that specific community). Apparently there is also a community browser you can use.
Thank you!
The community browser you mentioned is super useful. Just copy links from there into your search bar to subscribe.
https://browse.feddit.de/
Well, it's actually a bit simpler than that.
You can directly browse a community that technically lives on another instance without ever leaving your instance.
If you're on the start page of your instance you can e.g. change between seeing Local, Subscribed or posts from all communities (across instances).
You can click around and browse from there without having to leave your instance :)
Thanks!