When people are told about Lemmy and look for it in a search engine, join-lemmy.org is one of the first pages that comes up. Here they should be able to find out what Lemmy is, and be able to register an account to start posting.
At the moment this still seems too complicated, so I'm looking for your suggestions to improve it:
- On the main page, is the text relevant and up to date or should anything be changed?
- How about the instance selection wizard (click "join a server" on the homepage), which lets you select topics and languages to select instances. Do the current options make sense?
- The instance list itself, is there any information missing, or potential design improvements?
- And the list of apps, what can be done here? For one thing the data is rarely updated, so we would appreciate pull requests.
- Any other suggestions you may have.
Since yesterday I already made a couple of improvements:
-
... mostra di piùWhen people are told about Lemmy and look for it in a search engine, join-lemmy.org is one of the first pages that comes up. Here they should be able to find out what Lemmy is, and be able to register an account to start posting.
At the moment this still seems too complicated, so I'm looking for your suggestions to improve it:
- On the main page, is the text relevant and up to date or should anything be changed?
- How about the instance selection wizard (click "join a server" on the homepage), which lets you select topics and languages to select instances. Do the current options make sense?
- The instance list itself, is there any information missing, or potential design improvements?
- And the list of apps, what can be done here? For one thing the data is rarely updated, so we would appreciate pull requests.
- Any other suggestions you may have.
Since yesterday I already made a couple of improvements:
- Use biased random for instance list, so large instances are always near the top
- Rename Join to Sign Up in instance list
- Fix icon overflows by using inline-flex (by @dessalines)
- Add button to visit random instance (not merged yet)
Edit: Here is a draft for some changes to the frontpage:
github.com/LemmyNet/joinlemmy-…
Having the instance list completely random is not great because it often shows very small and niche instances at the top. In the past we used biased random sort for this, dont know why or when this...
GitHub
iByteABit
in reply to Nutomic • • •In the instance list, the link to lemmyverse.net/communities seems broken right now, it only works if you remove the
/communitiespath and then navigate to communities from the UI itself (it seems to be their own bug, it also happens if you go to the communities tab and refresh the page). Maybe the link could change to point to lemmyverse.net/ instead.Created an issue for it: 516
lemmyverse.net link is broken
iByteABit256 (GitHub)Nutomic
in reply to iByteABit • • •- github.com/LemmyNet/joinlemmy-…
- github.com/tgxn/lemmy-explorer…
Bug: Direct link to /communities is broken
Nutomic (GitHub)Dessalines likes this.
9point6
in reply to Nutomic • • •Because I've not looked at it since I signed up 2.5y ago, just went through to see how many clicks to get to a sign up page.
5 clicks is maybe slightly on the "too many" side. Perhaps language selection could be auto selected by browser language and/or default to multi.
Though randomness highlighted a 2nd issue that might not be especially visible. I got Lemmy.zip as my top suggestion so I hit the sign up button and I was greeted by a "blocked in my country because my government are idiots" page. Now I understand why the admins have made that choice, but for a new user who stumbles onto Lemmy by accident, does the 5 clicks and gets greeted by a user journey terminating error page, it's probably going to result in a fair amount of bounce.
Now I know it can't be perfect given instances don't declare by API where they are available, so I guess it would need to be a manually curated list, but maybe a feature to push instances down the list if they're geoblocked in the user's IP country
Nutomic
in reply to 9point6 • • •Makes sense, I opened an issue for automatic language selection: github.com/LemmyNet/joinlemmy-…
The 5 clicks is with the selection dialog, if you click "See all servers" instead (or the "Join" button in the top menu), you get to the instance list directly and can be done with 2 clicks. What do you think about renaming the button "Join a server" to "Instance selection wizard" or similar?
The country blocks are tricky, to know about this we would have to add data for
allowed_countriesorblocked_countriesfor each instance (and keep it up to date). I guess you are in the UK?Take languages from `Accept-Language` instead of manual input
Nutomic (GitHub)9point6
in reply to Nutomic • • •Parola filtrata: nsfw
How did you guess..! haha
I imagine we're one of the main demographics affected by this in terms of Lemmy traffic share, but I'm sure there must be other countries that face similar blocks
Yeah I had a bit of a think to try and come up with a practical solution that was less of a manual exercise, but I couldn't think of anything simple. The other solution I came up with is much more involved, where Lemmy offers geoblocking as a built-in feature to allow the instances to self-report their geoblocking config in a consistent way.
If it's too impractical/too much of a maintenance burden to solve, we will probably have to live with it, but I wanted to raise it for visibility regardless.
So from a UX point of view, I went for the most obvious CTA to get me started from my perspective.
Just had a look again and the quick join is behind the hamburger menu on mobile, so I'd say add a CTA for that of equal prominence next to the wizard CTA.
I'm not a copy guy so I'm not sure what's the best wording to use to make the two options distinct. It needs to offer the "sign me up quick" Vs "I want to customise my choice" user journeys clearly
Brainstorming, perhaps the "just sign me up" button could even take you straight to the sign up page of the random top instance in the list. Perhaps with a self-redirecting interstitial page to let them know where they're going if that's not super old-school
Another semi-related issue, perhaps you want to consider down-weighting nsfw instances in the list too, as I'd guess the average user would probably not otherwise choose one of those as their home instance.
Nutomic
in reply to 9point6 • • •It seems that Australia introduced some similar laws recently, and we can expect other western countries to follow their example over the next years. These could be handled by builtint geoblocking in Lemmy, but I'm not sure if it would really be flexible enough.
Then there is also the case of countries blocking certain websites/instances via DNS, for example China. This is not so noticable now because we have few users from such countries, but it may also get more relevant as Lemmy grows. And this is not something which can be specified on the instance itself.
The cleanest solution would be to run a service in various countries which pings the different Lemmy instances to see if they are reachable. But that would be complex to setup, and expensive to host (unless we rely on volunteers, which makes it even more complex to manage).
You can also quick join with the third button "See all servers". Again the button texts are maybe not clear enough. It could make sense to add a button "Visit random instance" directly on the homepage, similar to
... mostra di piùIt seems that Australia introduced some similar laws recently, and we can expect other western countries to follow their example over the next years. These could be handled by builtint geoblocking in Lemmy, but I'm not sure if it would really be flexible enough.
Then there is also the case of countries blocking certain websites/instances via DNS, for example China. This is not so noticable now because we have few users from such countries, but it may also get more relevant as Lemmy grows. And this is not something which can be specified on the instance itself.
The cleanest solution would be to run a service in various countries which pings the different Lemmy instances to see if they are reachable. But that would be complex to setup, and expensive to host (unless we rely on volunteers, which makes it even more complex to manage).
You can also quick join with the third button "See all servers". Again the button texts are maybe not clear enough. It could make sense to add a button "Visit random instance" directly on the homepage, similar to #513. Not sure if that should go to registration or to the instance homepage, as the user may want to have a look around first.
@geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml also made some similar suggestions in a sibling comment.
NSFW instances are already excluded from the list.
9point6
in reply to Nutomic • • •Parola filtrata: nsfw
I thought about the ping-instances-from-different-regions, but figured it would be impractical to do this for every country, and would potentially end up hitting false positives/negatives around bot detection tooling such as the cloudflare captcha screen with some instances.
Definitely not a simple one to solve!
You may have a regression in prod then, I added that point to my comment because I got lemmynsfw at the top of the list on one of my refreshes somehow
Nutomic
in reply to 9point6 • • •9point6
in reply to Nutomic • • •Fair play, I was more coming from a place of you maybe wanting to do something about that if you're gonna have a button that sends people to a random instance.
I should have said at the start btw, thanks for all the work you guys do
Nutomic
in reply to 9point6 • • •Ah that makes sense, made a note to change that.
No worries, thanks for the helpful feedback!
geneva_convenience
in reply to Nutomic • • •- Donation button can be on top, but I don't think it's handy to have it at onboarding when people don't know what Lemmy is
- See all servers button at the top as well
- There needs to be more "general" servers. Lemmy.world was the most popular choice because people want to check out Lemmy and just click on "general". Not sure if .ml still has the commie paste prompt.
- If possible let their first server be a general one without email verification so they can quickly join
- Most people don't have a preference for interests, I'd make one giant button on the left saying "all" or " general" or something like that which just directly sends you to a "general" server, and one on th
... mostra di piùSelecting interests for personalized experience is something which should happen on an account basis imo. Reddit lets users select their interests and bases their frontpage algorithm on that. And people can change those filters if they so wish to get a different feed. That's customization on an account level, not on instance level.
Language customization should be less emphasized, or should be put in the "interests" section based on their country IP while joining. On the internet imperialist English has been considered the default language. The join-Lemmy page is English to begin with.
Nutomic
in reply to geneva_convenience • • •Its not the same, as forums dont use scores and have less focus on external links. The text already mentions forums, by removing link aggregator it would also be too short here.
That is what "Join" does, but the text is probably not clear. "See all servers" is a bit long, would "Instances" be clear enough?
... mostra di piùThere are a few like lemmy.zip, lemmy.wtf or reddthat. We could also consider showing lemmy.world again, but with the current sorting it is always shown at the top because it is so much larger than other instances. lemmy.ml still has the commie paste prompt.
Its not the same, as forums dont use scores and have less focus on external links. The text already mentions forums, by removing link aggregator it would also be too short here.
That is what "Join" does, but the text is probably not clear. "See all servers" is a bit long, would "Instances" be clear enough?
There are a few like lemmy.zip, lemmy.wtf or reddthat. We could also consider showing lemmy.world again, but with the current sorting it is always shown at the top because it is so much larger than other instances. lemmy.ml still has the commie paste prompt.
From what I can see, all the general instances do require email verification.
You mean those grayscale images by the features? Those are just general placeholders to avoid having all text. There arent really any images which are relevant to show for a software project.
Maybe that can be added as a filter. For now I added an icon to instances which require email to signup (#523).
It uses the language configured in your browser. For me it shows in Spanish. We can also use browser language to filter the instance list without manual selection.
Frontpage buttons and topic selection are definitely the trickiest part. I would consider removing the topic selection, because there are some which barely narrow it down (technology, general or politics each show a few dozen instances), or shows only a few instances which dont match well. Plus the topics are not actively maintained.
I made a PR with some changes to the frontpage: github.com/LemmyNet/joinlemmy-…
Frontpage changes by Nutomic · Pull Request #524 · LemmyNet/joinlemmy-site
GitHubgeneva_convenience
in reply to Nutomic • • •Possibly. Dumping everyone at lemmy.zip is a possibility too. lemmy.wtf is is a bit too on the nose.
I would avoid using instances without "lemmy" in the name like reddthat, it was very confusing to me when I started out.
I think I agree with that, at least for now. The only topic instance with real specific activity in that list is probably blahaj for the LGBTQ.
The new front page looks much better and cleaner. Not sure about the "Apps" though, people need to create an account first so. Maybe "Instance selector"? Also I'd call it "Mobile Apps" instead, "Apps" is a bit vague.
I still plead for removing both buttons and directly showing the "instance selector" in the middle area, with the "See all instances" showing in the top bar only. Maybe slightly more prominently than the other top bar
... mostra di piùPossibly. Dumping everyone at lemmy.zip is a possibility too. lemmy.wtf is is a bit too on the nose.
I would avoid using instances without "lemmy" in the name like reddthat, it was very confusing to me when I started out.
I think I agree with that, at least for now. The only topic instance with real specific activity in that list is probably blahaj for the LGBTQ.
The new front page looks much better and cleaner. Not sure about the "Apps" though, people need to create an account first so. Maybe "Instance selector"? Also I'd call it "Mobile Apps" instead, "Apps" is a bit vague.
I still plead for removing both buttons and directly showing the "instance selector" in the middle area, with the "See all instances" showing in the top bar only. Maybe slightly more prominently than the other top bar icons
::: spoiler link aggregator rant
The definition used by Reddit currently is also possible
that would make Lemmy a "forum and (social) news aggregation" platform. "Link-aggregation" sounds much to vague to me, as if Lemmy is a link-scraping bot. But I've gone on that rant in the past.
:::
One of the buttons talks about "instances" and the other one about "servers in your new design". Not sure what the difference there is
Nutomic
in reply to geneva_convenience • • •That makes sense. I went through the list and found these as reasonable defaults: lemmy.zip/, lemmy.today/, thelemmy.club/, lemmus.org/
Then it would be one of the monthly tasks for @dessalines@lemmy.ml and me to go through this list and keep it updated.
... mostra di piùThat makes sense. I went through the list and found these as reasonable defaults: lemmy.zip/, lemmy.today/, thelemmy.club/, lemmus.org/
Then it would be one of the monthly tasks for @dessalines@lemmy.ml and me to go through this list and keep it updated.
At least some of the apps let you register directly, though I dont have an overview of that. Would be good to contact the app devs about adding a registration option where it is missing. They might have the same doubts which instances to use as defaults.
It also includes web apps and desktop apps...
Which instance selector do you mean?
"News aggregator" and "Link aggregator" is very similar, either one works for me.
No difference, its just that "Instances" may not be clear to new users. Should definitely be made consistent before merging.
Dessalines likes this.
Die4Ever
in reply to Nutomic • • •I don't think link aggregator is a good term at all. If I said that to my mom she would never imagine anything like Reddit, she'd probably think of Google instead. Forum would be much better. "Discussion forum" would fix the issue with it being too short.
Or even "forum with voting and comment trees" lol IDK, I feel like anything is better than "link aggregator".
Nutomic
in reply to Die4Ever • • •Makes sense, I created a separate post about this: lemmy.ml/post/41767599
Nutomic
2026-01-16 11:01:50
Makes sense, I created a separate post about this: lemmy.ml/post/41767599
Nutomic
2026-01-16 11:01:50
Dessalines likes this.
jaybone
in reply to Nutomic • • •I haven’t looked at that site in a few years.
One thing I always think about though, in order to get a better distribution of users across instances, maybe not put the biggest instances at the top (like Lemmy.world) but instead put active medium to large size instances at the very top. But not that they are too small or too inactive such that user signs up on an instance which is not properly maintained or used, giving them a bad experience and possibly losing their instance/account.
And maybe offer different levels of option selection for any type of sign up wizard. Like advanced options could let you specify a bunch of stuff. But maybe have a simple option, like googles old “I’m feeling lucky” button. But you might call it “Pick an active instance for me” or something like that. Which might again use the above sizing and activity guidelines to pick an instance for them.
Nutomic
in reply to jaybone • • •Lemmy.world is already excluded from the list as it has more than 30% of active users. And the list now uses a "biased random" sorting by default, with larger instances always near the top, and smaller instances further down.
Are there any specific options you would like to see? I did just add an icon to indicate instances which require email verification (#523), but also dont want to overload the UI with too much info. And I made some changes to the homepage, including a button to open a random instance (#524).
Aria
in reply to Nutomic • • •Ask the user if they want to give Hitler a medal or a bullet. Medal redirects to .world and bullet to grad.👍
(This is a joke).
I think the colour scheme and dark-mode screenshots contributes to it looking daunting. You even have Matrix (the film)-text in the open source banner photo. The website looks like it's trying to sell the Lemmy software instead of the Lemmy user experience/community. I think just changing those photos to gentler more iconographic or symbolic ones would go a long way towards making it lighter to process. In fact in-fact, those concepts don't really need pictures to make them easier to communicate, but the features list probably does. There's a paste-icon and then it says "Clean, mobile-friendly interface.". I think just having a mobile screenshot would communicate that way better.
As for helping the user find an instance: If you can find a concise way to communicate what federation is, that'll probably take some of the anxiety away. I don't really know how. What do people think about maybe showing like a "80% federated" type stat? Tag
... mostra di piùAsk the user if they want to give Hitler a medal or a bullet. Medal redirects to .world and bullet to grad.👍
(This is a joke).
I think the colour scheme and dark-mode screenshots contributes to it looking daunting. You even have Matrix (the film)-text in the open source banner photo. The website looks like it's trying to sell the Lemmy software instead of the Lemmy user experience/community. I think just changing those photos to gentler more iconographic or symbolic ones would go a long way towards making it lighter to process. In fact in-fact, those concepts don't really need pictures to make them easier to communicate, but the features list probably does. There's a paste-icon and then it says "Clean, mobile-friendly interface.". I think just having a mobile screenshot would communicate that way better.
As for helping the user find an instance: If you can find a concise way to communicate what federation is, that'll probably take some of the anxiety away. I don't really know how. What do people think about maybe showing like a "80% federated" type stat? Tags would also help, because right now you're basically going by the logo and name, and only when one catches your eye do you read the description. (You might immediately read the description of the first few presented). I think users probably want to compare by seeing structured information so the differences stand out. Since the description is free form it's not 1-to-1 like tags would be. The current presentations makes user count seem by far the most important. And then once you've made that assumption you'll probably make another assumption that user count determines how much content you can interact with.
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Nutomic
in reply to Aria • • •We dont have any designers on the team so these things are always tricky for us. The images are quite arbitrary, so if you have any specific suggestions for better images I would be happy to replace them.
For a normal user it shouldnt be necessary to understand federation before signing up. Tags are tricky because they are dont exist in Lemmy itself, and the ones defined on joinlemmy are practically unmaintained.
I see what you mean about user count, the current layout makes it seem like the most important metric to compare instances, when in reality it doesnt matter so much. Plus the tooltips are wrong, these are only numbers for local users and local comments, federated ones are not counted (and unfortunately are not available from the API at the moment). Is there any other information you would like to see instead of these numbers? The ones I see which are relevant and easily available would be:
- Number of linked/blocked instances
- Downvotes enabled
- Languages
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Aria
in reply to Nutomic • • •Okay. I will give this some thought.
It's unmaintained but at least it exists. I'm sure you'd go through the effort of updating them if an instance owner asked, right? So they're probably still close enough. You do have data to present and it's better than nothing.
But then what decision are they making? Both what decision are they actually making and what decision do they think they're making? Knowing that they can interact with all* the instances is hugely transformative to your heuristics.
... mostra di piùNumber linked is good, but blocked has the problem of confusing narrow scope and being vigilant against spam. An instance might federate with every
Okay. I will give this some thought.
It's unmaintained but at least it exists. I'm sure you'd go through the effort of updating them if an instance owner asked, right? So they're probably still close enough. You do have data to present and it's better than nothing.
But then what decision are they making? Both what decision are they actually making and what decision do they think they're making? Knowing that they can interact with all* the instances is hugely transformative to your heuristics.
Number linked is good, but blocked has the problem of confusing narrow scope and being vigilant against spam. An instance might federate with everyone* but because it's more maintained they also block more.
Cloudflare is useful to know for our privacy-consonous userbase. It might be kinda technical but if there is one or two stats visible the user cares about or at least understands then I don't think having one they don't understand matters. They essentially don't understand "users" and that's the main thing presented right now.
Dessalines likes this.
Nutomic
in reply to Aria • • •Sure, and they can also update it on their own by making a PR to this file. In fact anyone can do that.
... mostra di piùVery good question. I suppose the main criteria are:
- Topic (general purpose or specific interest)
- Language or country
- Instance size (small, medium, large)
Sure, and they can also update it on their own by making a PR to this file. In fact anyone can do that.
Very good question. I suppose the main criteria are:
- Topic (general purpose or specific interest)
- Language or country
- Instance size (small, medium, large)
This is a niche topic again, most normal users dont even know what Cloudflare is. Those who care can choose an instance which mentions privacy, or check it themselves.
Opened an issue here: github.com/LemmyNet/joinlemmy-…
Replace statistics shown for instances
Nutomic (GitHub)dantel
in reply to Nutomic • • •Ok so I think it would be best to have two ways: One really completely foolproof way, where the user does not need to know a single thing about the technologies involved. 0 upfront homework for the user.
And then a second way for users willing to take the time to do a 'manual setup'.
I created an AI slop clickable mockup real quick as it's easier to bring the idea across than describing it with lots of words. This only covers the foolproof way.
jsfiddle.net/da9m4nuq/
The main idea being to remove all possible friction for users who are the opposite of tech savvy - which imo are the absolute majority of all users.
The tricky part is preselecting a server for them. This will probably need a more or less manually curated list of servers which most people will be okay with - so no extreme opinions, not technical, big enough so they don't seem empty on first sight. Done in such a way that the people get more or less equally distributed, so we don't create one centralized
... mostra di piùOk so I think it would be best to have two ways: One really completely foolproof way, where the user does not need to know a single thing about the technologies involved. 0 upfront homework for the user.
And then a second way for users willing to take the time to do a 'manual setup'.
I created an AI slop clickable mockup real quick as it's easier to bring the idea across than describing it with lots of words. This only covers the foolproof way.
jsfiddle.net/da9m4nuq/
The main idea being to remove all possible friction for users who are the opposite of tech savvy - which imo are the absolute majority of all users.
The tricky part is preselecting a server for them. This will probably need a more or less manually curated list of servers which most people will be okay with - so no extreme opinions, not technical, big enough so they don't seem empty on first sight. Done in such a way that the people get more or less equally distributed, so we don't create one centralized instance.
But I think it is crucial to remove any friction for the users. Don't let them do homework before they even know what Lemmy is and if it's worth it at all.
Lemmy – Quick Sign In Mockup - JSFiddle - Code Playground
jsfiddle.netNutomic
in reply to dantel • • •dantel
in reply to Nutomic • • •It is shaping up very nicely! One more nitpick: cloud that button say something like 'Join Lemmy (instance name)'?
So that any fool understands what it does. Join instance name has the potential to confuse some people, because they don't know what joining instance name means - especially if some instance is chosen which name is more on the cryptic site.
But anyway, very nice!
Nutomic
in reply to dantel • • •Coincidentally thats exactly what I did:
Still needs some more changes though.
Otter
in reply to Nutomic • • •I appreciate that you are gathering community feedback!
Right now it feels like the website is geared towards the style and content that technical users appreciate. I agree with the other comments that it would be nice to simplify the website down. Technical users are willing to explore for more information while the average user taking a quick look will likely leave.
Taking inspiration from other Fediverse platforms, my favourite landing pages are from Peertube and Mastodon:
... mostra di piùThis is likely a bia
I appreciate that you are gathering community feedback!
Right now it feels like the website is geared towards the style and content that technical users appreciate. I agree with the other comments that it would be nice to simplify the website down. Technical users are willing to explore for more information while the average user taking a quick look will likely leave.
Taking inspiration from other Fediverse platforms, my favourite landing pages are from Peertube and Mastodon:
This is likely a biased opinion, but could you add 'region' as a field, or 'regional' as a topic? For our instance, I think that's how a lot of people are choosing to make an account with us given recent events. It also helps the user find an instance that is nearby (for lower latency), and within a jurisdiction that they are familiar with / can have an influence over through voting or other means.
pangora.socialseems to be down right now, but I recall them having a nice way of organizing thatAnother biased opinion, I agree that it's better to have large instances near the top since they're more likely to be up / fixed quickly / on top of moderation. You could include a note saying that larger instances are near the top because of XYZ, and that people can always make more accounts down the road if you change your mind. That way there's less pressure to pick the "correct" instance.
Could you potentially collaborate with lemmyapps.com/ ? It would be easier for users to submit updates to one place (whether it is a PR to you or an update on that site)
If I were to try and critique the site in excessive detail, from top to bottom:
Join a serveandSee all serversare very similar for a user that's not familiar with how this all works, and they end up in the same place. So instead of a popup, could you have it as a responsive widget on the instance's page? That way users can quickly figure out how the instances are taggedOn the servers page:
Mastodon - Decentralized social media
joinmastodon.orgNutomic
in reply to Otter • • •
... mostra di piùMakes sense, this all seems similar to the frontpage changes I drafted today (added screenshot to the OP just now).
Makes sense, this all seems similar to the frontpage changes I drafted today (added screenshot to the OP just now).
This also makes a lot of sense, showing regional instances can make the choice much easier. Opened issue: github.com/LemmyNet/joinlemmy-…
This is already the case since yesterday, there is a semirandom sort which always shows larger instances near the top and smaller ones further down.
Very good idea, also opened an issue: github.com/LemmyNet/joinlemmy-…
You mean the Lemmy logo in the top left? It seems the thin lines are not rendered well at this small scale. What colors would you use?
Maybe, but there are so few items that it seems fine like this.
Again see github.com/LemmyNet/joinlemmy-…
With Peertube they have a good designer on board to make these graphics. We are all programmers, so its very difficult to make a good design without more concrete suggestions.
The images are just to avoid having too much text, a bit similar to the Peertube site. I already mentioned it in another comment, if you know any better images to put there I would be happy to replace them. The icons on your site are very small, so it would still show a lot of text.
True the texts should be a bit bigger. github.com/LemmyNet/joinlemmy-…
True these havent been updated in a long time. Any specific features that you would emphasize?
Instances can have multiple topics, in fact you can make a PR to this file to update it yourself.
That does look good, though it also has some problems. Most instances are uncategorized, and country selection is by server IP so Germany also has
pixelshot.itlisted. Manually specifying countries would be more reliable (but also more effort).Larger text
Nutomic (GitHub)Otter
in reply to Nutomic • • •I just took another look at the site, and I love the new changes already!
I see the developer also found the issue, great to hear that you both might be collaborating.
That's a good point. I like the images you have currently, and I'll keep an eye out for anything that might be better.
... mostra di piùA few of them have nice big cards now, so those could be combined. Otherwise the features that I personally would have been intere
I just took another look at the site, and I love the new changes already!
I see the developer also found the issue, great to hear that you both might be collaborating.
That's a good point. I like the images you have currently, and I'll keep an eye out for anything that might be better.
A few of them have nice big cards now, so those could be combined. Otherwise the features that I personally would have been interested in are (in no particular order):
Emojis with autocomplete support. Start typing :User tagging using @, Community tagging using !: You could also emphasize that this works across instances. For example: "Tagging users and communities from any federated instance"Integrated image uploading in both posts and comments.i18n / internationalization support for > 30 languagesRSS / Atom feeds for All, Subscribed, Inbox, User, and Community.By hosting your own server, you can be in full control of your content.Thanks, I made a note for our team to look into that in the future!
That's a good point, I'm also not sure if there is a good way for instance admins to change that on Pixelfed's site. I don't have a strong preference either way, but having some way for admins to update the information would be ideal. Perhaps an automated system with custom overrides through a file on the GitHub?
Some more feedback on the current version of the site:
Browse All Serversbe the primary button, and then the join button be secondary. A refresh button might also work: "Refresh for a new randomly selected server"Pixelfed Server Directory
PixelfedNutomic
in reply to Otter • • •Not sure how you mean. Is it too complicated to make a pull request and edit the file I linked above?
... mostra di piùIts not random from the whole list, but selected from a curated list (currently only lemmus.org and thelemmy.club, s
Not sure how you mean. Is it too complicated to make a pull request and edit the file I linked above?
Its not random from the whole list, but selected from a curated list (currently only lemmus.org and thelemmy.club, see #545). Its displayed like this because a lot of people complained that choosing an instance is too complicated.
The images are not great, I will make a similar post soon to get contributions, and feedback for better texts.
comfy
in reply to Nutomic • • •I think the description starts off too technical - "link aggregator" is correct, but not a term that many people know about. "Selfhosted" might even be lost on most people.
Perhaps something more simple would help as a first introduction, there's plenty of opportunity for the more technical-minded to learn more. Maybe calling it a "network of content-sharing and discussion forums"? I'd love to put "decentralized" at the front, although I'm not sure how obvious that term is.
Dessalines likes this.
Nutomic
in reply to comfy • • •Some other people also mentioned this, made a post to gather suggestions: lemmy.ml/post/41767599
Nutomic
2026-01-16 11:01:50
Some other people also mentioned this, made a post to gather suggestions: lemmy.ml/post/41767599
Nutomic
2026-01-16 11:01:50
Dessalines likes this.
Meldrik
in reply to Nutomic • • •It should show the user an instance based on their IP, location, browser language etc. and perhaps the list of possible instances should be hardcoded.
Then also give the user the ability to see all servers.
Nutomic
in reply to Meldrik • • •gandalf_der_12te
in reply to Nutomic • • •Nutomic
in reply to gandalf_der_12te • • •Default settings and welcome message for new users
Nutomic (GitHub)gandalf_der_12te
in reply to Nutomic • • •I do think the "topic"/"language" selection screens make sense overall.
Also what i noticed is that on
join-lemmy.org/
when you select certain topics (like "Art/literature" and "german speaking"), then the resulting instance list is empty. It might be wise to show at least one instance for every search query, even if it's not 100% fit. For example, at least display one generic-topic instance for your language or one english-language instance for your topic.
Lemmy - A forum and link aggregator for the fediverse
join-lemmy.orgNutomic
in reply to gandalf_der_12te • • •Instance topics
Nutomic (GitHub)gandalf_der_12te
in reply to Nutomic • • •Lemmy - A forum and link aggregator for the fediverse
join-lemmy.orgNutomic
in reply to gandalf_der_12te • • •Make link for instance list more obvious, remove placeholders by Nutomic · Pull Request #404 · LemmyNet/lemmy-docs
GitHubDessalines likes this.
1984
in reply to Nutomic • • •Just be careful to not drive all traffic to only large instances, because then people who run smaller ones may not get enough users to keep doing it. How healthy will Lemmy be if everyone uses the same five instances?
Its already a bit of a problem with the large instances being so dominating.
Dessalines
in reply to 1984 • • •This is what scares me more than anything, and why I want to reject requests to drive ppl to the larger instances.
The more decentralized, the healthier we are.
wiki_me
in reply to Nutomic • • •Two ideas i like:
linking to a bunch of platforms that have reviews of lemmy, fynd does this:
A neodb instance (but maybe another platform would do) where you can read and write reviews about fediverse instances (but that would require at least one volunteer to moderate it).
🧩 NeoDB
neodb.netNutomic
in reply to wiki_me • • •wiki_me
in reply to Nutomic • • •The website is already linking to google play store and apple store. right now apps that are purely web don't have a platform to read reviews on . plus neodb lib.reviews are open source although they might not yet be ready for the task yet.
I doubt that, any data? similarweb shows the top referring site for now is openalternative.co (although at least one of the referring sites mentioned doesn't seem to make sense for me ).
I think people would want to see average ratings. reading a community page means you only read 1-3 reviews and that sample size is too small and potentially biased. you could just run into people who hate a instance for some particular reason (and it's not hard for me to think of reasons like that).
OpenAlternative - Open Source Alternatives to Popular Software
OpenAlternativeNutomic
in reply to wiki_me • • •Those links are specifically for people searching an app for those platforms. Very different from asking for reviews.
... mostra di piùNo data, its my impression from reading various related discussions on Lemmy. We also added a new signup question on lemmy.ml today, asking people how they found out about Lemmy. That should give us some more info.
Those links are specifically for people searching an app for those platforms. Very different from asking for reviews.
No data, its my impression from reading various related discussions on Lemmy. We also added a new signup question on lemmy.ml today, asking people how they found out about Lemmy. That should give us some more info.
Feel free to start something for community ratings, I dont really have time or interest.
zlita
in reply to Nutomic • • •On the new UI i'm not sure what is the difference between "country" and "language" (btw "Country" isn't translated in the french version, the translation would be "Pays"). What I can guess is that "country" is the country where the server are hosted, but I'm far from sure with the current wording (and I'm a technical person, most peoples would definitively not guess it). If that is the case, I would rename it with "hosted in" or something similar.
Concerning the language selection I also find it disturbing to not be able to select multiple language (in my case I speak both french and english, so I would want to select both but not "all language" as I don't speak german for example). If you allow multiple language selection then instances speaking both language should be displayed before the ones where they speak only one of the language (I don't know if instances with multiple language exists right now ? but we could imagine it in the future).
Nutomic
in reply to zlita • • •Good point, I renamed it to "hosted in" and also added a filter by continent ath the same time (github.com/LemmyNet/joinlemmy-…). Translations are contributed by people like you via Weblate, contributions welcome!
Multiple language selection would be both complicated to implement and also complicated to use. Not even joinmastodon.org has it. I would simply select the language which is less common, for French there is only a single instance.
Change country to "hosted in", add continent filter by Nutomic · Pull Request #567 · LemmyNet/joinlemmy-site
GitHub