How do I subscribe to a community outside my instance?

3 years ago by balerion to c/lemmy_support

Hi. I've subscribed to several communities outside my instance already, but I'm having a problem where I can't seem to repeat the process for certain communities.

For example, I wanted to go to /c/test on lemmy.ml. But going to lemmy.ml/c/test takes me outside of Beehaw, my home instance, so I can't post or subscribe from there. So I checked how I could visit this community, and its URL is https://beehaw.org/c/lemmy_support@lemmy.ml. I then tried going to https://beehaw.org/c/test@lemmy.ml, but that gives me an error page.

What do? I can't find /c/test on the communities page, either.

Apologies if I'm being dumb.

Barbarian 10 points 3 years ago

Hey! So, lemme explain:

You can only see communities and easily subscribe if at least 1 person in your instance has done it already.

If you're the first one from your instance to do so, what you need to do is copy the full URL (https://sh.itjust.works/c/shadowrun, for example), go to the communities list at the top of the site, hit search to get the options up, change from "Communities" to "All", then wait for your instance to pull in the content (maybe 5-10 seconds or so)

Finally, click through to the Community and click subscribe. Now that community is pulled onto your server for yourself and everyone else in your server.

Can provide images and additional clarification if needed. I know it's a little janky and unintuitive, but a Lemmy server can't just pull in all communities from all servers all the time, they'd explode. There needs to be at least 1 person who wants to see that community (subscribed) for the server to know to do that.

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bdonvr 9 points 3 years ago

And the devs have said they're working to make this happen more automatically.

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klangcola 1 point 3 years ago

Any idea why this process wouldn't work for a particular Community?

In this post both OP and me are unable to find !projectzomboid@midwest.social, while other Communities from midwest.social work fine

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Barbarian 1 point 3 years ago

That's really weird, just tried it myself from your search. Anything subscribed to in the past work from your instance, but nothing new (I tried chat, ohio and fediverse too). I don't think either server is blocking eachother, no mention of that in the instance list here or here... I'm really confused by that. Definitely not something that's supposed to happen.

I'd say contact the midwest.social admins and ask them to double-check their federation config, something fishy is going on there.

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planish 9 points 3 years ago

I always have to copy-paste the URL of the community on its home instance, or the !community@instance.tld form, into the search box on my instance, with no spaces before or after it, and then mash the search button for like 30 seconds until it federates over and appears as a search result.

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reddthat 9 points 3 years ago

Pro tip, if its a community it actually federates very fast depending on the destination instance. It's just that the "Search" result box takes a while.

If you do a search for a community, press enter, then change back to the Communities tab, select All it should show up there before it shows up in your Search result.

The UI is a bit not great for showing but it's getting there. Hopefully in one of the next Lemmy-UI releases they add better UI regarding the 'we are federating, hang on a sec' items

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hapax 1 point 3 years ago

thanks, this worked for me. the exclamation mark is required.

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beaker 5 points 3 years ago

You're not being dumb, that sounds like how it ought to work to me!

What worked for me was to log in to my home instance, search for the whole URL for the community, and then, after getting no results from the search, change the type of the search to All. Sometimes I would change it to Communities and then to All. Eventually after a couple tries the link should show up in the results. Click it to browse to the community and then you can subscribe. It's a bit cumbersome but it worked for me.

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guildz 2 points 3 years ago

That delay is from your instance and the instance you searched for exchanging information and syncing its database. You can actually see this in action if you have the "all" tab on your instances homepage open while you do the search.

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TendieMaster69 4 points 3 years ago

It's along these lines in this image

I got this to work by doing it, sometimes it takes a while for it to show up in the search https://sh.itjust.works/c/test@lemmy.ml

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balerion 6 points 3 years ago

This was what finally worked for me. Searching for the full URL didn't do it, but searching for !test@lemmy.ml did.

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mike 3 points 3 years ago

On your home instance, search for the community you want to sub. Eg: search for http://lemmy.ml/c/test - it will initially say nothing found but after about 10 seconds you should be able to find it in the All Communities list on your home instance. Click on the name of the community to view it, or click subscribe.

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DannySpud 1 point 3 years ago

Is this the same for Kbin magazines? I tried doing this with gaming@kbin.social and got the same Subscribe Pending thing mentioned in the OP.

[Edit] I assume it's related to this: https://kbin.social/...

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mike 1 point 3 years ago

No idea about kbin, sorry. Although I have gotten "Subscribe Pending" when subbing to a few communities - they eventually change to Subscribed.

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wizjenkins 1 point 3 years ago

This. I think it's a bug that it doesn't render a result on the search page.

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roblarky 3 points 3 years ago

I was literally just looking into this as well!

Like I'm signed up to beehaw, but say if I go to sh.itjust.works I can view communities, but subscribe asks to login

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bdonvr 3 points 3 years ago

On BeeHaw, go to the communities tab. Go to "all". Then search for what you're looking for.

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roblarky 1 point 3 years ago

Thanks!

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